The Power of Their Ideas: Lessons for America from a Small School in Harlem.

Abstract

The Power of Their Ideas: Lessons for America from a Small School in Harlem, by Deborah Meier. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995. 190 pp. $12.00, paper. Reviewed by Herbert J. Walberg, The University of Illinois at Chicago. From 1940 to 1990, the number of public school districts in the United States declined from 117,108 to 15,367 while the average number of students enrolled in them rose more than 10 times, from 217 to 2,637. During this same half century, the number of schools in these larger districts declined from approximately 200,000 to 62,037 while their average enrollments rose from 127 to 653 (Walberg & Walberg, 1994). Notwithstanding, a huge and increasing amount of research suggests that, other things being equal, students achieve more in smaller districts and smaller schools (Walberg & Walberg, 1994). Yet, big city school systems cannot easily be broken up and it would cost too much to replace the larger schools within them with more intimate buildings. Thus, at least for the time being, school districts are stuck with facilities whose large size has been shown to contribute, to some extent, to the failure of large numbers of students. New York City, with about 900,000 students and nearly a thousand schools, is home to our nation's biggest school system. Yet it is within one high-poverty and majority minority district of this mammoth entity that much of the work of developing and refining a more intimate educational setting has taken place. Indeed, the author of this book and the staff of the four innovative public schools she established in New York City's Central Park East District 4 can take much of the credit for the school-within-aschool concept of separate, smaller schools of choice with distinct identities, staffing, and students housed within larger school buildings. This work-which is part autobiography, part excerpts from personal diaries, and part reworked essays published elsewhere-presents Meier's own story and educational philosophy as much as it reveals the nature and extent of the educational reform that has occurred within her East Harlem schools. Describing herself as the product of a private progressive school, Meier repeatedly iterates her faith in the potential of public education while delineating a pattern of failure in big city schools and in the involvement of urban parents in their children's education. She nonetheless maintains, however, that the schools where she has labored as a principal, teacher, and educational reformer for the past 21 years show that it is possible to break that pattern. These schools, Meier claims, follow the tradition of many of New York's private schools by challenging the low and trivial expectations of students held by teachers, parents, and administrators of most urban public schools. She describes in this book many of the activities that have taken place within the Central Park East schools, identifying as key elements their small size, smaller student bodies, emphases on cooperative learning and curriculum integration, longer class periods (one or more hours) and full-length advisory periods as well as the on-site decision making that takes place at the schools and the intensive parental involvement they demand. According to Meier: Each of the four schools offers a rich and interesting curriculum full of powerful ideas and experiences aimed at inspiring its students with the desire to know more, [and] a curriculum that sustains students' natural drive to make sense of the world and trusts in their capacity to have an impact upon it. (p. 16) But have the Central Park East schools really been successful? Then, if they have, what factors or conditions have contributed to that success? Can these elements be successfully implemented beyond the District 4 community? These are the big questions most educators would like to see answered. Although Meier provides in this book some statistics on dropout and college attendance rates showing that her Central Park East students fare better than their peers in many other New York City public schools, she can cite no studies using control groups of strictly comparable students to substantiate her claims because no such studies have been done to date. …