IS SMALLER BETTER?

NEA Today, Feb 2006 by Jehlen, Alain, Kopkowski, Cynthia

Many teachers in the 'small high schools' movement shout 'Yes!'-but others are less convinced. Here's what you need to know about this latest wave of reform.

It started as an experiment led by a group of dedicated innovators. Their early successes grew into a reform movement. Now, the effort to transform large urban high schools into small schools has turned into a virtual stampede, driven by a giant carrot (Bill Gates' money) and an even bigger stick (No Child Left Behind).

Thousands of new schools, generally with 400 or fewer students, have been launched in the last few years. Many are standalone schools created from scratch. Others were formed by dividing big schools into several "small learning communities," or "academies," which still share the old building. Most keep teachers and students together for several years to strengthen their relationships.

Many educators love their little academies, where everyone knows everyone else and discipline problems no longer dominate the classroom. "I'm getting to do what I really want to do, and that's teach," says Patty Kamper, an art teacher in Kansas City, Kansas. "The teaching becomes so much easier because you know how they learn."

The benefits for students are clear. "In a large high school, students can become invisible and slip through the cracks," says Marsha Smith, a middle school physical education teacher in Rockville, Maryland, who serves on the NEA Executive Committee. "In a small school, you personalize attention to the student." Downsized schools, she adds, "give students and parents a sense of community."

But like most good education reforms, this one can be done well or badly. "Small schools can be great, but they do take more resources," says Oakland, California, math teacher Jack Gerson. His big high school was chopped into three small ones. "Now we have three principals, three attendance clerks, three offices," says Gerson, and yet Oakland is slashing its school budget.

Many cities are imposing small schools from the top down, but success depends on giving teachers a leading role, says journalism teacher Stan Karp, who led a small school in Patterson, New Jersey, and now works on a state taskforce writing guidelines for small, urban high schools. "Where the rubber meets the road is in the teacher teams. They're on the front lines," he says. "They need support and autonomy. "

That's why it's important for Association members to be proactive when a small school conversion is in the works, says Smith. "The union needs to call people together and move out front. Have a discussion with members and talk about the pros and the potential challenges. This needs to be done with us, not to us."

The huge high schools now being carved up are the product of an earlier reform wave intended to offer a variety of courses to suit the needs of every student. In affluent communities where most students come to school ready to learn, big schools tend to do well and there's little appetite for breaking them up. But in low-income areas, big schools can breed paralyzing discipline problems.

One of the movement's leading pioneers was Deborah Meier, who founded Central Park East High School in East Harlem in 1985. (see interview on page 30.) Her success led to other experiments, and in 2000, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation awarded its first grant for a small high school in San Diego. Gates has since poured Sl billion into creating about 850 small new schools and breaking up 700 big old schools.

Meanwhile, the so-called No Child Left Behind law, with its escalating punishments for schools with low test scores, is putting mounting pressure on schools in low-income areas, where scores are much lower than in wealthy areas. Something has to be done, and starting small schools definitely qualifies as something.

But recently, Gates Foundation leaders have sounded less enthusiastic about the virtues of smallness. A Gates-commissioned study revealed that test scores in a sample of Gates-funded schools were slightly lower than for comparable students in regular public schools. Small school teachers told the researchers they were struggling with heavy workloads. "Unwieldy workloads may be endemic to.. .many small high schools," the report warned.

"We still believe in small schools," says James Shelton, the foundation's education program director, but adds that they now put more emphasis on improving the quality of instruction because downsizing is not enough.

Likewise, many educators say the move to small schools can be a giant step forward-if done right. JVEA Today recently visited schools in two cities to hear from frontline educators about the virtues and problems of the "small-is-beautiful" movement.

Kansas City, Kansas

SAVING A TROUBLED SCHOOL

The teachers at Wyandotte High School in Kansas City shifted in their seats and set their jaws. It was 1997, and yet another administrator was detailing yet another education reform they would have to implement. This time it was called "First Things First," and it required breaking their 1,200-student high school into several self-contained units, called learning communities.