Why Small Schools
Are Essential
Volume 13, Number 3
January, 1997
Sidebars
What Research
Has Found About Small Schools
Philadelphia's
"Small Learning Communities"
Why Do Students
Do Better in Small Schools?
What About School-Within-A-School
Plans?
Helpful Resources
on Small Schools
Small schools do better across
the board at knowing students well,
keeping their work meaningful, and
joining with others in collaborative
communities. In the push toward
higher student achievement, how
can we bring their successes into
the large schools most of our students
attend?
Straight from the bursting halls of
a Sacramento, California middle
school, at first Francisco Bustos
did not know what to make of the
tiny lakeshore community of Northport,
Michigan. His father had moved the
family there, to work first as an
orchard laborer and then in a casino
on a nearby reservation; and with
only 311 fellow students in kindergarten
through twelfth grade, Francisco,
14, felt shy and exposed.
"I had a way of acting, before,
that helped protect me from gangs
and all," he says. "I had lost
a lot of my friends to violence."
Schoolwork mattered less than survival,
and attitude was Francisco's chief
defense.
His self-protective stance began to
falter, though, as Northport teachers
who knew his name and cared about
his nature encouraged him to work
harder and risk more. "They
give me extra help," he says. "They
know I can do better if I try."
In a meeting with his parents and
adviser, he resolved to prove them
right.
Francisco's story could have come
right from a textbook describing
the advantages of small schools,
whose positive effects on student
attitudes and achievement have proved
especially striking for minorities
and those without socio- economic
advantages. But students need not
move to the country to reap those
rewards, Essential schools around
the country are finding.
By breaking up into separate units
of no more than 500, even huge urban
schools with thousands of students
can achieve the personal stake in
student success that underlies Essential
School principles. Using smaller
size as a lever, such units may
then gain autonomy over budgets
and hiring, forge new links with
parents and community, and build
thriving support networks of like-minded
schools.
The more this happens, argue Essential
school leaders like Ted Sizer and
Deborah Meier, the more likely that
students like Francisco Bustos will
experience the conditions necessary
for learning: teachers who know
their students well, standards generated
together by a community, and bonds
that hold us to the values we profess.
How Schools Got So Big
Today's public schools grew large
in an era that regarded their task
as producing large numbers of educated
citizens as efficiently as possible.
In both curriculum and administrative
affairs, economies of scale seemed
to dictate more courses in fewer
sites; standardized procedures and
tests; and, ultimately, the union-management
relations that characterized factory
production.
Schools not being factories, the product
often disappointed. Though teacher
credentials may improve and costs
decline as schools grow, research
shows that at some critical "tipping
point" student achievement actually
goes down, reports Craig Howley,
who has conducted a review of the
research for the ERIC Clearinghouse
on Rural Education and Small Schools.
To gain only 17 percent more curriculum,
a school's size must double-and
even then, the additional courses
benefit only a small percentage
of students. As a school grows,
too, problems of crowd management
undercut whatever economies its
large size may confer.
Moreover, what we call "large"
has shifted since James Bryant Conant's
influential 1959 book The American
High School Today, argued for
consolidating smaller schools into
more efficient units that would
graduate classes of about 100. But
as suburbs, small towns, and cities
alike reorganized into dramatically
larger districts with many fewer
schools, the number of students
in a typical school soared accordingly.
These days, when a big-city high
school might enroll upwards of 4,000
students, researchers tend to regard
as "small" an elementary school
of 300 to 400 students and a secondary
school of 400 to 800.
Small Enough to Share
But Sizer, Meier, and other Essential
school leaders would like to see
the numbers keep going down from
there.
"When I don't know the name of
every student, the school is too
big," says Sara Newman, principal
of the Brooklyn International School,
one of several dozen small new Coalition
member schools in New York City.
Her school works in close partnership
with two others like it in Manhattan
and the Bronx, each serving no more
than 300 students who arrive with
little or no English. She credits
their extraordinarily high rates
of attendance, graduation, and college
acceptance to the close attention
these students receive from teachers
who know their diverse needs and
situations.
Newman's teaching staff can also still
fit around one table to talk, which
many regard as essential to good
schooling. "Teaching is intellectual
work," says Bill Ayers, whose Small
Schools Workshop at the University
of Illinois has sparked a resurgence
of small alternative public schools
in Chicago. "It happens when
reflective people share productive
relationships that center on teaching,
curriculum, assessment, and the
lives of children. Small schools
allow teachers-maybe ten, maybe
twenty of them-to do that together.
When you can't sustain that any
more, the school's too big."
Agreeing with that sentiment, the
Center for Collaborative Education
(CCE) in New York launched the Coalition
Campus Project, working with the
Board of Education to dismantle
several of the city's enormous public
high schools and reconstitute them
as small autonomous schools inhabiting
the same building. The old Julia
Richman High School site on East
67th Street, for example, now houses
several Essential Schools, a professional
development center, a Head Start
program, and a program for teen-age
parents. In the Bronx, the former
James Monroe High School is heading
along a similar path, with two Coalition
high schools already in place.
But a new set of issues crops up when
several smaller units share a space,
observes CCE co-director Heather
Lewis. Ideally each tenant would
benefit from a building-wide network
that shares a philosophy, spans
the path from early childhood to
adulthood, and provides joint learning
opportunities for teachers. In practice,
though, both the Julia Richman and
the James Monroe sites include schools
outside the Coalition approach,
and even some within the Coalition
prefer to network elsewhere. (Manhattan
International School, for example,
shares the Julia Richman site but
networks with the Brooklyn and Bronx
International schools.)
To help resolve neighborly issues,
the Julia Richman schools established
a site council, and Lewis highly
recommends some such arrangement.
But each of CCE's schools must also
belong to a small collaborative
network, even if not at its site,
through which teachers give critical
feedback to each other. At Julia
Richman on Election Day, teachers
from Urban Academy, Vanguard High
School, and the Ella Baker School
gathered to hash out new ideas together.
A few miles away, the three International
Schools were making plans to visit
and critique each other's graduation
exhibitions and portfolios.
How Much Autonomy?
In Chicago, Philadelphia, and New
York one can find plenty who favor
breaking large schools into small
units along these lines. But they
differ on just how much autonomy
such schools need.
"Once a small school organizes
around teaching and learning, it
needs the authority to hire its
own staff and decide on allocating
its resources," Heather Lewis declares.
"If the district and union
do not support the teaching and
learning piece this way, new schools
end up structured in the same ways
as the old big schools." The first
Coalition Campus schools have appreciably
lowered their costs by using staff
differently than do larger schools,
early data show. But regulations
on seniority transfers for teachers
can trip up such plans, she notes,
as can policy issues like budgeting,
space, and contracts or licensing.
For Chicago's Essential schools the
issue of autonomy looms less large,
says Jack Mitchell, who directs
their network, the Chicago Forum
for School Change. "We favor
any way in which we can get our
schools to be more personal," he
says. "If teachers can improve
their practice, it creates stronger
bonds between teachers and students,
which motivates students to improve
their effort and performance. If
we can do that by breaking a big
school into separate academies under
one principal, we'll do that."
The Chicago school system defines
a small school as having a cohesive,
self-selected faculty with substantial
autonomy, a coherent curricular
focus that provides a continuous
educational experience, and inclusive
admissions. The unit may be fully
autonomous, with a principal, a
Local School Council, a unit number,
and a separate budget. Or it may
exist in a "multiplex" building
that houses a number of semi- autonomous
small schools, each with a lead
teacher but sharing one principal
and Local School Council.
Such a unit may also be a school-within-a-school
"academy," located either in
a larger host building or in a satellite
location, but served by the host
school principal and Local School
Council. Schools-within-schools
may share facilities, but have their
own names, faculty, students, curriculum,
schedule, and budget.
At DuSable High School, one such academy
opened its doors in September, focusing
on television and radio broadcasting
and video production. Students couple
their academic coursework with projects
that might include producing a radio
talk show or interning at local
media stations.
The Chicago Essential high schools
now teach all ninth graders in transitional
"freshman academy" units, and
many section off other units as
well. The 4,000 students at Chicago
Vocational High School, for instance,
choose from eight specialized programs
oriented toward different careers,
from banking and finance to transportation,
manufacturing, or the performing
arts.
In Philadelphia, the district recently
asked all its large schools to break
up into "small learning communities,"
an approach first tried in "charter"
units now well established in comprehensive
high schools such as Simon Gratz,
a longtime Coalition member. But
extending the practice to elementary
and middle schools, the district
has found, takes more attention
than simply telling staff what "small
learning community" means. So along
with establishing clusters of schools
that can share teaching and learning
strategies, the central office is
revising its accounting and reporting
functions to support autonomous
decisions made by the new small
units. Soon it will be able to chart
spending and student achievement
patterns not just by school but
also by small learning community.
Because the school-within-a-school
has not proved an effective approach
to whole-school change, the Coalition
now discourages schools from using
"pilot programs" to launch
Essential school ideas. Efforts
like those in these cities, though,
mark a full- scale initiative to
bring the well-documented advantages
of small and autonomous schools-an
intimate learning environment and
a strong community connection-not
just to a select few, but to all
of the vast majority of United States
students who are served by large
school systems.
How Small Schools Help
"We see our responsibility in
terms of respect," says principal
Jim Bodrie, speaking of how Northport
High School teachers worked to raise
Francisco Busco's motivation level.
"Once we know you well enough
to know that you can do it, it's
disrespectful not to ask the best
from you."
Because teachers here spend 80 minutes
a day together planning and regularly
work together across school levels,
they can exert considerable effect
on a student's experience in class.
This district's size not only helps
them align their philosophy, curriculum,
and teaching practice with Essential
School principles. It also makes
possible an enviable research project
by superintendent Shari Hogue: following
every Northport graduate's progress
into adult life, and documenting
whether the schools' goals and strategies
have lasting effects.
If the consistent findings of over
100 research studies hold true,
Northport's small size alone will
make an enormous difference. Along
every measure of student attitudes
-attendance and graduation rates,
extracurricular participation, attachment
to school, disciplinary incidents,
and more-students in small schools
do better. And their academic achievement
goes up, whether one looks at test
scores, grades, or critical thinking
skills.
For these reasons, many districts
establish small alternative schools
to serve students who have struggled
in larger settings. The 155 students
at Frederick Douglass High School
in Columbia, Missouri-a university
town experiencing an influx of rural
poor-spend part of their days in
jobs with community business partners,
including a newspaper publisher
and a student-run deli. Virtually
all graduate, and most of them go
directly to work, notes Jill Barr,
who coordinates the work-study program.
"They come to us with low self-esteem
and not many positives," she says.
"We teachers serve in a way
as surrogate parents, and our kids
know and love us. We point out the
positive, and give them the skills
they need to succeed as citizens."
"Our vision works because
it's personal," adds special education
teacher Dawn Dickel. "Any school
can have a good philosophy, but
I don't know how you can carry it
out over a certain size. For us,
200 kids would be pushing it."
Douglass regards itself not so much
as an organization but as a community-an
important distinction, according
to educational philosopher Thomas
Sergiovanni, who spoke on this subject
at a recent meeting of the American
Educational Research Association.
When a school's members are so few,
everyone's presence and contribution
becomes more important to the functioning
of the whole. A student newspaper
or a sports team in a small school
may easily depend on a single student's
choice to participate, which can
only increase his or her sense that
coming to school matters. Parental
involvement, too, rises along with
the visible need for every pair
of hands. To cultivate and nurture
learning thus without succumbing
to bureaucracy, Sergiovanni declares,
a school must not exceed 300 students.
Tiny Gideon, Missouri presents a rural
example of this theory, particularly
striking because its school enrollment
has sharply dropped since the town's
main business, a crate factory,
folded in the 1970s. Now the school
is Gideon's biggest employer and
its prime source of hometown pride,
from basketball games to the student-made
sign that welcomes visitors and
their business interests into town.
When Carolyn Cornman graduated here
in 1968, the Gideon school had 1,700
students from kindergarten through
twelfth grade. Today it enrolls
400, and Cornman teaches English
to the children of her former schoolmates.
Unemployment and poverty rates equal
those in Missouri's worst inner-city
schools, yet stepping into this
school's culture feels like stepping
back 30 years, teachers say.
"When class ends, the relationship
doesn't end," says Allen Winchester,
who moved his family here after
retiring from the Army several years
ago. "You go into town and
people say, "There's a teacher.
It's a way of life."
Gideon's secondary teachers recognized
their own convictions in Essential
School ideas and took fire, applying
for grant money to rethink their
curriculum and teaching practices.
Only around 20 percent of Gideon's
graduates go on to college; most
head for the city to look for work.
In that context, deepening what
they would experience here took
on even more importance.
"For a child in this town, this
school is your best chance-your
only chance-for a better
life," Cornman says. In her long-block
semester course students write resumes
and letters to the editor, read
short novels like The Scarlet
Letter, and prepare argument
papers on topics like women in the
military. Math teacher Shawn Pyland,
a 1977 Gideon graduate herself,
gave up all "general math"
courses to teach algebra concepts
to everyone. Students do research
on the Internet and post information
on Gideon's own Web site, which
they helped design in order to attract
new industry to town. And Allen
Winchester's government classes
have launched a full-scale effort
to revitalize and clean up their
town.
Can Curriculum Compete?
When schools like Gideon's engage
in community development and community-based
learning, what we think of as schooling
"costs" actually become investments
in the community's future, asserts
Paul Nachtigal, who directs the
Annenberg Rural Challenge. And such
authentic connections between their
schoolwork and their community exemplify
the Essential School philosophy
of "student as worker."
But can a small school's curriculum
provide enough breadth and depth
to satisfy the needs of every student?
"Less is more," those who belong
to small Essential schools reply;
and both Kathleen Cotton's and Craig
Howley's reviews of the research
cite at least a dozen studies that
back up this belief.
Some of these analyses take a mathematical
approach: the relationship between
a school's size and the number of
its curricular offerings, for example,
diminishes as schools become larger.
Quantity does not equal depth, others
note as they analyze what the "shopping-mall
high school" offers the majority
of students.
But the most persuasive evidence
resides in those small Essential
schools that have crafted a rich
and deep curriculum-often integrated
across subject-area lines, and often
led by teachers who are willing
to explore areas outside their specialty.
Started by neighborhood parents and
teachers under the aegis of their
local school district, the Oakland
Charter Academy makes its home on
an industrial pier in this California
port city. Its 150 largely Latino
seventh through ninth graders face
poverty and social barriers, and
its staff confronts bureaucratic
and financial obstacles at every
turn. Yet on a shoestring budget
this school has provided better
conditions for high quality learning
than many of its larger neighbors.
In a state where teacher loads of
150 are the norm, Oakland Charter's
five full-time and five part-time
teachers need know fewer than 50
students well each year, because
they integrate their curriculum
into two long core blocks. Language
arts and social studies are taught
together; academic teachers also
teach physical education; classes
are taught in both Spanish and English.
Everyone stays after school for
social and cultural activities,
from dance to chess. The school
enjoys not only close ties with
its parent neighborhood but a relationship
with the University of California
at Berkeley, which sends student
tutors to help out in math. A family
therapist works at the school four-fifths
time, and "teachers are on
the phone with parents pretty much
every day," says principal Martha
Acevedo.
Other small Essential schools in less
adverse circumstances have found
that a narrowly focused academic
curriculum can produce high levels
of achievement even when enrollments
are quite small. The Brown School
in Louisville, Kentucky, which enrolls
600 students in kindergarten through
grade twelve, prides itself on a
rigorous course of study, for example.
And Grass Lake Junior-Senior High
School near Ann Arbor, Michigan,
with 370 students, offers an interdisciplinary,
project-based curriculum that any
larger school might envy. "It
is possible to offer at the 400-pupil
level," concludes a 1987 study by
D. H. Monk with which many other
studies concur, "a curriculum
that compares quite favorably in
terms of breadth and depth with
curriculums offered in much larger
settings."
This often goes hand in hand, other
research shows, with flexible teaching
practices: teaching teams, multi-age
grouping, cooperative learning,
alternative assessments, and an
experiential learning focus. The
small school typically gives both
staff and students more responsibility
for their own learning. Classes
are smaller, activities are tailored
to the individual, and scheduling
is much more flexible. The learning
needs of students, not the organizational
needs of the school, tend to drive
school operations.
When a School Grows
So what happens when a small school
used to these norms confronts the
demands of a growing student population?
California's Oceana High School
more than doubled in size over the
last few years because a neighboring
school closed, and its current size
of 770 students "makes a heck
of a difference," according to its
new principal, Dick Morosi. "The
sheer numbers are tougher to deal
with."
The smaller Oceana worked hard to
develop a very personal school culture,
Morosi says, and that has paid off.
The faculty of 37 still meets together
weekly; the campus is still quiet
and safe; classwork is still organized
around individual or small-group
learning; portfolios and projects
characterize the curriculum and
assessment practices. Teachers use
"tuning protocols" to reflect together
on student work, and seven standing
committees address ongoing governance
issues.
"Some people find our new size
unwieldy," Morosi says, "and
perhaps we do have less sense of
community now. But we still use
consensus, and we observe definite
norms and procedures in our meetings.
And even though our graduating class
is around 140 now, for the most
part the students still know each
other."
Because of its larger size, he notes,
Oceana can now offer more electives
without losing sections from its
academic core. And its extracurricular
program is more varied. "Open
enrollment in our district means
we have to vie with other schools
for students," Morosi says. "The
district will simply not support
us as a smaller school; in fact,
in California your average daily
attendance figure determines how
much money per pupil you get. We
have to compete."
In truth, despite unequivocal research
in favor of small schools, the size
of schools across the country seems
often to have more to do with politics,
economics, and social factors than
with what works best for students.
And the cycle perpetuates itself.
"The larger and more anonymous
are the institutions that come in
contact with the community," asserts
Bill Ayers of the Small Schools
Workshop, "the more likely
that individuals-parents, businesspeople,
community organizations-feel like
part of a mob."
Young people respond to the same factors,
he adds; when schools are impersonal,
they drop out. "Kids need a
place where they are known and valued
by adults they care about," Ayers
declares. "They drop out when
they feel that "nobody cares
if I stay. Educators see that as
an indictment of parents, but it
is an indictment of us-our structures
don't let us tell kids it matters
to us. We have too many kids and
too little time. That's a structural
issue, and it undermines our intent.
We need to create a new structure
to tell 200 kids it matters."
What Research Has
Found About Small
Schools
For both elementary
and secondary students
of all ability levels
and in all kinds
of settings, research
has repeatedly found
small schools to
be superior to large
schools on most measures
and equal to them
on the rest. The
Northwest Regional
Educational Laboratory
in Portland, Oregon
recently made available
Kathleen Cotton's
digest of 103 studies
of the relationship
of school size to
various aspects of
schooling. The studies
Cotton reviewed focused
on issues of achievement
(31), attitudes toward
school or particular
school subjects (19);
social behavior problems
(14); levels of extracurricular
participation (17);
students. Feelings
of belongingness
versus alienation
(6); interpersonal
relations with other
students and school
staff (14); attendance
(16); dropout rate
(10); academic and
general self-concept
(9); college acceptance,
success, and completion
(6); teachers. attitudes
and collaboration
(12); the quality
of the curriculum
(10); and schooling
costs (11). Their
chief points:
Academic achievement
in small schools
is at least equal-and
often superior-to
that of large schools.
Achievement measures
used in the research
include school grades,
test scores, honor
roll membership,
subject-area achievement
and assessment of
higher-order thinking
skills, and greater
achievement and years
of attained education
after high school.
In reporting these
conclusions, researchers
are careful to point
out that they apply
even when variables
other than size-student
attributes, staff
characteristics,
time-on-task, and
the like-are held
constant; and smaller
schools showed long-range
effects independent
of rural school advantages.
The effects of small
schools on the achievement
of ethnic minority
students and students
of low socioeconomic
status (SES) are
the most positive
of all.
Student attitudes toward
school in general
and toward particular
school subjects are
more positive in
small schools. The
attitudes of low-SES
and minority students
are especially sensitive
to school size and
improve greatly in
small schools.
Student social behavior-as
measured by truancy,
discipline problems,
violence, theft,
substance abuse,
and gang participation-is
more positive in
small schools.
Levels of extracurricular
participation are
much higher and more
varied in small schools
than large ones,
and students in small
schools derive greater
satisfaction from
their extracurricular
participation. The
single best-supported
finding in the school
size research, this
holds true regardless
of setting and is
most applicable to
minority and low-SES
students. Because
research has identified
important relationships
between extracurricular
participation and
other desirable outcomes,
such as positive
attitudes and social
behavior, this finding
is especially significant.
Student attendance
is better in small
schools than in large
ones, especially
with minority or
low-SES students.
Not only do students
in smaller schools
have higher attendance
rates than those
in large schools,
but students who
change from large
schools to small,
alternative secondary
schools generally
exhibit improvements
in attendance. ï
A smaller percentage
of students drops
out of small schools
than large ones.
Students have a greater
sense of belonging
in small schools
than in large ones.
Feeling alienated
from one's school
environment is both
a negative in itself
and is often found
in connection with
other undesirable
outcomes, like low
participation in
extracurricular activities.
Student academic and
general self-regard
is higher in small
schools than in large
ones.
Interpersonal relations
between and among
students, teachers,
and administrators
are more positive
in small schools
than in large ones.
Students from small
and large high schools
perform comparably
on college-related
variables such as
entrance examination
scores, acceptance
rates, attendance,
grade point average,
and completion.
Teacher attitudes
toward their work
and their administrators
are more positive
in small schools
than in large ones.
Poor students and those
of racial and ethnic
minorities, who continue
to be concentrated
in large schools,
are more adversely
affected-academically,
attitudinally, and
behaviorally-by attending
large schools than
are other students.
Despite the common
belief that larger
schools have higher
quality curricula
than small schools,
no reliable relationship
exists between school
size and curriculum
quality. Even a small
school can offer
a curriculum that
compares favorably
in breadth and depth
to that offered in
larger settings.
Larger schools are
not necessarily less
expensive to operate
than small schools.
Small high schools
cost more money only
if one tries to maintain
the big-school infrastructure.
Average per-pupil
costs do decline
as enrollment increases,
but then reach a
minimum and begin
to rise with further
school growth.
From Kathleen Cotton,
"School Size,
School Climate, and
Student Performance,"
Close-Up Number 20,
1996. Portland, Oregon:
Northwest Regional
Educational Laboratory.
Tel: 503-275-9618;
Web site http://www.nwrel.org/scpd/sirs/10/c020.html
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Why Do Students Do
Better in Small Schools?
Kathleen Cotton's comprehensive
review of research
for the Northwest
Regional Educational
Laboratory distilled
the chief factors
to which researchers
attribute the superiority
of small schools:
Everyone's participation
is needed to populate
the school's offices,
teams, clubs, and
so forth, so a far
smaller percentage
of students is overlooked
or alienated.
Adults and students
in the school know
and care about one
another to a greater
degree than is possible
in large schools.
Small schools have
a higher rate of
parent involvement.
Students and staff
generally have a
stronger sense of
personal efficacy
in small schools.
Students in small
schools take more
responsibility for
their own learning;
their learning activities
are more often individualized,
experiential, and
relevant to the world
outside of school;
classes are generally
smaller; and scheduling
is much more flexible.
Small schools more
often use instructional
strategies associated
with higher student
performance-team
teaching, integrated
curriculum, multi-age
grouping (especially
for elementary children),
cooperative learning,
and performance assessments.
From Kathleen Cotton,
"School Size,
School Climate, and
Student Performance,"
Close-Up Number 20,
1996. Portland, Oregon:
Northwest Regional
Educational Laboratory.
Tel: 503-275-9618;
Web site http://www.nwrel.org/
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TOP
Philadelphia's "Small
Learning Communities"
Funded by the Annenberg
Challenge in late
1994 Philadelphia's
school district adopted
the ambitious "children
achieving" plan
that included reorganizing
its schools into
neighborhood clusters
and breaking every
big school up into
"small learning
communities".
Virtually all students
in comprehensive
high schools were
affiliated with such
a unit during the
1995-1996 school
year, and hundreds
more were beginning
in elementary and
middle schools. Philadelphia
defined small learning
communities as having
the following traits:
-heterogeneous, including
all children
-multi-year, providing
a close relationship
among students, parents,
and teachers lasting
longer than one school
year
-unified, built around
a theme or an instructional
approach
-instructional promoting
strategies that help
students reach high
standards
-collaborative, providing
time for teachers
to work together
and grow professionally
-connected, with
students and teachers
spending most of
their time in one
community
-empowered, having
the authority and
resources to design
their own instructional
program
-accountable, responsible
for improving student
performance
small, having fewer
than 400 students
from the Consortium
on Policy Research
in Education, Evaluation
of the Children Achieving
Initiative; Report
on Year One, May
1996.
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What About School-Within-A-School
Plans?
Research on the effects
of school-within-a-school
arrangements is less
extensive and conclusive
than that on the
relative effects
of large and small
schools, Kathleen
Cotton's review from
the Northwest Regional
Educational Laboratory
reveals. But it suggests
that students do
benefit from this
form of organization,
as long as the school-within-a-school
is sufficiently separate,
distinct, and autonomous
in its vision, culture,
environment, and
administration.
That autonomy may
not come easily,
given the variety
of forms that schools-within-schools
may take. Sometimes
a larger school will
organize into cross-grade-level
"houses" of
several hundred students,
each with its its
own discipline plan,
parent involvement,
student activity
program, student
government, and social
activities. Other
schools establish
"houses" for
particular student
groups, such as ninth
graders, students
whose first language
is not English, or
particular interests
such as technology
or publishing.
But such houses do
not achieve the central
ends of small schools,
argues Deborah Meier,
who founded the Central
Park East Schools
in East Harlem, New
York and serves as
vice-chair of the
Coalition of Essential
Schools. "A
small school . .
. can be just one
of many housed in
a shared building,"
she writes in her
1995 book The
Power of Their Ideas,
"but a building
does not equal a
school. A school
must be independent,
with all that the
word implies, with
control over a sufficient
number of parameters
that count-budget,
staffing, scheduling,
and the specifics
of curriculum and
assessment, just
to mention a few.
And power indeed
to put toilet paper
in bathrooms. And
mirrors, too."
Moreover, when a school-within-a-school
exists as a "pilot"
for reform ideas,
it can create harmful
divisions within
a school culture
and actually lessen
the chances for whole-school
change, research
on Coalition member
schools by Donna
Muncey and Patrick
McQuillan shows.
Still, Cotton observes,
whether school-within-a-school
students are compared
with non-school within
a school peers in
large schools or
with their own prior
performance, the
research shows benefits
in their academic
achievement, social
behavior, attitudes,
satisfaction, student-teacher
relations, and attendance.
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Helpful Resources
on Small SchoolsReviews
of the Research
Cotton, Kathleen, "School
Size, School Climate,
and Student Performance,"
Close-Up Number 20
in the School Improvement
Research Series,
produced by the Northwest
Regional Educational
Laboratory under
a contract with the
Office of Educational
Research and Improvement,
U.S. Department of
Education. Contact:
Northwest Regional
Educational Laboratory
Document Reproduction
Service, 101 S.W.
Main Street, Suite
500, Portland, Oregon
97204; tel.: (503)
275-9519. Web site
http://www.nwrel.org/
scpd/sirs/10/c020.html
Useful articles by
D. H. Monk, Paul
Nachtigal, A. Ramirez,
and B. Rogers appear
in the Source
Book on School and
District Size, Cost,
and Quality.
Oak Brook, IL: North
Central Regional
Educational Laboratory,
1992.
Klonsky, Michael, "Small
Schools: The Numbers
Tell a Story," from
the Small Schools
Workshop, University
of Illinois at Chicago
(115 South Sangamon,
Chicago, IL 60607;
tel. 312-413-8066),
1996.
Howley, Craig, "The
Academic Effectiveness
of Small-Scale Schooling:
An Update." ERIC
Digest. Charleston,
WV: Clearinghouse
on Rural Education
and Small Schools,
June 1994 (ED 372
897).
Selected Books and
Articles
Barker, R. and Gump,
P. Big School,
Small School: High
School Size and Student
Behavior. Palo
Alto, CA: Stanford
University Press,
1964.
Conant, James B. The
American High School
Today. New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1959.
Eberts, R. W.; Kehoe,
E.; and Stone, J.
A. The Effect
of School Size on
Student Outcomes.
Final report, from
the Center for Educational
Policy and Management,
University of Oregon,
Eugene, OR, June
1982.
Fowler, W., "What
Do We Know About
School Size? What
Should We Know?"
Paper presented at
the annual meeting
of the American Educational
Research Association,
San Francisco, April
1992. (ERIC Document
Reproduction Service
No. ED 347 675).
Haller, E., Monk, D.,
& Tien, L., "Small
Schools and Higher-Order
Thinking Skills,"
in Journal of
Research in Rural
Education 1993,
9(2).
Howley, Craig, "Synthesis
of the Effects of
School and District
Size: What Research
Says about Achievement
in Small Schools
and School Districts,"
in Journal of
Rural and Small Schools
1989, 4(1).
Johnson, S. M. Teachers
at Work: Achieving
Success in Our Schools.
New York: Basic Books,
1990.
Meier, Deborah. The
Power of their Ideas.
Lessons for America
from a Small School
in Harlem. Boston:
Beacon Press, 1995.
Monk, D. H., "Secondary
School Size and Curriculum
Comprehensiveness,"
in Economics of Education
Review, Vol. 6 No.
2, 1987.
Muncey, D. and P. McQuillan,
Reform and Resistance
in Schools and Classrooms.
New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press,
1996.
Nachtigal, Paul, "School
and District Size,
Cost, and Quality,"
in Source Book
on School and District
Size, Cost, and
Quality. Oak Brook,
IL: North Central
Regional Educational
Laboratory, 1992.
Public Education Association,
"Small Schools.
Operating Costs:
Reversing Assumptions
about Economies of
Scale." December
1992.
Sergiovanni, Thomas.
"Organizations
or Communities? Changing
the Metaphor Changes
the Theory." Paper
presented to the
American Educational
Research Association,
Atlanta, GA, April
1993.
For Discussion:
What means does your
school currently
use to make sure
every student is
known well?
How does the size
of your school make
that easier or harder?
What would it take
to improve the situation?
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