Also, I don't think it's a coincidence that it will be easier to get away with segregation with a system of small schools.
Favor small schools on a case-by-case basis? Sure, why not, especially when teachers and parents express great enthusiasm (*the* big factor for short-term localized success) and if it's not some cover for racism. And big schools don't have a truly progressive history (no matter how many of its original advocates could spout Dewey with the best of them)--the push for school consolidation historically has paralleled that of corporate consolidation: minimal cost savings, but great direct political benefits to those in the command and control hierarchy. But as a centerpiece of true systemic progressive educational reform, forget it; if nothing else, it will be easily hijacked by the Right (if it hasn't been already). (I remember when charter schools were touted, sincerely, as a great progressive hope...)
---------- Original Message ---------------------------------- From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2003 18:10:04 -0400
>[This is long, but it could be interesting. Anyone know anything about this?]
>
>UNDERNEWS SPECIAL REPORT
>SMALL SCHOOLS
>
>Apr 22 2003
> From the Progressive Review
>Edited by Sam Smith
>Since 1964, Washington's most unofficial source
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>SMALL SCHOOLS
>
>[We have recently reported Bill Gates' major funding of the small school
>movement. Here are a few of the items that we have run on this important
>topic]
>
>JOE NATHAN PIONEER PRESS, MN - Conventional wisdom holds that small schools
>are more expensive and that districts automatically save money by closing
>them. But a new report says bigger isn't necessarily better or cheaper. The
>report, "Dollars and Sense," summarizes recent research on school
>construction and concludes small schools - elementaries with 300 or fewer
>students, middle schools with 500 or fewer and high schools with no more
>than 600 students - are not prohibitively expensive and that putting tax
>dollars into those building makes sense. It looks at studies that show when
>students from similar backgrounds are compared, those in smaller schools are
>safer, have higher graduation rates and test scores and are more likely to
>participate in extracurricular activities. They're also likely to have
>involved parents and more satisfied teachers. The report includes research
>compiled by Paul Abramson, a columnist for the national magazine School
>Planning and Management, that found costs per student and per square foot
>were lower for the smaller high schools and smaller middle schools than they
>were for the larger ones. Smaller elementary construction costs were
>slightly greater per student than those for larger elementary schools. . .
>"Dollars and Sense" cites two rural Nebraska districts that thought
>consolidation would save money. But after adding more than 25,000 miles to
>the cost of transporting students, buying new band uniforms and athletic
>equipment, purchasing new textbooks so all students would use the same
>materials, buying out several teachers whom the new district felt it would
>not need, increasing pay of remaining teachers and combining the two
>districts' curricula, the districts spent $230,000 more than they had been
>spending. As the report notes, "So much for saving money."
>
>http://www.ruraledu.org/dollars_sense.pdf
>
>MICHAEL A. FLETCHER WASHINGTON POST, APRIL 2002 - Students who attend small
>schools are less likely than others to engage in risky behavior such as drug
>use, violence or early sexual activity, largely because they feel better
>connected to their teachers and one another, according to a study. The
>results drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a
>federally funded survey of 72,000 junior high and high school students,
>found that when the number of students in a school increases beyond 1,200,
>students become more isolated from one another, which contributes to a wide
>range of unhealthy activity . . . In addition, the survey found that harsh
>disciplinary codes, such as zero-tolerance policies that call for automatic
>student suspensions or expulsions for offenses such as smoking or fighting,
>often alienate students even if they foster a more orderly environment.
>While zero-tolerance policies are designed to make schools safer,
>researchers found that students in schools with those types of discipline
>policies report feeling less safe than do students in schools with more
>moderate policies.
>
>WASHINGTON POST: Education Secretary Richard W. Riley said yesterday that
>the best solution to violence in schools is not more metal detectors or
>locker searches, but rather making the nation's high schools smaller and
>more personalized so that students feel connected to each other and caring
>adults. Riley's prescription differed from what has been the prevailing view
>that tighter security measures and student discipline are needed in the wake
>of school shootings in Littleton, Colo., and elsewhere .... Riley cited a
>study by the National Association of Secondary School Principals that
>recommended an enrollment of 600 as the ideal size for a high school. Many
>high schools, particularly in rapidly growing suburbs, enroll three to four
>times as many students. Given the expense of replacing large high schools
>with smaller buildings, Riley said that subdividing existing schools into
>smaller units called "schools within schools" was another way to "make young
>people feel more connected." [TPR has from time to time argued for smaller
>schools. Since the corporatization of education following Sputnik, the
>number of schools in this country has declined almost in inverse relation to
>the growth in number of students. This has, among other things, produced
>monster-schools like Columbine High, where instead of a principal, one needs
>a combination corporate CEO and prison warden.]
>
>D. KEVIN MCNEIR, OAK PARK & RIVER FOREST JOURNAL: Educators and parents
>throughout Oak Park and River Forest are concerned about the threat of
>violence and the increasing achievement gap in their schools. But at a
>recent workshop held at Village Hall, University of Illinois-Chicago
>professor Michael Klonsky said the solution is to reduce, not increase,
>student populations. "There is now a compelling body of research showing
>that, on a wide range of measures, when students are part of smaller, more
>intimate learning communities, they are more successful," Klonsky writes in
>his 1998 publication, "Small Schools: The Numbers Tell a Story." . . . "When
>it comes to student engagement in learning, anonymity is the enemy," he
>said. "Large schools, which often process students with bar codes and ID
>numbers, sacrifice a sense of community and caring, in big schools - whether
>urban or suburban-students who need supportive relationships often turn to
>cliques or gangs." . . . Klonsky defines a small school as one with 350
>students or less, and said there are two key ingredients to making schools
>places that are safe and conducive to learning. "All children must be known
>by their teachers and peers, not just those at the very top and the at-risk
>students at the bottom," he said. "It's the kids in the middle who often
>become invisible. And there needs to be a professional community of teachers
>who communicate with one another regularly and discusses classroom
>environment and teaching strategies." . . . "When we started the Small
>Schools Workshop many suburban schools did not accept our system," he said.
>"They believed everything was fine and did not want to make any changes. But
>then we had the Columbine incident . . . Since then, there have been seven
>or eight similar occurrences in predominately white, middle-class schools
>with the shooters all being white males. And ironically, in the same year as
>the Columbine shootings, 48 Chicago Public Schools children were killed -
>but the story was buried in the back pages of the local newspapers."
>
>ETHAN ALLAN INSTITUTE: Thirty years ago Vermont was torn by a passionate
>debate over small schools. Three progressive commissioners of education, led
>by A. John Holden, had aggressively forced the closure and consolidation of
>dozens of Vermont's small schools as possible in the name of "efficiency."
>As Commissioner Harvey Scribner put it, following the then-popular education
>school theory, children learn by being exposed to "learning experiences"
>facilitated by certified educators. Large schools naturally offer more
>"learning experiences" than small schools. Therefore, children who attend
>"efficient" large schools will learn more. There was no empirical evidence
>to support this neat and simple proposition. Of the billions of dollars
>spent on educational research by governments and universities since World
>War II, not one study could be found comparing the educational achievements
>of small-school children versus large-school children . . . So the
>progressive commissioners (on dubious legal authority) forced the closing of
>small schools all over Vermont. But now, thirty years later, the education
>establishment has decided that closing small schools may not have been such
>a Great Idea after all. Act 60 required the Department of Education to study
>of the role and value of small schools. That report was released last month.
>In the words of study chairman Bob McNamara, "small schools do cost more to
>operate -- the smaller you are the more expensive it is - but they do have a
>value added because the students in these schools do very well in
>achievement results." . . . Small schools and small communities have a
>symbiotic effect. The school is the focus of the community, and parents and
>community people give generously in time and effort to the school as the
>community's principal activity. This notion was definitely out of fashion in
>the 1960s, when education "reformers" sought to separate children from
>parents and community so that they could be molded properly by high-minded
>experts free of the detracting influence of untrained and often wrong headed
>parents and pastors.
>
>KATHLEEN CUSHMAN, PRINCIPAL MAGAZINE: In 1992, when Naomi Booker became
>principal of Clymer Elementary School in one of Philadelphia's most
>dangerous neighborhoods, she found many of its 900 students failing in basic
>skills and being taught by a burned-out staff that expected no better. "It
>was unmanageable," Booker recalls. In a neighborhood plagued by crime and
>drugs, where almost all families receive public assistance, only 75 to 80
>percent of Clymer's students regularly attended school and barely 10 percent
>could read at grade level. "I spent most of my day putting out fires,"
>Booker recalls. "Over 400 kids a year were showing up in my office for
>behavior problems." Today, that number is closer to 40 and Clymer's pattern
>of failure has been transformed into a pattern of steady success. Student
>attendance averages 90 to 92 percent and there are few staff absences.
>Sixty-five percent of students read at their grade level, the honor roll
>boasts 200 names, and the number of children identified as "mentally gifted"
>has increased twelve-fold.
>
>Booker produced these results by leading her school through a simple but
>dramatic structural change. She divided Clymer into three smaller "learning
>communities," each with about 225 students and its own collaborative team of
>12 to 17 teachers. (The school's population had decreased due to
>neighborhood change and the departure of overage students.) Teachers work
>collaboratively in the learning communities, staying with one group of
>students as they pass from the early grades through fifth-grade graduation.
>Twenty-five staff members-arts specialists, social workers, school
>secretaries, and custodians-work in all three communities, mentoring
>students needing extra help, helping to mediate and resolve conflicts, and
>leading all-school projects like the annual spring cleanup . . . Behavior
>issues, too, seemingly evaporate before escalating into serious disciplinary
>problems . . . Although Clymer was the first of Philadelphia's large
>elementary schools to break itself into smaller learning communities, the
>city's elementary and middle schools have formed over 600 such communities
>since 1995 . . .
>
>In other districts nationwide, elementary school principals are considering
>similar action as they seek ways to handle the steady rise in school size
>that has seen the average school population increase five-fold since the end
>of World War II. A push to consolidate schools has reduced the number of
>districts by 70 percent in the same period. Ironically, this trend toward
>big schools coincides with research that repeatedly has found small schools
>- commonly defined as no more than 400 students for elementary schools - to
>be demonstrably better for students of all ability levels, in all kinds of
>settings. Academic achievement rises, as indicated by grades, test scores,
>honor roll membership, subject-area achievement, and assessment of
>higher-order thinking skills. For both elementary and secondary students,
>researchers also find small schools equal or superior to large ones on most
>student behavior measures. Rates of truancy, classroom disruption,
>vandalism, theft, substance abuse, and gang participation all are reduced in
>small schools, according to a synthesis of 103 studies.
>
>STACY MITCHELL, INSTITUTE FOR LOCAL SELF-RELIANCE: In 1930, one-room
>schoolhouses accounted for nearly 70 percent of the nation's public
>educational facilities. Between 1940 and 1990, the number of elementary and
>secondary schools decreased from 200,000 to 62,000, despite a 70 percent
>rise in US population. Average enrollments skyrocketed from 127 to 653.
>
>The trend toward giantism continues. The number of high schools with more
>than 1,500 students doubled in the last decade. Two-fifths of the nation's
>secondary schools now enroll more than 1,000 students. Some schools have as
>many as 5,000 students and enrollments of 2,000 or 3,000 are common. . . .
>Today, riding on a wave of real-world success and a mountain of empirical
>evidence, a full-fledged small schools movement has emerged. It's
>transforming public education in several big cities and, in rural areas,
>reinvigorating a long-standing fight to wrest local schools from the jaws of
>consolidation. The movement has received endorsement from high offices. In
>May 1999, prompted largely by the shootings at Columbine High, a school with
>2,000 students, Vice President Al Gore criticized the practice of "herding
>all students into overcrowded, factory-style high schools" A panel of school
>security experts was convened by Education Secretary Richard Riley. Their
>top recommendation had nothing to do with gun control, metal detectors or
>police on the premises. Rather, they said, reduce the size of the nation's
>schools. Small schools are a powerful antidote to the sense of alienation
>that can lead to violence. In September, Riley told the National Press Club
>that the nation needs to "create small, supportive learning environments
>that give students a sense of connection. That's hard to do when we are
>building high schools the size of shopping malls. Size matters." According
>to the US Department of Education's report, Violence and Discipline Problems
>in US Public Schools: 1996-97, more than half of small school principals
>report either no discipline or minor discipline problems, compared to only
>14 percent of big school principals. Furthermore, compared to schools with
>fewer than 300 students, big schools (1,000 or more) have 825 percent more
>violent crime, 270 percent more vandalism, 394 percent more fights and
>assaults and 1000 percent more weapons incidents.
>
>ROOTS OF COLUMBINE HIGH - Bill Kauffman, writing in Chronicles, supports
>the argument made here before that one of the most deleterious changes in
>public education has been the increase in school -- rather than class --
>size. Kauffman notes that this was intentional, led by people such as
>Harvard President James Conant who produced a serious of postwar reports
>calling for the "elimination of the small high school" in order to compete
>with the Soviets and deal with the nuclear era. Says Kauffman, "Conant the
>barbarian triumphed: the number of school districts plummeted from 83,718 in
>1950 to 17,995 in 1970."
>
>GATES TO ADD BILLIONS TO SMALL SCHOOL MOVEMENT
>
>GEORGE ARCHIBALD, WASHINGTON TIMES - Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates is
>committing billions of dollars to radically redesign failing public high
>schools into smaller, more academically rigorous institutions in
>predominantly black and Hispanic communities in which less than half the
>students graduate. The goal, says the executive director of the Bill and
>Melinda Gates Foundation, is to double the graduation rate for minority
>students by the end of the decade and quadruple the number of inner-city
>students prepared for college.
>
>"Our high schools are the least effective part of the American education
>system," Tom Vander Ark, who administers the $24 billion foundation, wrote
>in a commentary to explain the reform efforts. "This coming September, about
>3.5 million young people in America will begin the 8th grade. Over the
>succeeding four years, more than 1 million of them will drop out - an
>average of 3,500 each school day," Mr. Vander Ark wrote in Education Week.
>"Another 1.5 million will muddle through with a collection of credits that
>fail to prepare them for college, work, or citizenship. . . "If we keep
>building the impersonal tracked high schools, we'll need to expand our
>prison system."
>
>Smaller is better, as shown by New York City's small-schools movement that
>started in the late 1970s, he said, adding that national school reform
>efforts need to take into account "a century of success in private
>education, particularly urban Catholic schools." Other "pockets of
>excellence" pointing the way forward, he said, are "innovative and highly
>successful charter schools, including Houston's KIPP Academy, the 'Met'
>school in Rhode Island, San Diego's High Tech High, and the Aspire public
>charter schools" in the San Francisco Bay area of California. . . Earlier
>this month, the foundation gave $9 million to the California community
>college system to create 15 early-college high schools in the state, each
>having no more than 400 students.
>
>http://washtimes.com/national/20030421-919737.htm
>
>LINKS
>
>CLEARINGHOUSE ON RURAL EDUCATION & SMALL SCHOOLS SMALL SCHOOLS COALITION
>http://www.ael.org/eric/
>
>ANNIE E CASEY FOUNDATION
>http://www.aecf.org/initiatives/success/smschool.htm
>
>SMALL SCHOOLS & COMMUNITIES OF COLOR
>http://www.bankstreet.edu/news/smallschoolsofferhope.html
>
>SMALL SCHOOLS WORKSHOP
>http://smallschoolsworkshop.org/
>
>BAY AREA COALITION FOR EQUITABLE SCHOOLS
>http://www.bayces.org/small_schools/
>
>||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
>
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