School size is a hot topic, with most educators today supporting the smaller-is-better philosophy. However, this idea challenges traditional conventional wisdom that large schools are better able to offer high-level courses, particularly in math and science, at an acceptable cost. What does the research say? Does size matter? Moreover, if smaller really is better, how affordable and necessary is it to build a small school from scratch? Would it be possible to create a small school environment within an existing large facility?
About 70 percent of all high school students in the United States attend a school with 1,000 or more students, and a sizable group goes to schools of 2,000 or more.
This large school model came into existence after World War II, but the concept really took hold following the Soviet launching of Sputnik in 1957. The widely held belief at that time was that schools had to be enlarged to offer the kind of math and science students needed to compete technologically with the USSR.
The biggest advocate for larger schools in this era was education theorist James Bryant Conant of Harvard University, whose book The American High School Today (1958) asserted that the first priority of many states should be the "elimination of the small high school by district reorganization."
Conant has been credited (or blamed) for the move to close small high schools in the United States, consolidating them into larger "comprehensive" schools where students might find more advanced-level opportunities.
School consolidation resulted in an overall decline of 70 percent in the number of secondary schools in the United States. Since 1940, the average U.S. school district has risen from 217 to 2,627 students, and the size of the average school has risen from 127 to 653.
Although we continue to live in a land of large schools, educators have believed for some time that bigger educational facilities are not better?and are, in fact, worse for many students.
The National Association of Secondary School Principals recently recommended that the high school of the 21st century be much more student centered and, above all, much more personalized in programs, support services and intellectual rigor.
Underlying this recommendation are the association?s beliefs that students take more interest in school when they have a sense of belonging and that students benefit from a more intimate setting in which their presence is more readily and repeatedly acknowledged.
Overwhelming evidence available today reveals that small schools do a better job of supporting student success than do large schools. Small schools have higher graduation rates, lower dropout rates, and more students going on to postsecondary education.
According to the U.S. Department of Education, there are fewer disciplinary problems, fewer incidents of drug, alcohol and tobacco use, and less crime and violence in small schools.
The challenge before school planners, administrators and educators today is to figure out how to either create new small schools themselves, or to redesign large schools so as to create small-school environments.
Fortunately, our national leaders have come to realize that encouraging smaller learning environments is in the best interest of education reform efforts.
President Bush?s No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 reiterated the important goal of creating smaller learning communities. Building on the Department of Education?s Smaller Learning Communities (SLC) program of 2000, the new law gives defined structure to the discretionary grant status of the SLC grant competition. It also ensures that Smaller Learning Communities will continue to assist large public high schools, which are defined as schools that include grades 11 and 12 and enroll at least 1,000 students in grades nine and above.
By reauthorizing the SLC program, the No Child Left Behind Act allows grantees to use their funds to, among other things: (1) study the feasibility of creating smaller learning communities; (2) research, develop, and implement strategies for creating smaller learning communities; (3) provide professional development for school staff in the teaching methods that would be used in the smaller learning community; and (4) develop and implement strategies to include parents, business representatives, community-based organizations, and other community members in the activities of the smaller learning communities.
Congress set aside $125 million for the Smaller Learning Communities program for 2001 and $142 million for 2002. In the program?s first year, a total of 349 schools, serving more than 450,000 students, received the grants. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has also donated $235 million to the movement for small schools.
With considerable data supporting smaller learning communities and some federal, state and private funds now available for this effort, there are still questions about whether small schools can be built cost effectively, and if anyone has actually done so. Using data drawn from 489 schools submitted to design competitions in 1990-2001, the 2002 report Dollars & Sense: The Cost Effectiveness of Small Schools, answers both questions with a "resounding yes."
The report asserts that there are many economic arguments in support of small schools and that it is "fiscally responsible to spend school construction dollars on small school facilities."
As an excellent example of an effective small school, the report highlights the unique state-funded Metropolitan Career and Technical Center in Providence, Rhode Island. The "Met" graduated its first class in June 2000?43 students, each of whom applied and were accepted to at least one college.
Upon entering the Met, the class of 2000 looked much like their peers in the Providence school system?an ethnically diverse group, many from needy families with parents who were not college educated, and many two or three years behind grade level in skills. In fact, while the group spanned all levels, the majority of students were at the lower end of the achievement scale, not having developed the skills necessary to succeed in college and careers.
But at the Met, they found a school unlike any they had ever attended. Their school experience included independent projects, quarterly exhibitions of their work, creation of four-year portfolios and intensive time spent with an advisor and peer advisory group and community mentor.
Small schools, of course, are not effective simply because they are small. It is the increase in teacher collaboration and team teaching, greater flexibility and responsiveness to student needs, and the personal connections among everyone within the system that make smaller schools work.
The authors of Dollars and Sense note that, unfortunately, in some states, "even if local leaders are inclined to build smaller schools, state policy governing maintenance, renovation, and construction of school facilities promotes consolidation and larger schools."
Some states, such as Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia and Georgia require specific minimum enrollments in order for a district to qualify for funding for school facilities. Policies setting "required acreage" for existing and new schools also pressure districts to close small facilities and build consolidated schools in outlying areas.
However, a number of state policies have begun to change regarding smaller schools. Three states noted in Dollars & Sense have most recently considered legislation that supports small schools.
In 2000, Florida passed a bill limiting elementary schools to 500 students, middle schools to 700 students, and high schools to 900 students. Maryland has considered legislation requiring the state to pay ten percent over the maximum state allocation for construction of schools in "priority funding areas" meeting specific size limits. And, in 1998, Vermont passed legislation to encourage the viability of small schools with increases in funding for this effort.
Many people realize that large schools are far from ideal places in which to teach and learn, but it is rarely possible to replace large schools with small facilities just with the snap of the fingers.
Creating schools-within-a-school (SWaS) is one current strategy for reducing school size. However, it is recommended that this concept be used appropriately when making use of an existing large high school building; experts warn that it is not advisable to build a new facility simply so that it can be turned into a SWaS.
Also, some emerging research suggests that it can be difficult to create effective schools-within-a-school. But, if it is the most feasible solution, then the suggestion is to take steps to ensure that all students have access to specialized facilities such as the gym, auditorium and cafeteria. Also, districts must work to prevent the re-segregation and re-tracking of high schools that have occurred in some SWaS. Finally, SWaS should be completely autonomous to overcome the inflexibility that characterizes other large schools.
Besides creating SWaS, schools with more than 1,000 students may employ a number of other strategies to personalize the learning environment, including:
- career academies: offering students academic programs organized around a broad career theme;
- mentoring and other teacher-advisory systems: allowing teachers, counselors, other school staff and volunteers to work with the students as mentors to help students on an individual basis;
- career clusters: helping students by mapping out a curriculum that would provide the academic and technical education necessary for their particular field.
School districts all over the United States are embracing smaller learning communities with some promising results. A glimpse into what?s happening:
Last September, six new or reconfigured high schools opened their doors in Baltimore, Maryland, including the technology-focused Digital Harbor High School and three smaller neighborhood high schools designed to draw students from the city?s largest ones. Three new middle schools run by outside groups also promised students innovative curricula and smaller learning environments. The school system added a sixth grade to 10 elementary schools, the first step in a citywide move to keep children closer to home through the eighth grade?a design that generally produces better test results.
The New National Academy Foundation high school operating at Port Discovery (the "kid-powered" museum) opened as a home to academies of finance, travel and tourism, and technology, with a class of about 85 ninth-graders. The technology academy?s small classes give teachers more time to help students and give students the opportunity to shadow professionals in the technology sector.
Sacramento City Unified School District students in California could have five additional high schools to choose from come next September. The district?s plan to overhaul secondary schools will result in the creation of different theme-based schools, each with fewer than 500 students.
The school, open to all students, will include the technology-themed New Technology High School. Based on the successful New Tech High in Napa?and funded in part by a grant from the Gates Foundation?Sacramento?s New Tech High will offer career and technical education in a rigorous applied-learning setting. Like other similar schools in California, it will combine immersion, personalization and performance-based assessment in a high-tech environment. Applied learning includes a project-based model, digital portfolios and industry partnerships to prepare students for postsecondary education.
Other new schools in Sacramento will include a health service academy, run in collaboration with the local health care industry and encouraging individual education plans tailored around student interests. A small alternative school will also be created to help students who have struggled with behavioral and academic programs.
Sacramento is also planning to create a Met School?a virtual replica of the Providence success story?with no more than 150 students. The Gates foundation awarded money to the founder of the first Met schools in Rhode Island to replicate that model in Sacramento.
With enrollment at the comprehensive high schools in Sacramento exceeding 2,100 each, the goal is to open as many as 15 small high schools in the next five years.
Parents in Oakland, California, were the primary force behind school size reform in their community, pressuring their school board to open 10 new small schools by 2003. With this vote, Oakland became the first district in California to launch an official policy of downsizing to small schools. Among the new public schools is the Life Academy, with only 250 students, where students participate in a daily advisory group?as well as taking a course load heavily focused on the biosciences and health. Oakland?s early results are promising, with students earning better grades and schools seeing better attendance overall.
In Montgomery County, Maryland, many new high schoolers are having a very different experience this school year. Beginning last September, four large urban high schools (Wheaton, Montgomery Blair, Einstein and Kennedy) opened ninth grade academies to assist the many students who too often fall through the cracks at these huge 1,500 to 3,000-student schools. At each of the four schools, 40 percent of the students who start out as freshmen do not stay to graduate?a trend that the academies are intended to reverse.
Through the academies, freshmen are assigned a core of four or five teachers whose job it will be to get to know each of them, just like in middle school. The need at the four schools is intense. At Einstein, one in four freshmen are reading at a sixth-grade level or below; at Wheaton, 80 percent of incoming freshmen are reading below the state standard; and at Blair, almost 25 percent of ninth-graders had grades so low they were ineligible to play sports or perform in school plays.
In coming years, each school plans to set up unique career academies?Wheaton will offer engineering, for example, Kennedy sports medicine?or academic programs. Einstein is offering the highly rigorous International Baccalaureate program. Once Northwood High School is reopened in 2004 and becomes part of the consortium, students in the Silver Spring area may choose to attend any one of the four high schools.
The coming years will see more than 100 new small schools created, each embracing a different model, but all focused on providing the kind of academic rigor and personal relationships needed to help all students achieve.
From career academies to charter schools, from alternative schools to technical centers?increasingly school districts are embracing the concept that smaller is better, and rolling up their sleeves to make smaller learning communities a reality for more students every day.
According to the U.S. Department of Education*, big schools have:
- 852 percent more violent crime
- 270 percent more vandalism
- 378 percent more theft and larceny
- 394 percent more physical fights or attacks
- 3,200 percent more robberies
- 1,000 percent more weapons incidents
Meanwhile, research shows that small schools have:
- Higher student satisfaction
- Better attendance rates
- Lower dropout rates
- Higher outcomes on standardized tests, such as the SAT and ACT
*When comparing small schools (less than 300) with big schools (1,000 or more).
Sandy Cutshall is a regular contributor to Techniques. She works as a writer/editor in Mountain View, California, where she also teaches adults English as a second language.
