Small schools, big opportunity

by Linda Perlstein, EWA’s Public Editor

Much of the $2 billion the Gates Foundation gave toward improving high schools over the last decade went to making them smaller. In an open letter published this month, Bill Gates wrote, "Many of the small schools that we invested in did not improve students’ achievement in any significant way."

When Gates and other foundations—Carnegie Corporation, the Open Society Institute and others—started pumping money into small schools, the media produced plenty of stories about the new trend. Journalists wrote about the hope, and in some cases the reality, that students would feel more connected to adults when the staff-to-student ratio declined. They wrote about the ways career academies—the outcome of many restructurings—could better engage students and prepare them for post-graduate life. They occasionally covered logistical complications and the difficulties of staffing more schools with excellent principals and properly credentialed teachers.

But not enough of the stories I have read over the last few years have gone into depth about what really has, or hasn’t, changed at these schools. There are so many questions I have wanted to see asked and answered. What actually differs in the daily lives of students? Have there been changes in teacher quality and curriculum and assessment, stuff we know really matters? (Gates said in his letter that the small schools where students did improve made other radical changes besides their size.) Are staff members truly more able to connect with students in a personal, meaningful way?

At career academies, are students really required to follow a new course of study, and if so, are they more engaged? Are some small schools in the same buildings separate in name only?

Eduwonkette Jennifer Jennings has often pointed out that the small schools in New York City enroll fewer at-risk kids than the schools they replaced. So what happened to the students who didn’t make the cut for the small schools? Did they wind up at schools even more crowded and impersonal?

And, of course, the question that is bringing the topic to the fore right now: Are small schools financially sustainable?

I am not saying that small schools are a bad idea (personally, I like the premise) or that they are failures (some are, some aren’t, and most can’t be easily categorized one way or the other). But I worry that too often we journalists get caught up in the spin of a trend—a well-funded trend, it’s worth noting—and are so eager to portray reforms as promising that we fail to anticipate complications or look critically at their implementation.

It’s not too late. Now that money troubles and lack of enthusiasm from the Gates Foundation are putting the small schools movement at risk, we are reading about them again. Some of these stories are good. But they still don’t cover all the points we need to consider. A closer look at what these schools really look like, at what they do and don’t accomplish, can help readers, and policymakers, decide if they are worth saving.

Public editor Linda Perlstein is available to help you. Contact her at 410-539-2464 or lperlstein@ewa.org.