How To Do It Right

Small schools generally serve fewer than 600 students, but take on an infinite variety of forms, including stand-alone schools, multiple small schools sharing one large building, and small schools sharing facilities with other agencies or schools in a leased space. However, just being small does not guarantee a school will do well. As noted above, small schools and shared facilities are, on average, more effective with students. But the most effective small schools, including those described here, share common features. These features include:

• Clear goals and standards to help focus curriculum, learning, and instruction.
• A distinctive educational approach.
• Strong outreach to and involvement with students' families.
• An orientation toward active learning in the classroom and in the community.
• Extensive partnerships with community and business groups (which might include co-location).
• Regular monitoring of student achievement using multiple measures to refine and improve schools.
• Involvement of students and educators by choice.
• A strong principal or other leadership structure that makes sure decisions are made and implemented (Newmann, & Wehlage, 1995; Education Trust, 1999; Henderson, & Berla, 1994).

Some schools have made the most of the opportunities created by being a small school that stands alone, or by being small schools that share one large building. These schools, such as Wyandotte High School and El Puente Academy of Peace and Justice, provide an important road map for policymakers.

Wyandotte High School

Many school districts have already invested in large buildings. Wyandotte High School in Kansas City was a large urban school that didn't let physical limitations stop it from making use of the research about smaller schools to improve outcomes for its students.

Eight years ago, Wyandotte High School was an extremely troubled place. Graduation rates, attendance, and achievement were quite low. But Wyandotte had a crucial thing in its favor—strong leadership. A new principal, Walter Thompson, came in to help make improvements. He spent a year listening to teachers, parents, and community members. Strong outreach to families and real involvement of teachers is a key to successful small schools, especially when converting one large school into several smaller ones.

After reviewing the research and listening to a variety of people, Thompson worked with the faculty to create eight small distinct schools in the building, which serves about 1500 students. Wyandotte High was not simply divided into houses or subgroups of students, an approach often taken to create smaller learning communities. Students select among seven small schools in the building. Each has a different theme so students and faculty (who have also selected the small school in which they work) have a much greater commitment to the school. They aren't assigned a school—teachers and students make a choice. Each of Wyandotte's small schools offers different opportunities to students, increasing the odds that the needs of students with a variety of learning styles and interests will be met.

The first small school created, Opportunity Center, serves only 9th graders who have failed. Thompson selected the woman he thought was the single most talented person working with such youngsters and gave her the chance to select several staff to join her. Then seven other small schools were created around themes such as Business or Creative Arts.

By specializing, each school can have focused curriculum, learning, and instruction. While students take most of their course work in the small school they have chosen, housing the small schools together in one large building allows the students to easily access courses being taught in the other schools.

The results are heartening. Attendance, achievement, graduation rates, and behavior have improved dramatically. In addition, teachers report that Wyandotte is a far more satisfying, rewarding place to work than it used to be.

El Puente Academy of Peace and Justice

El Puente Academy of Peace and Justice, a small public school located in a very low-income area of New York City, is a success story on many levels. El Puente was one of several small schools created by educators and community groups when the district wisely offered this opportunity to people throughout the city. As with Wyandotte, the involvement of teachers and community members was key to designing a school that works. It is also important to note that in this case the school district invited and facilitated the creation of small schools, resulting in several strong small schools within the district including El Puente.

El Puente serves a couple hundred high school students in a building that formerly was a church. The school shares facilities with social service staff who help students and families with a range of issues, including medical concerns, counseling, and teaching people to read. One of the best ways to make small schools no more expensive than massive ones is to share facilities with other organizations. Moreover, shared facilities can respond to a chronic concern of educators—that they need help! In shared facilities like El Puente, educators can concentrate on helping young people learn.

With assistance from the school's faculty, El Puente's students frequently combine classroom work with community service. For example, they helped create a coalition of African American, Hispanic, and Chasidic Jewish people to block an incinerator that the city was going to put in their already badly polluted neighborhood. Also, students studying advanced mathematics are developing a skateboard park that will be located underneath a nearby bridge. When students give back to the community it creates strong connections between the school and community, which can create a two-way street of giving.

By getting students out into the community to learn, and by making maximum use of resources outside the building, El Puente can also offer students a broad and deep curriculum rooted in hands-on experience. This approach also maximizes tax dollars in many cases. Out of necessity, a small school is more likely to make use of the public library, community recreation facilities, museums, zoos, and other publicly funded or subsidized resources, instead of trying to recreate these opportunities on the school campus.

El Puente's results are encouraging. More than 90% of the students who enter El Puente as 9th graders graduate four years later (in an area where large high schools have graduation rates of about 50%). And although El Puente faculty resist the idea that their school should be judged only on test scores, their students are doing very well on the challenging New York State Regents Exams.

CREATIVE RURAL SOLUTIONS

Small rural high schools face unique challenges. In many states, rural schools face declining enrollments, geographic isolation, students spread thinly over large geographic areas, and economic and regulatory pressure to consolidate with neighboring schools and districts. In the face of these pressures, rural school districts need to be especially creative to keep their small schools. Research tells us that these efforts are worth it. Rural students, just like their urban and suburban counterparts, do better in small schools (Howley, 2000; Raywid, 1999).

Creative solutions include rethinking the entire design of a high school and making the most of the community and of technological opportunities. One of the nation's most noted small schools is in a rural area 60 miles southeast of Minneapolis: Minnesota New Country School (MNCS). This secondary charter school enrolls about 125 students in grades 7-12. It is run as a co-op, with the faculty "owning" the school, and setting their own salaries and working conditions. Each school year starts with a family/student/advisor conference. The conference helps students develop a plan for how they will make progress toward graduation, which is based entirely on demonstration of skill and knowledge. There are no grades or bells at MNCS. Each student has a workstation with a computer and the opportunity to decorate the station with pictures of friends and family.

Students work individually or in small groups on projects that help them achieve the required mastery. Faculty members see themselves as facilitators and coaches, moving from student to student throughout the day. Every six weeks the school has a presentation night, during which students share information they've learned. Some students have been hired by businesses to create Web sites. But learning at MNCS is not confined to what's available by computer.

Students are regularly out in the community, doing research, and performing service. One project that attracted national attention involved students who had discovered some frogs that did not have four legs. The students convinced the Minnesota legislature to allocate thousands of dollars to study the problem.

MNCS uses multiple measures to assess student progress. They regularly reflect improvements in achievement, as well as very strong attendance and a high graduation rate.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has given MNCS $4 million to help replicate the school.

Creative solutions also involve maximizing scarce resources. In Northfield, another rural southeast Minnesota community, the community, city, school district, senior citizens center, and war on poverty agencies all came together to produce a 50,000 square foot state-of-the-art facility that serves residents, virtually from birth to death. The Northfield Community Center includes a vast array of services for families, children, teenagers and seniors, as well as a small public high school. The high school students located there are able to interview seniors to supplement history research and help with the Head Start Center, both of which are just a few steps from their classrooms. Charlie Kyte, former Northfield superintendent, now director of the Minnesota Association of School Administrators, calls the community center "one of the most rewarding projects I've ever worked on."

SCHOOLS WITHIN A SUBURBAN SCHOOL

Although it had nothing like Wyandotte's problems, a Texas suburban community used some of the same ideas to produce improvements. Seven years ago, South Grand Prairie High School, outside Dallas, enrolled more than 2000 students in a typical, above the national average suburban high school. The faculty and administration decided they were not satisfied. Today the building has been divided into five smaller schools from which students select. Once again, each school has a theme such as Communications, Creative and Performing Arts, and Business and Computer Technology.

The changes have produced progress. Many more students are taking Advanced Placement courses than before, and the already above-average graduation rate has improved. South Grand Prairie is a marvelous example of a faculty that did not face heavy pressure to change because of low student performance, but did so anyway because they wanted all students to move closer to their potential.

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