Cooley High School

Thomas M. Cooley High School is located at the intersection of Hubbell Avenue and Chalfonte Street, on the northwest side of Detroit, Michigan. The three-story, Mediterranean Revival-style facility opened its doors on September 4, 1928.

The school was named in honor of Thomas M. Cooley, a nineteenth-century jurist and former Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court. Cooley was also a charter member, and first chairman, of the Federal Interstate Commerce Commission.

Due to budget constraints and declining enrollment, Cooley High School was closed at the end of the 2010 academic year.

The early years

Cooley High School's history dates to the late 1920s, a time when thousands of homes were built upon land acquired through Detroit's westernmost annexation efforts in the former Greenfield Township, and village of Strathmoor. Cooley High was constructed to accommodate a rapidly growing populace on the city's burgeoning northwest side.

The first five years of Cooley's existence was marked by rapid growth. In 1928, the student population stood at 1570, by 1932 the figure had climbed to 3750. That same year, noted author and motion picture celebrity, Frank Buck visited Cooley High School; Buck thrilled a packed auditorium audience with travelogues of recent African excursions.

Cooley High

Cooley High is a 1975 American film based upon the real high school located on the near north side of Chicago, produced and released by American International Pictures and written by Eric Monte (co-creator of Good Times). The film, set in 1964 Chicago, Illinois, stars Glynn Turman and Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, and features a soundtrack made up of 1960s Motown hits.

The film is considered a classic of black cinema, and its soundtrack featured a new Motown recording, G.C. Cameron's hit single "It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday". That song was covered in 1991 by Motown act Boyz II Men on the group's first album, named Cooleyhighharmony in honor of this film.

Plot

The film tells the story of a momentous few days in the lives of Leroy "Preach" Jackson (Glynn Turman) and his best friend Richard "Cochise" Morris (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs), two black high school students at Edwin G. Cooley Vocational High School in Chicago, Illinois, during the early 1960s. Preach is an aspiring writer who reads poetry and history books for fun, and secretly composes his own poems, but is disinterested in school and thus does poorly. Cochise is a basketball star who hopes to go to college on an athletic scholarship. The boys and their friends live in a poor urban neighborhood, where Preach's mother works three jobs to support him and his two younger sisters, and Cochise lives with his extended family in a crowded apartment. The handsome and athletic Cochise is popular and sought after by girls, while the skinnier and shorter Preach often gets rejected.

High school

A high school (also secondary school, senior school, secondary college) is a school that provides adolescents with part or all of their secondary education. It may come after primary school or middle school and be followed by higher education or vocational training.

Terminology

The term "high school" originated in Scotland, with the world's oldest high school being Edinburgh's Royal High School from 1505. The Royal High School was used as a model for the first public high school in the United States, Boston Latin School founded in Boston, Massachusetts.

The precise stage of schooling provided by a high school differs from country to country, and may vary within the same jurisdiction. In all of New Zealand and Malaysia, along with most of Britain and parts of Australia, Bangladesh and Canada, high school means the same thing as secondary school, but instead of starting in 9th grade, these "secondary schools" begin at ages 11 or 12.

Country by country

Australia

In Australia, high school is a secondary school, from Year 7 or Year 8 through to Year 12, varying from state to state. High school immediately follows primary (elementary) school; therefore, a Year-7 Australian high-school student is sometimes as young as 12. In Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory, the term "high school" generally refers to Years 7–10, whereas the term "College" is used for Years 11–12. In Victoria the term "secondary college" has largely replaced the term "high school" following the reforms of the Labor Government in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Some schools have retained the name "high school" (such as Melbourne High School) and many have now dropped the "secondary" and are simply known as "college".

High school (disambiguation)

High school is the last segment of compulsory secondary education in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, India, Scotland, the United States, and other countries; the term also refers to the building where such education takes place.

High school may also refer to:

Education

Art, entertainment, and media

Comedy

Comics

Fictional entities

Films

Secondary education in the United States

In most jurisdictions, secondary education in the United States refers to the last four years of statutory formal education (grade nine through grade twelve) either at high school or split between a final year of 'junior high school' and three in high school.

History

The United States historically had a demand for general skills rather than specific training/apprenticeships. High school enrollment increased when schools at this level became free, laws required children to attend until a certain age, and it was believed that every American student had the opportunity to participate regardless of their ability.

In 1892, in response to many competing academic philosophies being promoted at the time, a working group of educators, known as the "Committee of Ten" was established by the National Education Association. It recommended twelve years of instruction, consisting of eight years of elementary education followed by four years of high school. Rejecting suggestions that high schools should divide students into college-bound and working-trades groups from the start, and in some cases also by race or ethnic background, they unanimously recommended that "every subject which is taught at all in a secondary school should be taught in the same way and to the same extent to every pupil so long as he pursues it, no matter what the probable destination of the pupil may be, or at what point his education is to cease."