The Downside of Small Schools

I've long been a fan of small schools, and there's much to admire in the 200 new small high schools that New York City has created since 2002. But there's a dark side as well. A new report (disclosure: I am one of the authors) shows that the success of the small schools came at the expense of remaining large schools that serve mostly poor kids.

When the city closed large, failing high schools to make way for new small schools, thousands of students who might once have attended those large schools were diverted to the remaining large schools, according to the report, published by The Center for New York City Affairs at the New School.

The new small schools admitted mostly struggling students, including kids reading at a fifth or sixth grade level. But thousands of students who were even needier, including English language learners and kids with special needs, wound up in ever-more crowded large schools. Many of those large schools were ill-equipped to cope with the influx and saw their attendance and graduation rates decline.

The new small schools cater to kids who might otherwise drop out of school. The hope is that schools with an enrollment of about 400 students offer personal attention that's missing in giant schools with 3,000 students or more. The problem is the city tried to create these schools without building a lot of new buildings. Instead, they housed four to six new schools in the buildings that housed the old large schools. The total enrollment in the new schools was lower than the enrollment of the old; the overflow kids were sent to other beleaguered large schools, with commutes of up to 90 minutes.

Is there a lesson? Small schools are good, but large schools still serve the majority of New York City students. The city needs to develop a strategy to help the large schools and not just make them worse.

Comments

[ReasonIsMyReligion]

(reprint from 6/18):

That's not a road map; that's a demolition derby...

...wherein only the most aggressive parents driving their kids through it can get to the promised land of education in Mayor Really Really Rich Guy's, and Chancellor Liberal Guilt Guy's system:

A selective or screened-entry high school (same goes for middle school) where clued-in white parents can land their kids in schools that cater to the high side of the achievement gap in a system that seems fine with segregation.

For parents whose kids on average end up on the low side of the achievement gap, there's school closures rather than school improvement, and an odd couple of Reverend Sharpton and Newt Gingrich willing to sell inner city parents a Charter School.

Or, as this report points out in so many words, warehousing. Yes, Chancellor Klein would rather talk about the "small schools" he wants more of than the "big schools" his "small schools" are causing to get ever more crowded -- and less successful.

You want your neighborhood high school, or middle school, back?
Simple: Kick Chancellor Klein out of the neighborhood.

(How can being anti-neighborhood result in INCREASED segregation? A good question for one NYC Public School product himself: Joel Klein.)

[Steve Ettlinger - Huffpost Blogger]

Good job on the report and post! What a conundrum of problems. Small schools were perhaps touted too much as a fantastic solution, in the literal sense.

[LeftRight]

Is there a lesson here? Of COURSE there is!! You cannot just make some schools small, you must make them ALL small!!!!

[ReasonIsMyReligion]

I'd like to agree. But the results in the smaller schools may be due to "creaming" more than scale.

[LeftRight]

Perhaps..... On the other hand, the results of smaller CLASS sizes has been shown to work amazingly well....