Getting small: transforming our high schools: Sacramento's large, impersonal high schools are becoming smaller learning communities that provide customized paths for student to reach standards mastery

Leadership, Sept-Oct, 2002 by Richard Owen, Kathi Cooper, Melissa Brown

More than a hundred years ago, a highly centralized educational bureaucracy was born out of the successful industrial management model--high school. This model focused on an approach that emphasized time and specialization due to a heavy reliance on unskilled labor. School attendance was mandatory, while high quality achievement was optional. Perhaps because high schools were partly responsible for producing "raw products" for the labor force, the industrial management model became the foundation for the development of America's high schools.

Sacramento City Unified School District's high schools are not unlike their average American counterparts. Like the assembly line model, bells still sound for the beginning and ending of mostly unrelated learning periods. Our high schools have far too many students (2,000 to 2,700) and few support services that nourish the development of the emerging adult. A sorting system remains based upon arbitrary, value-laden assessments as to who is smart and who is not so smart. The system has little chance of success in the Information Age.

High schools in the new economy

Our Information Age focuses on the use of technology and the globalization of the labor force. Due to "cost effectiveness," unskilled jobs increasingly migrate outside the United States. Technology advances have rapidly reduced the number of available vocational jobs. Further, the economy today stresses cognitive rather than manual labor skills.

Where the industrial model saw students as raw products, the new economy views students as human resource capital for the Information Age. Today's world values intellectual capital. The 21st century puts a premium on people who are able to work together, people who are able to solve problems as they arise and who can easily adapt to changing technology. How can high schools be organized to add value to the intellectual capital of today's youth?

Given the juxtaposition of these two concepts, it is not surprising that the desire for high schools to change has met with both subtle and outright resistance. Despite a bleak past of failed reforms, a past shared by other districts in the nation, SCUSD has embarked on a "systems approach" to bring about high school transformation. The district is one of seven school districts in the country to receive $8 million from the Carnegie Foundation to transform its high schools, as well as a $4 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Relationship crisis

Our initiative, which we call e21, begins with the notion that schools must change profoundly in order to educate current, and future generations of children successfully. It is grounded in the reality that not only has the model of the labor force evolved, but also the definition of the family unit is more varied than ever before. All relationships--school to home, teacher to student, student to system--are dysfunctioning.

Once upon a time children relied on an abundance of extended family relationships. Today, many students are more likely to spend time alone or with other peers. Our new model seeks to transform--not merely reform--this relationship crisis by ensuring that our system guarantees personalization.

Over the next five years, our goal is to transform Sacramento high schools from large, impersonal educational institutions to small, personalized learning communities. They will be transformed in name, culture and practice into teaching and learning centers that view teachers as instructional experts, principals as instructional leaders, students as active participants, and parents and the community as meaningful partners in supporting student achievement.

Seven essential elements provide the framework that guides SCUSD's transformation:

1. Small, caring and personalized learning communities;

2. Student-centered system with student supports and safety nets;

3. Student pathways to the world of work and post-secondary education;

4. Rigorous, relevant, standards-driven teaching and learning;

5. Culture of continuous learning;

6. Collective responsibility; and

7. Home-school-community alliances.

The engine of our transformation and the major lever to ignite meaningful change are the smaller learning communities. We believe the evidence that smaller learning communities, coupled with other strategic initiatives, can provide the nexus from the Industrial to Information Age.

Scholars across the country have already made the case for small high schools. The evidence for small learning communities is less conclusive, but provides valuable insights. Ayers, Klonsky and Lyons (2000) provide evidence that student achievement increases when small schools are created. They found that poverty had a weaker influence on student performance in smaller schools than their larger counterparts. Their research also concludes that incidents of violence and disruption are drastically reduced, which provides for a better learning environment.

Indeed, the small schools movement, combined with the establishment of standards across the K-12 system, represents the largest and most in-depth equity effort in our public school history. Even more importantly, smaller schools rekindle quality and long term personal relationships between students and adults, which are a welcome replacement of the factory relationships that still plague our system.