Let me say at the outset that I am neither for nor against small schools. Sometimes they work well, because they have small classes and extra attention, sometimes they don’t, especially when they don’t provide classes for English language learners or advanced courses or foreign languages. As always, it depends.
Recently a report by a research organization called MRDC asserted that New York City’s Gates-funded small high schools were surprisingly successful.
But an underground researcher in the NYC Department of a education says, wait a minute. Review the evidence.
He/she writes:
How to Reform a Portfolio District
In what has become an annual propaganda exercise, MDRC (yes, their corporate name is just the initials), a “research foundation” in New York City, has self-published a non-peer reviewed paper on their website claiming that the new small high schools created under the Bloomberg administration are a success.[1] The New York Times followed up with an editorial claiming that “the Bloomberg approach has been vindicated” and that de Blasio should continue the same educational policies.[2]
Is there any truth to these claims? Does the data support any of this? The answer is “no.” The papers self-published by the MDRC are shoddily researched with clear biases and poor grounding in reality. It order to keep the size of this essay to a manageable length let’s limit ourselves to a Top 10 list of the paper’s flaws.
- The Gates Foundation provides the funding for these papers. The Gates Foundation also funded many of the new small high schools in New York City. What we have here is a circular process of self-congratulation. The peer-review process might be expected to uncover the biases produced by this unholy alliance.[3] But these papers have, of course, never been peer reviewed. They are self-published by MDRC on their website and then touted in press releases and newspaper editorials.
- It is becoming standard practice for researchers to publicly post data-sets used in such studies. MDRC has refused to release the data-set. This makes it impossible for their results to be independently verified or questioned.
- The papers claim that the new high schools “are open to any student who wants to attend.” This claim invents its own reality and ignores the existing literature that has shown how schools manage their admissions and enrollment processes so as to selectively screen out more challenging students. [4] It also ignores the facts on how the lottery process for these new high schools actually worked. In reality the new high schools used such tools as required attendance at information sessions, applications with essays, student biographical data, and listing mandated uniforms in the high school directory to screen out more challenging students prior to the lottery process as well as post the lottery process prior to enrollment. [5] A review of earlier papers in the MDRC series concluded that “carrying out the lotteries using the method described in the report may have resulted in nonrandom differences between the study groups.” [6] MDRC has never addressed these issues and continues to self-publish these papers on their website. It seems MDRC is more interested in continued funding than actually figuring out what really works for all students.
- The new small high schools have been found to engage in questionable academic practices and the manipulation of data at a higher rate than other high schools. For example, the new small high schools represent about 25% of all New York City high schools, yet in one year they made up 60% of the schools with patterns of data so suspicious that the Department of Education did not give them a grade. This should raise some serious concerns that MDRC does not address.
- For mysterious reasons MDRC excluded 33 small new secondary schools, a potential 30% increase in the number of schools examined in their self-published papers, even though 9th graders also apply to these schools through the high school admissions process. This may lead to significant bias in the results, especially since 6-12 schools are included in the comparison group.
- The new small high schools were closed at the same rate as existing schools, raising serious doubts about claims that the new small high schools as a whole were an improvement over existing schools.[7] This reality, of course, also biases the outcomes of the MDRC papers. Since the closed and closing new small high schools cease to accept 9th graders, their lower student outcomes would have a smaller impact on outcomes in these reports. The closed and closing new small high schools include, Manhattan Theatre Lab, Gateway School For Environmental Research and Technology, International Arts Business School, Global Enterprise High School, High School of Performance and Stagecraft (renamed Performance Conservatory), Urban Assembly Academy for History and Citizenship for Young Men, and the School for Community Research and Learning. Interestingly enough about 7% of the schools in the MDRC sample have closed, which is very close to the effect sizes MDRC claims the new small high school have produced.
- The MDRC papers only examine what they term “oversubscribed” new high schools. Only about 85% of the new small high schools meet this criteria. Meaning that 15% of new small high schools did not have enough applicants to fill their seats. Remember this is in context of students listing up to 12 high schools on their application. This means that the comparison groups are not equivalent. The outcomes of the presumably much weaker new small high schools are excluded. In order to make the comparison equivalent, the 15% of comparison schools with the weakest outcomes that the matched students attended should have been excluded as well. MDRC did not, of course, make this correction.
- Even with their biased methodology the MDRC papers have shown that the new small high schools have no significant impact on mathematics outcomes for students. Given the greater constraints in scoring on math exams, this difference suggests that any positive effects in the new small high schools are due to more relaxed grading policies rather than true increases in educational attainment. There is a lot more evidence suggesting the same thing, none of which MDRC addresses. For example, examination of credit accumulation in New York City schools has shown that while new high schools grant more credits, the credits do not correspond to a rigorous college ready curriculum.[8]
- When analyzing outcomes of specific student populations the MDRC papers lump students into very broad categories such as English Language Learner and Special Education Status. Given the data showing, for example, that the new small high school serve fewer of the neediest special education students, such comparisons are clearly biased in favor of the new small high schools.[9]
- MDRC does not acknowledge the special “favors” that were granted to Bloomberg’s new small schools. This includes receiving a higher percent of their Fair Student Funding formula than other schools [10], having more available facility space than other schools [11], and excluding special needs students [12] and English Language Learners in their early years [13]. Any comparisons made in such an inequitable policy environment are ridiculous.
The current popularity of the portfolio district approach can be attributed to the following factors:
- a) Superintendents of urban districts and other district officials with no background in education- with zero expertise in education they have no clue how to improve teaching and learning.
- b) A reluctance on the part of districts to take ownership and responsibility for the success of their schools- this leads to the strange but increasingly familiar scenario of districts trashing the public schools they are actually supposed to be supporting and improving while praising and granting special favors to charter schools (see Newark, New Jersey and Camden, New Jersey).
- c) The short time-frame of most superintendents and other district officials in each posting. With no long-term accountability they can play the portfolio game for a couple of years- closing schools, opening schools, closing even more schools- giving off the impression of activity and hard work. Though no real progress is made, by the time this becomes obvious, they have transitioned into other positions at reform think tanks and foundations. [14]
Mayor de Blaiso and Chancellor Farina, please do not continue the education policies of the previous administration as the New York Times demands. Thankfully, you have already made very clear that you do not intend to, as the data show that the portfolio district approach employed by the previous administration was a failure.[15]
Here is what you should do instead:
+ Develop rich, engaging curricula that support student learning and train teachers in implementing these curricula with fidelity while having the flexibility to customize the curricula to the needs of their students.
+Return to a geographic approach of school support and governance based on feeder patterns between elementary, middle and high schools. This will allow for articulation and alignment of supports as students progress from one grade band to the next.
+ Improve the metrics currently used to evaluate teachers and schools. The current metrics penalize schools that serve more challenging students and are open to manipulation. The initial revisions to the school Progress Reports are a good first step in what needs to be an iterative and ongoing process.
+ Focus on equity and fairness at every level of the organization. Enrollment practices must be reformed so that all students are educated by every single school. Tracking practices must be reformed so that every student receives a challenging academic program. Funding practices must be reformed so that schools are funded at levels appropriate to the students they serve.
This is how New York City will progress and truly serve every single student.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] http://www.mdrc.org/publication/headed-college/file-full
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/18/opinion/small-schools-work-in-new-york.html
[3] Peer review is, of course, not the perfect solution for identifying bias in research. For example, the famous Chetty et al. study that was used to support value-added measures to evaluate teachers and played a role in the California tenure lawsuits now appears to have significantly exaggerated its claims. See Jesse Rothstein’s working paper at http://eml.berkeley.edu/~jrothst/workingpapers/rothstein_cfr_oct2014.pdf where he notes:
“Like all quasi-experiments, this one relies on an assumption that the treatment – here, teacher switching – is as good as random. I find that it is not: Teacher switching is correlated with changes in students’ prior-year scores. Exiting teachers tend to be replaced by teachers with higher measured VA when students’ prior achievement is increasing for other reasons, and by teachers with lower measured VA when student preparedness is declining. CFR have confirmed (in personal communication) that this result holds in their sample as well.
The evidence that the teacher switching “treatment” is not randomly assigned implies that CFR-I’s quasi-experimental analyses, which do not control for changes in student preparedness, cannot be interpreted causally…
It is not clear that the association between VA and long-run outcomes can be interpreted causally. The evidence of bias in VA scores means that the association between a teacher’s VA and students’ long-run outcomes may reflect the student sorting component of the VA score rather than the teacher’s true effect. Moreover, even if this issue is set aside there is still a concern that students assigned to high-VA teachers may be advantaged in ways that are predictive of the students’ long-run outcomes, implying that the estimated “effect” of being assigned to a teacher with high estimated VA is upward biased. In both CFR’s district and the North Carolina sample, teachers’ measured VA is correlated with students’ prior scores and other observables. Neither CFR-II’s observational estimates nor their quasi-experimental estimates of teachers’ long-run effects control fully for students’ observed, predetermined characteristics.”
[4] See Jennings, Jennifer L. (2010) School Choice or Schools’ Choice? Managing in an Era of Accountability. Sociology of Education 83: 227-247 “Although district policy did not allow principals to select students based on their performance, two of the three schools in this study circumvented these rules to recruit and retain a population that would meet local accountability targets.”
[5] http://eduwonkette2.blogspot.com/2007/10/when-lottery-is-not-lottery-ii-nyc.html
[6] http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/pdf/quick_reviews/nyc_sm_hs_013112.pdf
[7] http://www.edwize.org/meet-the-new-schools-same-as-the-old-schools
[8] http://www.edwize.org/new-schools-students-getting-passing-grades-yes-ready-for-college-not-so-much and http://www.edwize.org/bloombergs-new-schools-of-choice-prepare-fewer-kids-for-college
[9] http://www.nyccej.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/school-closures-report.pdf. See http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/eduwonkette/2008/06/why_has_the_education_press_mi.html and http://eduwonkette2.blogspot.com/2007/10/turnaround-at-evander-childs-nyc-small.html for other significant demographic differences between older schools and the new small high schools.
[11] http://www.ibo.nyc.ny.us/iboreports/overcrowdingaugust2010.pdf
[13] http://www.thenyic.org/sites/default/files/report_3_ed_1.pdf
[14] See, for example, the cases of Joel Klein, former chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, who now works for the Murdochs and of Marc Sternberg, former deputy chancellor of the now shuttered Division of Portfolio Planning at the New York City Department of Education, who now works for the Waltons.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
To the original question: too big and too small are not good. Somewhere around 1000 – 1400 seems best.
Smaller and you can’t offer the broad or deep curriculum. High school teachers can’t always be generalists. Scheduling is a nightmare.
Over 1400, the personal touch, the family feeling is lost. Kids are lost.
And then there’s football …
The suggestion that we “Return to a geographic approach of school support and governance based on feeder patterns between elementary, middle and high schools. This will allow for articulation and alignment of supports as students ” is, I believe, incompatible with the other suggested reform “Tracking practices must be reformed so that every student receives a challenging academic program”
Fairfax County, Virginia, for example, ensures that high ability students receive a challenging academic program by ignoring the geography of the district and running a qualified admissions high school (Thomas Jefferson High) that creams high ability students from their assigned district school. I don’t see another way to offer these students a challenging academic program at anything close to an acceptable cost to the local taxpayer.
Why not send the kids across state lines to cream the top students and give them the best education then? To hell with the normal and/or dumb kids, huh? Cost effective? Challenging? There is nothing wrong with neighborhood schools, when they are fully funded. Period. If a kid is a genius, let the parents find him/her a genius school. If kids need extra help, fund it. Period.
Donna,
It is the original post that calls for “…every student receives a challenging academic program”. I interpret the word every to mean every student. Perhaps you see it differently.
And, sigh, once again, TE, it has been explained to you ad nauseum that this can be accomplished within a district system.
Dienne,
TJ High School IS a district high school. TJ High School is not consistent with “a geographic approach of school support and governance based on feeder patterns between elementary, middle and high schools.”
If we did as the original post advocates, TJ High School would not be allowed in its present form as a magnet district school. The same would be true of every qualified admission district school.
Why are parents of gifted kids expected to find a ‘genius’ school, but the children who need extra help should be funded in the traditional school?
I think there are very few students who are truly gifted, but I would hope that public schools would find a way to fund the education they deserve without expecting the parent to find a ‘genius’ school.
I think TE has some valid points. In my district students with extreme learning issues/disabilities are grouped not by neighborhood but go to specific neighborhood schools with dedicated teachers and classrooms for their needs. Even in a large district, there most likely are only a small percentage of high school students who are capable of doing the high level math he mentions. Why not have dedicated classes in one school for these students? Wouldn’t that be a good thing for our society?
At the risk of sounding crude, when I was a kid, there were special buses that took the special kids to special classes at special schools. Kids who were “gifted and talented” though that phrase didn’t exist at the time, were promoted to the next grade if they were indeed smarter than their peers/age group. I guess all of that stopped with G&T classes, AP classes and inclusion classes.
Parental involvement is what I mean by if parents believe their kid is a genius, have their kid tested – put that genius in college at 10…………if he/she is genius material.
Donna,
Skipping grades has it’s own costs. Sometimes, of course, those costs are worth paying.
BTW, TE, you want a really challenging program? Then how about teaching kids, including and especially the bright/”gifted”/enriched white affluent ones, to get along with everyone, including and especially the kids that aren’t at your kid’s lofty level and the kids who aren’t as privileged? Seeing every human being as a worthy individual with valuable contributions to make, regardless of their score on a standardized test, is a challenge that eludes most people, especially the “gifted” ones.
Dienne,
The schools that my children attended ranged from about 60% of the students eligible for free or reduced price lunch (elementary school and junior high for one) to 25% of the students eligible for free or reduced price lunch (the high school for all three). Are those schools really much more elite than the private progressive school where you send you student?
By the way, not all my children are white.
My kid’s high school is almost 3,000. They have phased out classes like honors math and traditional math (Algebra, Geometry and Algebra 2). Everyone will take the same class now under Common Core. Teachers are on their “devices” much of the class time and so are the students, with no accountability. Why is surfing the web and social media sites acceptable at school by staff and students? I’m sure it won’t be long before honors English gets the “cut” too, and Common Crap spreads its ugly control.
TE, it depends some on the programming preferences and needs of the student population, but you can generally run a challenging academic program for high ability students in a comprehensive high school in the enrollment range Peter notes above.
Where the student population has relatively fewer at-risk students, you can usually go above 1400 without adverse consequences but you will need to accept more of the “Shopping Mall High School” model. Where the student population has relatively more at-risk students, the need for connectedness is more essential and the optimal size might be around 700-800. Lee and Smith studied this extensively in the 90’s and really the issues have not changed that much since the Conant report in 1959.
Stiles,
TJ High School is able to offer an impressive set of math classes (Calc BC, Multivariate Calculus, Linear Algebra, Complex Analysis, Differential Equations, Probability Theory, AP Statistics) that I think would be difficult to reproduce in a comprehensive high school at a cost that taxpayers would find reasonable or a class size that would allow for beneficial peer impacts to take place. TJ’s size, at 1,844 students, will give many students strong peers that would not be available to them in a comprehensive high school of 1,400.
TE, a comprehensive school of adequate size can certainly offer Calc BC and AP Stats. I agree that it would take a magnet high school or a very large high school to offer the courses that are higher than BC or stats. However, my view is that the higher math courses you mention are truly university level math courses where completion should earn the student counting credits. Places populous enough to have a sizeable number of students who might take analysis as a senior are probably proximate to an institution of higher education where the students could attend on a concurrent enrollment basis. That’s the option I would prefer.
Stiles,
Joe Nathan has been a vocal proponent of the sort of concurrent enrollment that you suggest, but he may well have been bullied of the blog at this point so we may not see him comment.
In my state the median high school has 250 students, so the vast majority of schools are well below the adequate size to offer any AP classes. In my state classes taken at universities do not count towards high school graduation and university tuition must be paid by the family. This is a barrier for students from realitivly poor households.
In any case it is true that there are relativly few students who could take advantage of the most advanced courses. Perhaps the original post could be modified. Rather than calling for EVERY student receiving a challenging academic program, it could call for some or even most students receiving a challenging academic program. The discussion about which students to leave out would be interesting.
TE, no one bullied Joe Nathan. If you refer to my outrage at his anti-Catholic comments, that was not bullying.
Dr. Ravitch,
I was not thinking about specific incidences, but the nature of the interactions over the last couple of years. Heterodox posters here get bullied. It is just the nature of this blog. Perhaps it is the nature of the Internet.
TE,
The median public high school in my state has 285 students and providing equity of access to students in the smaller schools serving rural communities is a challenge here too. Providing good access to world language, science, and technical education courses is a major issue for these smaller schools.
Our state has two separate state programs that provide students with free access to higher education courses, one is long standing on is very new. K-12 and higher ed are not used to closely collaborating, although the two sectors generally would like to in principle. I am optimistic that states will continue to make progress in providing good access to concurrent enrollment courses to students who could benefit. I’ll note that this is a broad population of students, not only advanced learners.
Stiles,
I hope my state will eventually have a program for high school students taking college classes. Even if tuition is paid, I suspect distance from a post secondary institution will require the courses be virtual or taught in the local school by local teachers, not faculty from the post secondary institutions.
Thank you for posting this piece. I read the NYT editorial and wondered. Unfortunately, more people will most likely read the NYT than this blog. US News published its best high schools. In Colorado #3 was 2100 student Fairview HS in Boulder (where it is believed the DPS superintendent sends his HS student), #7 was 3450 student Cherry Creek High School. Check out the FRL % for both. Both serve very middle class and above populations. Until this country addresses poverty, all the money and all the “reforms” won’t amount to much.
The closing of large high schools and the creation of small high schools began in the late 80s and accelerated in the 90s, well before the Bloomberg portfolio strategy … the Chancellor’s High School District and the Gates New Century initiative was continued an accelerated by Bloomberg …. unfortunately there were numerous long established low achieving schools, the Department had created a triage system, sacrificing schools to “save” others.
While most small high schools are “limited, screened schools” the computer still spins … principals can “rank” students who select their school, schools are advised to select at least 5x as many students as seats … most large high schools have education options programs that also recruit students.
The personalization of small schools is attractive, students are not
“lost” in the maze of large schools; however, I agree with Diane, there is no magic bullet.
All schools should have geographic zone options and students should have the ability to apply anywhere else.
We live in a world of advocacy research, the organization conducting the “research” uses the process to “prove” preconceived ideas … and active PR to place the research in local media.
The answer is neither large nor small schools, the answer is effective schools that serve all students.
To answer the question: NO!
Fascinating… I worked in a small middle school, a magnet school experiment, and it worked well because the teachers were brilliant, allowed to collaborate and create the curricula, and we knew every single student who passed us in the halls. That made a huge difference… the social capital.
It is not size that matters, if the head honcho dictates what the teacher-practioner must do, must use, and how the teacher must evaluate students.
Top-down business bozos like Bloomberg do not know how the human brain acquires skills an knowledge and should leave the curricula and methods in their small schools to the teachers who know what LEARNING looks like.
Living in Oregon, I cannot speak for what goes on in New York City, but I firmly believe that small schools are better for students and teachers. I was a principal of two small elementary schools and one small middle school for a total of 25 years. Because of the simpler sturucture of these schools, were able to do a good job of educating all students, eliminating bullying, and improving teachers’ skills. We were also able to have all kids who wanted to, including special-needs ones, participate in extra-curricular activities. I submitted a more detailed letter to the NY times, and they edited it and returned it for my approval. I have every reason to believe it will be published within the next few days.
Please post your letter once it’s published (or post the longer version once the NYT’s version is out).
There is no such thing as a “magic bullet”, certainly.
School size is not always a matter of choice, though continues to be treated as such here in rural Northern Maine where you could not reach assumed “ideal” size if you gathered every child for 100 miles under one roof!
Though the research has called into serious doubt the relationship between size and curriculum quality, children nonetheless face grueling and expensive bus rides as policymakers chase elusive scale and more prosperous areas of the state sneer at the “waste” they see in small schools scattered over a wide, geographic area. Children are further shortchanged as their small schools are governed by those who view them as inferior, and haven’t the expertise or will to optimize small school advantages.
Focus on “per pupil costs” rather than need is inherently inequitable.
Educate the children you have, whatever their number.
stay in oregon and stop worrying about nyc schools and…writing about nyc schools..you do not live in nyc and are not familiar with the over crowding and how bloomberg jammed all the schools inside of buildings one on top of another. There are no more offices for staff, small classrooms and everyone is breathing on each other. So, write about whats going on in oregon and stop writing about nyc for which obviously you know jack squat about
What? I think you were trying to reply to Diane Ravitch, and not me.
I cannot imagine ANYONE advocating for overcrowding of any school, though.
Ohio’s governor behaves similarly.
and erratically.
Depends on the students and how the school is run. A micromanaged small private school could be a disaster while a large, public high school with autonomous teacher teams and schools-within-schools choice might be highly successful.
Small schoolr by themselves are of no consequence. However, if they were allowed to innovate using 1st class achievement rather than the 2nd class achievement of the testing fiasco, they will be valuable.
My upcoming book has ideas for big schools also. http://www.wholechildreform.com
Re small schools. It depends on what one decides is the “essential” purpose of schools, and on how one makes use of smallness or largeness. At heart the issue is “knowing each other”–across generations, and across class and racial lines. It also means the school is ale to make revisions whenever the evidence suggests they should–sitting around together–at one table–looking into the eyes of ones’ colleagues. It’s academically more important for kids who “don’t get it”–but since diversity also matters and schools that cater only to “low performers” are likely to reproduce “low performers” we need ways to make small schools attractive to one and all. Choice is one way–but it often/usually leads to more, not less segregation. Interestingly, virtually 90% or ore of all expensive private schools stay small–compared to public schools. Creating schools on a human scale–comparable to most work places for that matter–requires some trade-offs (an that’s where choice is relevant) ONLY because we aren’t willing to spend the same money that we spent on rich kids. Eve then there are ways to overcome the trade-offs with imagination.
debmier,
While I agree that a major advantage of having specialized qualified enrollment schools is scale economies lowering per student expenditure on advanced classes, it is not the only advantage. Having a significant group of peers to work with is also important and can not be duplicated at any cost in a school where only one or two students could take a course like differential equations.