The Bloomberg administration loves small schools. Conversely, it hates large schools, especially large high schools. The city used to have dozens of large high schools, some of which had a storied history. Now few remain. One that was slated to close last year was Long Island City High School, but it was saved by a court order.
So the Department of Education is killing it by the usual means, by diverting students to other schools. As enrollment falls, so does funding. We previously saw this process at historic Jamaica High School, where the city starved it of students and funding until programs died and nothing was left but bare bones of what was once the pride of the community.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I recently watched an old documentary on New York and started thinking that nothing is new. What is happening today with schools seems to be just another way of perpetuating unfair practices like redlining was in its day. The powers that be can dress up all the parts of education reform, give them a sense of importance with numbers on charts, and give them a names that imply something beneficial for everyone but if you look behind the curtain, the ruse is obvious.
For those of you in NYC, do you have any opinion(s) on the Julia Richman complex – a large high school that was converted into several small schools. When I’ve visited, union leadership i the building, as well as educators have been very positive. I’d be interested in your views:
http://www.jrec.org/
I used to teach at a sister school for one of the schools in the Julia Richman campus. I always enjoyed professional development there, because the staff, students, and administration in the school seemed to have really great synergy.
Larger schools actually generate higher test scores on average than smaller schools (at least in Texas). I guessing this is due to scales of economy.
Research on small schools and small learning communities from the NEA website:
http://www.nea.org/home/13639.htm
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Research Talking Points on Small Schools
What do we mean when we talk about “small schools?”
“Small schools” is the expression used for a concept for restructuring schools — particularly high schools — and the human relationships inside them. The optimum size for small schools varies, with many recent definitions calling for not more than 500 students, but, based on the most frequently cited research (Lee & Smith, 1997), they are defined as schools with enrollments that range between 600-900 students.
In some cases, large high schools that cannot be physically broken into smaller units are organized into small “learning communities” (see section on schools-within-schools listed below) in order to obtain the benefits associated with small schools. Although there is much ongoing research associated with such efforts, to date we do not have a comprehensive or conclusive set of evidence to determine if smaller learning communities produce the same effects as small schools.
What are the benefits of small schools?
An extensive amount of research indicates that there may be many benefits from smaller learning communities (Supovitz & Christman, 2005; Howley, et al., 2000). The most important benefits include:
Faised student achievement
Increased attendance
Elevated teacher satisfaction,
Improved school climate
Smaller schools may be especially important for disadvantaged students by more individualized attention and teachers being able to address different learning styles. Also, smaller schools may promote substantially improved achievement and higher graduation rates (Howley, et al., 2000).
Do they work better than large schools?
In addition to the benefits listed above, research indicates that there may be improved instructional quality and working conditions. These factors also play a role in greater job satisfaction for the small school faculty (Darling-Hammond 2002).
A small school offers an environment in which students may be more visible. Student-teacher relationships improve, allowing teachers to more easily identify individual talents and unique needs of each student, which offers a more personalized educational experience. Teachers are able to interact more with their faculty administrators. A small school staff size allows more opportunity for teachers to know each other well, more easily share information about their students, collaborate to solve problems, and generally support one another.
Further, according to a recent report (Lawrence 2002) small schools can be more cost effective than large schools. Although, cost per-pupil is more effective for larger schools, on a cost per-graduate basis, small schools have been shown to be more efficient. While small schools alone are not the solution, they can prove to be a useful platform for improved student achievement.
What are “schools-within-schools”?
Schools within schools are large schools (in most cases high schools) that have been divided into smaller learning communities. Each school within the larger school functions autonomously, while at times sharing resources of the larger facility (Walcott, et. al, 2005). Research suggests that transitioning into effective schools-within-schools can present challenges. Some problems that will need to be taken into consideration are Labor Agreement issues, uniting faculty, students and community around change and coordinating sharing resources ( Allen & Steinberg, 2005). It is imperative that diligent preparations and strong leadership are in place to be prepared to address challenges that will arise.
How widely available are small schools?
There are several states who are implementing small school initiatives (ECS 2005): Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Washington.
In addition, a large-scale research project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has poured more than $700 million into helping to establish and study small schools across the country. The American Institutes for Research is conducting a multi-year evaluation of these initiatives.
References
American Institutes for Research.
National Evaluation of the Early College High School Initiative
Allen, L. & Steinberg, A. (2005). Big Buildings, Small Schools: Using a Small Schools Strategy for High School Reform. Jobs for the Future and the Education Alliance at Brown University.
Darling-Hammond, L., Ancess, J., & Wichterle Ort, S. (Fall 2002). Reinventing High School: Outcomes of the Coalition Campus Schools Project. American Educational Research Journal, 39(3), 639.
Education Commission on the States.
Howley, C., Strange, M., & Bickel, R. (2000). Research about school size and school performance in impoverished communities. (Report No. EDO-RC-00-01).
Lawrence, Barbara Kent, et al. (2002)
Dollars & Sense: The Cost Effectiveness of Small Schools. (pdfsmall.gif PDF, 44 pp) The Small Schools Project.
Lee, V.E., & Smith, J.B. (1997). High school size: Which works best and for whom? Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 19(3), 205-227.
National Education Association (2003) Resolution C-17, 2005-2006 NEA Resolutions, page 48.
Supovitz, J.A. & Christman, J.B. (2005). Small Learning Communities That Actually Learn: Lessons for School Leaders, Phi Delta Kappan, 86(9), 649-651.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Walcott, Owens-West and Makkonen (2005). High School Reform: National and State Trends. California Teachers Association/WestED.
Small School Workshop
Resource site sponsored by a group of University of South Florida educators, organizers and researchers for public schools and school districts who are engaged in restructuring and whole-school improvement. The Workshop brings experience and expertise in elementary and secondary school redesign, curricular focus and building professional teams by providing guidance and professional development to large public schools that are in the process of restructuring into smaller learning environments.
– Tiffany Cain, NEA Research
November 2005
You should go to my blog where I have an interactive graph that allows you to compare various school variables including school sizes in Texas. The data is official state released, comprehensive, and covers a period of 9 years. I think the data speaks for itself and is a better argument than anything I could possibly say about school size and test scores. I think NEA and most people (myself included, until I made the graph) conflate small school with small classes. In any event, your citation indicates that small schools can range from 600-900 students. In Texas, that would be a mid-sized school. The vast majority of schools have less than 100 students.
Thanks for your note. Unfortunately I don’t know how to find your blog. If you would share info, I’ll be glad to look. Here’s a 2009 study done by a researcher at Stephen Austin State University http://www.ruraleducator.net/archive/30-2/Stewart.pdf
He found higher percentages of students passing state tests from small rural high schools than in large suburban, as well as urban high schools, except when the schools enrolled mostly affluent students.
The NEA research cited is not about class size. It’s about school size.
Of course, there are some great large schools, and mediocre small schools. But a variety of researchers, including Linda Darling Hammond, and long time practitioners such as Deborah Meier, point to the value of small schools.
You could just click on my name and it will take you there. But here is the relevant post.
http://phameducation.blogspot.com/2013/05/schools-achievement-and-demographics.html
Remember this is not a sample or district, but the population of Texas schools. Furthermore, it is the official data for the state across 9 years so bias should not be a big concern. As you note, there are always exceptions to any generalization. However, on my motion makes it clear that there is a positive correlation between school size and TAKS scores. I’m not saying that TAKS scores measure anything meaningful, but that for whatever reason, bigger schools tend to get better scores. The biggest schools consistently do well.
My recommendation: Change x-axis to “log” and “Demographic – Total Students”. I also change size and color to “Demographic – Total students” too to highlight the trends in size. Then press play and see how it changes from year to year.
Alternatively, you can set color to “Demographic – % Economically Disadvantaged”. Here you can see that poor school do not get very high scores and tend to be mid-size schools while the smallest schools are usually not that poor. After reading the Stewart paper you cited and comparing his data with with the TEA published, I believe that his analysis is misleading due to the taxonomic breakdown and and then calculation of percentages within those breakdowns. He did not control for differences in ED across school sizes.
This is why it is important to visualize global data so that emergent properties due to biases, assumptions, and methodology become less of an issue.
I am afraid you are right. I worked at LICHS until I retired 2 years ago. It is one of the newer buildings, so Bloomberg has targeted it. It is a crime what is happening in that school.
This notion of the goodness of huge schools is interesting. Diane seems to love the America that built our plutocracy, that sorted students by class and race and properly set up things for convenient exploitation by the few. Ask Diane what the goal of school should be. One that would serve a status quo that serves only some.
I meant to say “exploitation of theany by a few.” These are the sorting machines of which Joel Spring spoke. As for the research, be careful for the outcome variables may no comport with sensible and humane notions of proper education, something that needs to be discussed if conversations such as this are to produce meaningful outcomes. Those large schools Diane wishes to protect have not been loved by all if even the many and for very good reason, the damage done to those who went unrecognized on the crowd. Sishcoomba!
I have my own reasons to dislike Bloomberg’s policies after having taught 7 years in NYC public schools. Still, I wouldn’t call either option (big schools or smalls schools) perfect. Many of my students in the small schools needed a more intimate environment with *NO* anonymity, because they were likely to fall through the cracks in a larger school. At the same time, scheduling in a smaller school limits course offerings. Some of the brilliant kids who could really shine in college often don’t get exactly what they need. Maybe if those huge campuses were broken into two schools instead of five, the system might work better.
When I see this as the only criticism of Bloomberg’s policies, I feel as if the author might be Dudley from The Royal Tenenbaums. This is superficial compared to the war on tenure, the decentralization of teachers’ salaries, the public defamation of the profession, a focus on standardized testing, and the directives that push administrators to incredibly “grimy” actions.
I grew up in NYC and attended high school in the late ’70s. At the time, if you were a middle class kid in vast swaths of the city, your choices were: place into one of the specialized or arts oriented schools, private school, or leave the City. The big neighborhood school was not an option for many parents who valued their kids lives. I grew up in the Village. The local high schools, Charles Evans Hughes and Seward Park, were not options; they were threats. For UES kids, that’s what Julia Richman was, too. Yes, there were and are good big local high schools. However, just like the good big (and small) elementary and middle schools, they tend to be in stable predominantly middle-class neighborhoods. Schools in predominantly poor/tough neighborhoods, or in neighborhoods with clear class divides where the affluent can opt out are a different story.
So for someone of my background, hearing that one of the “threat” schools is being broken up, it’s hard for me to view this as a bad thing. I don’t doubt that there are better and worse ways of doing this, and to the extent that the core problem is the students’ it frustrates me that shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic is what passes for remedy. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that there is a long history of truly terrible big high schools in NYC. Yes, there’s also a long history of very good ones, but that doesn’t negate the reality that something truly drastic may need to be done with the bad ones.
Meant to say ” … student’s poverty”