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You
are here: What Kind of Schools are We Going to Have in the Future?
by Dick Lilly
That's not an idle question for school boards today, particularly the Seattle School board where I serve as one of two new members elected to the seven-member board last fall. But it's not a question about curriculum or teaching philosophies – except perhaps indirectly. It's a question about school size.
For nearly five years in the mid-1990s, I was The Seattle Times' education reporter assigned to the 47,000-student Seattle Public Schools. During those years – late 1994 to mid 1999 – I spent hours in classrooms in Seattle and the suburbs, attended probably 100 board meetings, met and learned from a number of prominent education researchers including Paul Hill and David Marshak here in Seattle and Dick Elmore at Harvard, and thanks to the Times' generous travel budget in those days also visited a variety of schools in other cities including Boston and New York.
Through all my research and behind most stories I wrote, was always the question, "What really works to make schools better?" After all, it wasn't hard to realize that much of what we'd done in schools during the second half of the Twentieth Century didn't work. The poor performance of America's children, particularly low-income and minority children, was ample evidence of that. Of course, the poor performance of children really means the poor performance of schools.
By the middle of my time on the school beat I had an answer that I still believe in. More than any other single factor we can control, small schools, at every level, enable better teaching and learning, and are particularly effective with low-income and minority children. Small schools, and not just small class sizes bring kids and teachers, kids and the institution, together at a scale both adults and children can manage. Small schools bring adults into kids lives, which is what we mean by personalized education. Everyone knows this intuitively. Just imagine a small high school of, say, 250 kids and about 25 teachers working together compared to the crowded halls – dominated by the peer pressures of youth culture – and closed classroom doors of the typical comprehensive high school of 1,000-plus enrollment.
Small schools are also easier to manage, more likely to lead to true teamwork because of their smaller staffs, and in the face of change, much more nimble than the battleships we're trying to turn, or stop, with other education reforms. Whatever direction you want to go, it's easier with a small school.
And that takes us back to the big question I posed at the outset: What kind of schools are we going to have in the future? Or, how do we get from here to there?
For example, the Seattle School Board and the district's superintendent, Joseph Olchefske, are pretty well aware of the benefits of small schools. Olchefske opened one new small high school last fall – planned enrollment, 300 – and plans are in the works for three more of about that size, including one that would operate between approximately 3 p.m. and 9 p.m. in an existing large high school building.
Otherwise, Seattle schools are fairly typical if a little on the small side for big cities. We have four high schools with enrollment topping 1,600, four at about 1,000 and two between 700 and 800, although there is also one small high school of about 250 students that's been operating for 20-odd years. In the past, it's been even smaller and has almost always had top test scores, leading all other high schools on SAT verbal last year.
In addition, a couple of our high schools are aggressively clustering students in small-group academies for core subjects while others are developing looser-knit academies around career paths, not really small schools but nonetheless notably better educational environments for our kids.
The situation is equally in flux for middle schools. Larger middle schools are encouraged through the district's transformation process to segment their enrollment into academies like some of the high schools. In addition, Superintendent Olchefske is aggressively moving toward more K-8 programs, but ones where enrollment in grades 6-8 will be increased to 250-300 total and a full middle school program offered.
So we're making changes, significant changes, but we're not yet sure where it all will lead. We believe small schools are better, but we may not be able to offer then to everyone. Nor will all families want their kids in small schools. We know many kids will still want the big high school experience with cheer squads and state championship athletic teams, world class drama and music programs. What's the right mix of small and traditional schools? And how do we get there?
Seattle and other school districts will need to find clear, compelling answers to those questions in the next few years or risk losing momentum in the promising turn toward small schools. Some small schools, maybe quite a few, need to be in the mix if we're going improve schooling for kids.
Dick Lilly is a member of the Seattle School Board, District 4. You may contact him via email at dililly@seattleschools.org, or write 815 Fourth Ave. N. Seattle, WA 98109.
Copyright © June 2002 New Horizons for Learning, all rights reserved.
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