The QUEST Story

Throughout the 1998-1999 school year, we discussed the problem of minority student achievement at Evanston Township High School with our peers and the administration. As you may already know, the enrollment of minorities in honors and advanced placement courses at high schools across the country is low and their achievement in these classes does not equal that of their non-minority peers. In addition, minority students are not performing as well as their non-minority counterparts on college entrance examinations such as the ACT and SAT. We feel that, as students, it is our duty to assist our administration in improving the education performance of our peers.

Therefore, we have organized QUEST: Questioning Understanding and Educating Students Together. We hope to question students, staff, and families as to what obstacles they feel are in the way of minority student achievement, understand what role the student body must play in improving the problem, and educate middle school students as to what they will face academically and socially during their high school career.

As experts in being students at Evanston Township High School, we feel that we can attempt to ease the problem through interaction with Evanston/Skokie School District 65 middle school students. We find that middle school is a time when teachers attempt to prepare students for their future high school years. They are given a fair amount of independence and must seek help from their teacher; they no longer receive the personalized attention concerning their schoolwork that they received during elementary school. Our organization gather students from all five middle school and magnet schools in District 65 to ETHS on Saturday afternoons from 5-6:30 PM. Throughout the year, we hope to serve as mentors to these students in a 2:5 mentor-mentee ratio. We wish to inform the students that their parents, peers, teachers, and future high school counselors are concerned with their achievement. In addition, we will conduct workshops concerning topics such as high school athletics and college selection, promote awareness of the many educational resources our school has to offer, review courses available to students at our school, discuss with the students' parents what they can expect their child to encounter in high school, and invite minority professionals to speak to the students about different career pathways. Currently, there are seventy middle school and thirty-two high school members of QUEST.

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We feel that every member of the Evanston Community plays an important role in promoting minority student achievement.

Staff

• Mantaining the same high expectations for students of all races
• Promoting open discussions of the hindrances of minority student achievement
• Eradicating prejudices of the academic ability of minority students

Students

• Initiating mentorship and volunteering activities for young Evanston minority students
• Heightening academic expectations among students

Parents

• Remaining in contact with school
• Encouragement and support
• Educational exposure

Community

• Creation of after-school programs that are not simply "day care"
• Offering spare time for mentoring and volunteering

 

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Contact us at questmsa@hotmail.com

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