Marc Epstein used to work in a large comprehensive high school that was broken up into small schools. Since then, he has worked in many small schools. Based on his knowledge, experience, and research, he came to question and doubt Gates’ belief that NYC’s small schools were successful.
Read here to know why he reached this conclusion.
Small schools are not a new idea in NYC:
“Long before the small school initiative, New York had its own disastrous experiment with dividing up a low achieving comprehensive high school into four small schools.
“Andrew Jackson High School was renamed Campus Magnet almost 20 years ago but the name change did nothing to raise student achievement and stem school violence. It should have provided a cautionary tale for small school promoters. But the lessons of Campus Magnet were ignored. Two of the four schools are to be closed to make way for new schools that will replace failure with success according to authorities.
“When large schools are divided you also lose control of the student population. Students from co-located schools often disrupt classes in neighboring schools or enter a neighboring school to fight. Texting and cell phones provide instant communication to the Clockwork Orange sociopaths, only exacerbating the level of violence.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“if you can measure a problem you can fix it”- Bill Gates
Bill, what about the ‘problems’ that defy measurement? Does that mean they are not problems, or that thay cannot be ‘fixed’?
I may be confusing this with something else, but weren’t you once a big proponent of smaller schools, Diane? Assuming I’m not misremembering or mischaracterizing, have you changed your views on that?
Our high school is a small high school originally funded by a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation grant. We have not failed. We are working hard and thriving in North Carolina. Small high schools can work. We are not a charter, but we are a public school of choice. Bill Gates’ small high school movement works, if you are looking for more than high test scores.
Data seems to be getting a bad name these days, so let me argue on the other side since data is a bit complicated. Data always is. I believe there is actually nothing wrong with data and it’s actually quite useful. But it’s mostly how you gather and use it which is the problem. Edward Deming, the proponent of the Quality Management whose ideas about extensive data use in manufacturing were rejected in the US, went on instead to transform the Japanese auto industry which 20 years later completely trounced the American auto industry in car quality, showing data does matter. But interestingly Deming never believed data should be used to rate employees and was known to give all his students A’s. So he knew when to use data and when not to and what its limitations were.
As I’ve detailed elsewhere, the recent CREDO study of the success of charter schools in NYC compared the matched sample students in public schools uses data, but the research design of the study is completely flawed as was its conclusion. But its not the data that was a fault, but its misuse and its exclusion of other data that resulted in the flaw. The same can be said about “value added” measures of teacher effectiveness.
I think It is the misuse of data what people mean when they object to data. Epstein correctly points this out when he notes that when data is made the criterion of success, people begin to manipulate the data. In schools this is the under-reporting of safety events but is also found in schools which are on some failing list or other, and suddenly finding their students passing classes at rates never before seen. The principals obviously cannot tell teachers to just start passing more students but they make pretty clear that they will be in trouble if they don’t. If students can’t pass the Regents to graduate even with sufficient credits, the questions become easier at the state level, or barring that the raw score conversion scale becomes easier. (On most Regents exams, the raw score passing rate is only 34-50% correct which is then scaled to “65”).
What worries me is the uncritical anti-data attitude which makes the anti-corporate reform movement appear as some sort of educational Luddite movement. More than that, when correctly used and interpreted, data is quite useful. The real education battle is not over the “cult of data” but that many of the people in power are using, interpreting. and distorting data for their own ideological purposes and agenda.
Well said, as always.
A.S. Neill: your comment is right on.
Data are not bad, but the misuse of them is.
The cult of data is nutty.
It’s good to know children’s height and weight, but it would be crazy to use that to stigmatize them or reward them (e.g., tallest is best).
Testing can be well used or ill used.
Judgment matters.
Diane
Bayard Rustin HS was a GREAT school until reorganized into 4 SLC’s. the creation of the SLC’s resulted in the immediate decline of academic achievement and that ultimately resulted in its closure. Now there 7 small separate schools in the building with each one slated to have 500 students. The building was designed for 1500.
Here’s a description of another conversion of a large NYC district building into small autonomous schools. It has worked out pretty well. http://www.jrec.org/
Every improvement made by the Julia Richman conversion could be made by a huge, completely dysfunctional ‘traditional’ high school if you gave those schools A. an admissions screen (a separate application or interview/audition) that would effectively eliminate students coming from the most troubled and disadvantaged family situations, and B. A commitment, backed up by the community, the DOE, and politicians. to a ‘no excuses’ culture with respect to student behavior.
The schools in JREC don’t all have admissions screens and of the ones that do, one school is an International schoool and simply takes kids who are ESL, one is a performing arts school and one is a school that takes transfer students who have not succeeded at their prior school. And none of them have what you would call a “no excuses” culture. They are actually on the progessive side of the ed spectrum with three of the 4 high schools being members of the Coalition of Essential schools.
The reason the building breakups failed is because they were done without adequate planning and more importantly, the small schools replacing the large ones were no better. Michelle Fine called them “big schools in drag.” If the DOE had followed the model of The Julia Richman Education Complex, which 20 years later is a very successful place That complex was designed and is run by. committedthe lifelong educators who had afollowed vision of what theI schools andin the building-
To continie:
The difference with JREC is that actual educators rather than DOE folks managed to control the conversion process to a great extent. Gates under Vander Ark used to traipse through the building with some regularity, but unfortunately never learned the lessons of what made the building and the schools in it successful.
I’m not arguing against having small schools in the mix of the New York City school system. But if you want to have a small school that works, then build a small school.
When I first went to high school I attended a triple session over-enrolled facility.
I hated it.
I was fortunate to have parents who recognized that my education experience needed modification and they had the means to enroll me in a small private school.
I loved it. Classes never exceeded 18 students. You received all the attention you needed from your teachers.
But simply dividing old comprehensive high schools into small schools that enroll high risk, low performing students in classes that are at the maximum enrollment level of 34 per class achieves nothing.
You wind up with limited course offerings, an overabundance of administrators, and safety problems that multiply because no one knows who everybody is and where they belong.
I just got off the phone with my colleague and union representative at my old school, Jamaica HS. He told me that three school safety officers had to be taken to the hospital for medical treatment after breaking up a fight at one of the small schools located in the old Jamaica HS facility.
It’s now called the Jamaica Campus. Some campus! In all my years in that building with essentially the same demographic, we never had that kind of incident.