Strategy for Improving High School and Middle School Student Achievement Through Development of Small Schools

Seattle Public Schools
Strategy for Improving High School and Middle School
Student Achievement
Through Development of Small Schools

by Dick Lilly

Purpose

The reason for developing small high schools and middle schools, both as stand-alone schools or as schools in clusters of two or more schools operating in Seattle Public Schools' larger buildings, is to improve academic achievement for all students and to reduce and eventually eliminate the achievement gap among racial and socioeconomic groups.

Choice of the Small Schools Strategy

During the past decade American public educators began developing new small schools, primarily urban high schools, reversing a 50-year trend toward consolidation and increasing school size. In large part, these small schools were created to counter the anonymity of large high schools. Their express purpose was to bring teachers and students – adults and teenagers – into closer interaction and provide every student with focused, personal attention that would stimulate academic achievement. At that, they have been dramatically successful, notably achieving lower dropout and higher graduation and college attendance rates for all students. Indeed, often the greatest gains, compared to students remaining in large high schools, have been among racial minorities and students from low-income families. Most of all, these results spotlight transformation from large to small schools as the most effective action available to U.S. school districts for improving high school and middle school academic achievement for all students.

Advantages of Small Schools

Small school size has a direct effect on student academic achievement in the following ways:

Small schools make it much easier for the staff-- teachers, aides, and administrators-- to work together as a team, all focused on the same academic goals and agreed-upon strategies for achieving them, widely accepted characteristics of successful schools.
Small schools are more flexible and responsive, in program development and modification and in response to individual student needs, because there is less formal bureaucracy and the people involved are well-known to one another and accustomed to working together.
Small schools mean every student is well-known to a group of adults who provide academic guidance as well as informal mentoring while students confront the challenges of growing up. This is in stark contrast to large middle and high schools where students may have little or no meaningful interaction with adults and a youth culture dominates.
Because each child is well-known to the adult staff, small schools make it nearly impossible for students to take refuge in anonymity (as often happens in large high schools), avoid academic challenges and drop out.
The small-group "advisory" structure used in most small schools is more effective in helping students than the system typical in large high schools where one counselor is responsible for as many as 400 students and teachers are not formally responsible at all.
Also because each child is well-known to the adult staff, parents and staff find it much easier to work together for the benefit of each student.
Parents find it easier to relate to school staff and play a larger role in the life of the school and their children's education.
Unlike larger schools, small schools make it possible for all staff, parents and students to work together as an educational community united around the small school's academic goals and success for every student.
Small schools are safer in every respect than large schools. According to national studies, in small schools there is less crime, whether it be petty vandalism or serious violence, than in large schools.

The Measurable Success of Small Schools

With significant consistency, compared to large schools, small schools achieve the following results among staff and among students of all ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds:

Lower dropout rates;
Higher grades;
Higher graduation rates;
Higher college attendance and college graduation rates, particularly among those students whose parents did not themselves attend college;
Better attendance rates for students and staff;
Greater teacher satisfaction;
Dramatically less crime, violence and vandalism.

The Size of Small Schools

The target for small middle and high schools based on what's proven effective elsewhere is approximately 300 students (fewer when possible) managed by an administrative-teaching team of no more than 20-25 people including teachers, aides and support staff. The size of the administrative-teaching team is crucial. The team must be small enough so the whole group can be meaningfully involved in most organizational and instructional decisions, the latter based on personal experience with most, if not all, students.

The Cost of Small Schools

When all factors are considered, small schools are not more costly than large schools. Within the per student cost range of existing programs, subject to careful administrative and School Board financial review as each new school proposal comes forward, a small schools strategy is a practical approach to Seattle Public Schools' goal of academic achievement for every child in every school. Examples:

The cost per high school graduate has proven to be about the same for both small and large schools.
Because of their high dropout rates, large high schools are more costly to society. Dropouts are more likely to be on welfare or in prison later in life, at significant public expense. Half of all families receiving public assistance are headed by high school dropouts; 82 percent of adult jail and prison inmates are dropouts. Incarceration per year costs taxpayers approximately four times the expense of a year in high school.
Large high schools incur costs for security and disciplinary staffs not required by small schools where a higher percentage of staff cost, therefore, goes for teaching.
Operating several small schools in a large school building, though not ideal for creating autonomous small schools, does not create additional staff or other overhead.
Development of stand-alone small schools, particularly in leased space, is cheaper than new construction or renovation of large schools. The per student capital cost of The Center School was only one-fourth of what Seattle Public Schools expects to spend per student on renovation of Roosevelt and Garfield high schools. Lease costs approximate the true maintenance and operations costs of district owned buildings.
Operations of Seattle Public Schools' existing small schools – NOVA and The Center School – fall within the cost range of other regular high school programs. Both achieve the exceptional results predicted for small schools.

Implementation of Seattle Public Schools' Small Schools Strategy

Seattle Public Schools and the Seattle School Board believe that a small schools strategy for high school and middle school transformation will significantly improve academic achievement for all middle and high school students while reducing and eventually eliminating the achievement gaps among races and socioeconomic groups. To implement this small schools strategy, the School Board sets the following goals:

Forceful continuation of the school transformation process begun two years ago.
Emphasis in the transformation process on the creation of small schools at the middle and high school level; or, in the interim, the creation of small learning communities such as academies within schools that open the way for maximum personal interaction between students, teachers, other school staff and parents.
Division of existing high school programs into clusters of distinct autonomous schools within the same building, beginning with Cleveland High School in fall 2003. Rainier Beach and Ingraham high schools will pursue the same course for fall 2003 if possible, but, as necessary allowing for time for extensive school-community involvement, dividing into clusters of autonomous small schools no later than fall 2004.
Restructuring and redefinition of several existing small programs including Middle College (Mall High School), Marshall, South Lake, Seahawk Academy and others where appropriate as autonomous small schools. (Leaders of these schools, as with autonomous schools clustered in large buildings, may be head teachers or other designated administrators reporting to a principal in charge of a group of several such schools.)
Opening in fall 2004 at least one new stand-alone small high school such as the proposed SODO High or Hospital High.
Opening of at least one stand-alone small high school annually thereafter until at least five small stand-alone high schools in addition to The Center School and NOVA have been established.
Creation of an administrative system for the development of new small middle and high schools that includes a Request for Proposal (RFP) process – applicable to both stand-alone small schools and schools created by the division of large middle or high schools – to stimulate the best possible plans from Seattle Public Schools' teachers and administrators, parents, business and non-profit communities and other potential partners in the education of children, including School Board final approval of each new school.
Continued forward-looking design of new and to-be-renovated middle and high schools such as Roosevelt and Garfield high schools, scheduled for renewal under BEX II, to promote their efficient and effective use as clusters of autonomous small schools.
Increased movement as part of the school transformation process toward "academy"-type grade-level or interest-area groupings in existing large middle schools in order to provide small school-like settings, creating strong and effective, personalized adult-student interaction.
Division of large middle schools into clusters of autonomous small schools where possible.
Continued establishment of K-8 schools with enhanced programs for grades six through eight to give middle schools students as much as possible the benefits of small schools. Including Seattle Public Schools' seven existing K-8 schools, new K-8 programs and authentic small schools within larger middle schools, there should be at least 20 small schools at the middle school level by fall 2009, a rate of about two schools per year.
Creation of a Task Force on Small Schools to explore, evaluate and recommend to the Board and Superintendent policies and procedures in areas such as student assignment, small school autonomy and so forth in order for Seattle Public Schools to smoothly carry out the goals of this strategy for improving high school and middle school academic achievement.

About the Author:

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.

© March 2003 New Horizons for Learning
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