Small High School Research Articles

Consider creating transition program for new students with disabilities

For some students with disabilities, the transition to ­college represents a significant challenge. Some students move from a small high school where the staff knew them and their peer group was limited to a large university where they are anonymous and their class contains thousands of other students. Many students haven’t yet ­developed self‐advocacy skills. They may lack academic skills, too. Some have never stayed away from home overnight.

Consider creating a transition program for new students

For some students with disabilities, the transition to college represents a ­significant challenge. Some move from a small high school where the staff knew them and the peer group was limited to a large university where they are anonymous and their class contains thousands of other students. Many students have not yet developed self‐advocacy skills. They may lack academic skills, too. Some have never stayed away from home overnight.

The impact of external resources on the development of an indigenous school in rural areas: Taking a junior high school in Taiwan as an example

The UN SDGs presented a vision for sustainability and the reduction of inequality within a country. The Taiwanese government uses many external resources to develop rural education. This study was conducted in a small public junior high school in a remote indigenous community in central Taiwan. Due to the economic downturn, the population in the indigenous community is outflowing, and the number of students is decreasing. With external resources, such as the Project of Female Science and Technology Talent Development from the Ministry of Science and Technology in Taiwan and other plans, this study introduces a full-time researcher as a teacher to promote science education in the research school. Implementing the projects improves students' academic performance and encourages students to participate in science competitions and achieve success. This study explores first the impact of the school's implementation of the Ministry of Science and Technology program on the development of the school; second, the results of the development of the school-based curriculum; and finally, it quantifies the statistics of the students' changes in the National High School Entrance Examination results. The impact of external resources on school development is determined by analyzing the performance of the participating students. This study finds that the Ministry of Science and Technology program plays an essential role in the development of the school, providing a key platform for teachers' growth, enriching school funding, developing featured courses, and encouraging students' performance. External resources have significantly improved students' results on the National Examination and facilitated students' motivation to learn science.

The Impact of Public School Choice: Evidence from Los Angeles’s Zones of Choice

Abstract Does a school district that expands school choice provide better outcomes for students than a neighborhood-based assignment system? This article studies the Zones of Choice (ZOC) program, a school choice initiative of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) that created small high school markets in some neighborhoods but left attendance zone boundaries in place throughout the rest of the district. We study market-level effects of choice on student achievement and college enrollment using a difference-in-differences design. Student outcomes in ZOC markets increased markedly, narrowing achievement and college enrollment gaps between ZOC neighborhoods and the rest of the district. The effects of ZOC are larger for schools exposed to more competition, supporting the notion that competition is a key channel. Demand estimates suggest families place substantial weight on schools’ academic quality, providing schools with competition-induced incentives to improve their effectiveness. The evidence demonstrates that public school choice programs have the potential to improve school quality and reduce neighborhood-based disparities in educational opportunity.

Gender Identity Within the Prisoner's Dilemma

Understanding all sorts of factors that play into social and moral dilemmas such as the prisoner’s dilemma is necessary to understand decision making on all fronts. These dilemmas are manifestations of many decisions from every day (deciding what to eat for dinner) to life-changing (a nuclear war treaty). To identify if there is a link between gender identity and levels of cooperation and the expectations of a partner in the prisoner’s dilemma, this study uses quantitative data collected from high school students taking the AP English Language and Composition course at a small high school in the midwestern United States. Using a game-like replication of the prisoner’s dilemma using point values instead of jail time, this study examines the relationship between gender and the decision of an individual to either “share the points” (cooperate) or “steal the points” (defect) in two environments, one with face-to-face interaction with partners and another with total anonymity. This study also tests the relationship between the gender of the assigned partner and the decision of an individual to “share” or “steal” in the environment of face-to-face interaction. The study shows that females have significantly higher rates of cooperation in both environments (with interaction and without) and that players have a significantly higher rate of cooperation when partnered with a female player.

Do small high schools affect rates of risky health behaviors and poor mental health among low-income teenagers? Evidence from New York city

ABSTRACT We evaluate the impacts of small high schools on youth risky behaviors and mental health in New York City, using a two-sample-instrumental-variable approach to address endogenous school enrollment. We find heterogeneous effects. School size, overall, has little effect. Among students most likely to attend small schools opened after an educational-achievement-oriented reform, however, diagnoses of violence-associated injuries and mental health disorders increased. Among students most likely to attend traditional small schools opened prior to the reform, pregnancy rates and diagnoses of mental health disorders declined. School focus is more important than school size as a determinant of student well-being outcomes.

A Pioneer in Caribbean History: Franklin Knight Reflects on Cuba

Lillian: Let's start with you telling a little about yourself.Franklin: I was born in 1942 in Jamaica. I went to elementary school, of course, and took the mandatory “Eleven-Plus” general examination in 1953. I then left elementary school and for a year attended a small private high school with my two older brothers. The school system was a little different from the United States. I know that well, because when I came here and told a group of Wisconsin school kids that I had spent six years in high school, they said, “You must have been very dumb.” To which I replied that “that was not the opinion of my teachers.” I didn't realize then that in the United States students spend four years in high school. In Jamaica we spend six, combining middle and high school years. You get in at age 12 or 13 and graduate at 18 or 19.

Effect of RISE Bundle implementation on school adoption of a student-centered return-to-learn program in Washington state.

Appropriate concussion care in school is vital for full recovery, but school return-to-learn (RTL) programs are lacking and vary in quality. Establishing student-centered RTL programs may reduce disparities in RTL care. To examine the effect of RISE Bundle (Return to Learn Implementation Bundle for Schools) implementation on high school adoption of a student-centered RTL program. A convenience sample of fourteen (4 rural and 10 urban) small and large Washington (WA) State public high schools were enrolled in a stepped-wedge study with baseline, end of study, and monthly measures over the 2021-2022 academic year. Schools identified an RTL champion who led RISE Bundle implementation in 6-week steps. Concussion knowledge and impact of RTL program on concussion care were examined. Ten schools (71.4%) successfully completed RISE Bundle implementation and established a functional RTL program. Self-reported concussion knowledge from RTL Champions increased post intervention. Establishing RTL programs facilitated provision of tailored accommodations, and perceived variation and inequities in RTL care were reduced. RISE Bundle implementation proved feasible, supported the establishment of a functional RTL program, and perceived to reduce disparities in concussion care in rural and urban WA State public high schools of varying sizes.

소규모학교의 고교학점제에 대한 교원 및 전문가 인식 분석

Objectives This study attempted to explore the effective operation plan of the high school credit system in small schools through in-depth interviews with teachers and experts on the difficulty of operating the high school credit system in small schools by G Office of Education following the introduction of the high school credit system.
 Methods To this end, 1st to 9th in-depth interviews (May 2022 to September 2022) were conducted with teachers in charge of the high school credit system in small schools and professional education staff in charge (regional offices and provincial offices of education). In the first interview, the content of the interview between the person in charge of the high school credit system in a small school and the participants in the inter-school joint curriculum was intensively discussed. In the ninth interview, cases of joint education courses between local unit schools were discussed, and the interview materials were recorded and transcribed.
 Results G Through interview analysis on small school high school credit system operation cases, (1) course application and opening, (2) teacher supply and demand, (3) work increase, (4) academic schedule adjustment and travel distance between schools, (5) Opinions were identified in six aspects, including the use of school facilities and local resources, the formation of consensus, and the shift in perception. In addition, implications were derived by analyzing the current status of high school credit system operation in small schools, cases of joint curriculum operation between schools, demand for vitalization of joint curriculum between small schools, and demand operation model for vitalization of joint curriculum between small schools.
 Conclusions First, regional consultative bodies should be activated so that communication between teachers centered on the Office of Education becomes routine beyond exchanges at the level of current subject research associations in the region. Second, it is urgent to establish a human resource pool using external instructors and improve the stable supply of teachers. Third, the school work organization for the operation of the high school credit system must be reformed. Fourth, the principle of adequacy of the teacher's workload should be applied.

Exploring Place-Based Pedagogy as Entrepreneurship Accelerator

This paper proposes a framework to create a small business and entrepreneurship accelerator designed based on prior work in evolving traditional place-based pedagogy to a more critical pedagogy of place. The proposal is crafted to utilize the built-in resources of a university as the core components in providing necessary resources for success including expert-level technical assistance and a safe, empowering third space for collaboration. The included case is focused on a suburban/urban campus located near several historically underserved geographies. This is important as the proposed small business and entrepreneurship accelerator will have a special focus on educating and guiding local populations – including high school students – in growing their businesses. The proposal in this paper brings together university resources, local community elements, small business owners, social entrepreneurs, and high school students by activating a critical pedagogy of place rooted in improving economic and social issues.

Former scholastic athletes perceptions of sport-based personal development: A 50 year retrospective case study

This investigation was designed to explore sport-related personal development of former high school athletes and to understand the perceived influence of their high school sport experience on their lives over five decades. A retrospective case study design was employed with nine former male varsity athletes from the same small town high school representing a variety of sports in the 1968–1969 scholastic sport season. Findings revealed that scholastic sport experience was perceived to contribute to (1) learning the value of “me” (e.g., developed individual achievement skills like hard work, time management, self-regulation) and (2) learning the value of “we” (e.g., group/team understanding and interpersonal skill development such as understanding roles and teamwork). While some unique personal development characteristics were felt to be learned through sport, the majority were perceived to be established by the athletes’ families and reinforced and further developed via sport participation. Lay Summary: Sport-related personal development of former high school athletes was studied via interviews for the purpose of understanding the perceived influence of the high school sport experience on former participants across their lives. Respondents reported that they (1) learned the value of “me” (e.g., time management, self-regulation) and (2) learning the value of “we” (e.g., group/team understanding, teamwork) via their sport experience with 8 of the 9 respondents indicating that these transferred to their adult lives. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE Coaches must make efforts to become aware of the psychosocial attributes their athletes bring to the sport context. Former athletes clearly remember specific sport experiences and coaching actions that they believe are tied to psychosocial development over five decades after they happened emphasizing the importance of coaches being aware of their attitudes and behaviors toward their athletes.

PH Professional Network: From Patient to Provider: How My Diagnosis Makes Me a Better Nurse

PH Professional Network: From Patient to Provider: How My Diagnosis Makes Me a Better Nurse

The Columbus Linguistics in High School experience: Fits and starts as a prelude to success

We report here on our efforts to incorporate linguistics into the high school curriculum in a large midwestern metropolitan area through a university-based initiative — Linguistics in High School (LxHS) — spearheaded by the Department of Linguistics at The Ohio State University. We offer a brief history of the project, and explain our strategy of targeting non-public schools and the practical nature of the reasoning behind this decision. We chronicle the ups and downs of our efforts, ultimately reporting on our success with implementing a linguistics course and a linguistics club at a small local STEM-oriented high school. This partnership between the school and the Linguistics Department has allowed, among other things, for on-site visits by the students to phonetics and sociolinguistics labs. By presenting our challenges, strategies, failures, and successes, we hope that others may be encouraged to evaluate how they can make a difference in their locale and with the resources they have.

The Impacts of Neighborhood School Choice: Evidence from Los Angeles' Zones of Choice

This paper evaluates the Zones of Choice (ZOC) program in Los Angeles, a school choice initiative that created small high school markets in some neighborhoods but left traditional attendance zone boundaries in place throughout the rest of the district. We study the impacts of the ZOC program on student achievement and college enrollment using a matched difference-in-differences design that compares changes in outcomes for ZOC schools and demographically similar non-ZOC schools. Our findings reveal that the ZOC program boosted student outcomes markedly, closing achievement and college enrollment gaps between ZOC neighborhoods and the rest of the district. These gains are explained by general improvements in school effectiveness rather than changes in student match quality, and school-specific gains are concentrated among the lowest-performing schools. We interpret these findings through the lens of a model of school demand in which schools exert costly effort to improve quality. The model allows us to measure the increase in competition facing each ZOC school based on household preferences and the spatial distribution of schools. We demonstrate that the effects of ZOC were larger for schools exposed to more competition, supporting the notion that competition is a key channel driving the impacts of ZOC. Demand estimates derived from rank-ordered preference lists suggest families place substantial weight on schools' academic quality, providing schools competitive incentives to improve their effectiveness. An analysis using randomized admission lotteries shows that the treatment effects of admission to preferred schools declined after the introduction of ZOC, a pattern that is explained by the relative improvements of less-preferred schools. Our findings demonstrate the potential for public school choice to improve student outcomes while also underscoring the importance of studying market-level impacts when evaluating school choice programs.

Implementing Technology: Measuring Student Cognitive Engagement

In an effort provide access to devices and prepare students for the future, a small rural high school committed to becoming a high-tech school. However, data collected using the IPI-T process suggested teachers were typically the users of the technology, students were often disengaged, and teachers were asking students to participate in lower-order surface activities. Missing from the process was the implementation of the faculty collaborative sessions. The year after the initial rollout of the devices, IPI-T data was collected three times. Additionally, faculty collaborative sessions were planned and facilitated within one week of collection data. Participating in each faculty collaborative session, teachers (a) became familiar with the IPI-T Rubric and Protocols, (b) analyzed and discussed the data, (c) identified high-quality examples of student learning that foster student engagement with technology, (d) designed high-quality lessons that foster student engagement with technology, (e) compared longitudinal data and set goals for future data collection using the IPI-T tool. An analysis of the data revealed when implementing the IPI-T process with fidelity teacher and student technology use increased as did student cognitive engagement when using technology. In addition, it was found that students use technology for information searches the majority of the time rather than media development or to collaborate among peers for example, which is associated with higher-levels of cognitive engagement.

Maintaining Balance.

Writing this biography forced me to look back over my career as a scientist, teacher, wife, and mother. To my surprise, a lifelong theme emerged that I was unaware of, that is, the role of maintaining balance between work and family, science and teaching, mentorship and administration, and personal values and challenges. My primary mentor, Dr. Doris Calloway, demonstrated the importance of maintaining balance. My interest in nutrition started as a preschooler living on a farm where I learned firsthand the importance of balancing the expense of providing good nutrition to the livestock with potential income. In our small high school, I became acquainted with the fascinating field of chemistry, but found it critical to balance that interest with a politically correct field of study for a woman in the early 1960s. I chose dietetics for its strong roots in chemistry. As a US Army dietitian, I learned firsthand how to conduct metabolic studies and knew, immediately, that I had to balance that interest with future opportunities feasible for a dietitian. I chose the University of California, Berkeley, for my PhD because it needed to train dietitians in research to balance an emerging need to offer undergraduates a practicum in dietetics. My subsequent faculty appointment there enabled me to develop novel isotopic approaches for studying zinc and prenatal nutrition, and balance my research with teaching and administrative responsibilities. During the next 40 years, my work as a Berkeley professor led to appointments at the Western Human Nutrition Research Center and Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute, while balancing my responsibilities as a wife and a mother to my two sons. Balance is defined as a condition in which different elements are equal or in the correct proportions. It is extremely satisfying to look back and see evidence of successfully balancing the disparate elements of my career.

Transformative childhood studies – a remix in inquiry, justice, and love

ABSTRACTThe meaning of justice is never pre-given. In this manuscript, I suggest that childhood studies scholars look critically at what justice means and what it would entail for differently positioned children, youth, and communities. I map out a concept and praxis of transformative childhood studies (TCS) which involves a remix in transformative justice, childhood studies scholarship, and feminist methodology. Transformative justice (TJ) calls attention to state violence and oppression, which must be healed, not restored – so that society can be actively transformed. I draw upon specific examples from six years of fieldwork in a small high school in Camden, NJ. I argue how critical reflexivity and institutional support for bridging and placemaking can assist childhood studies scholars to engage in deeper and more mutually informed relationships with youth participants, communities, and justice movements.

The Experiential-Learning Track: Career Exploration, Student Interest, & Applied Classroom-Learning in Small Rural Junior-Senior High Schools

The Experiential-Learning Track: Career Exploration, Student Interest, & Applied Classroom-Learning in Small Rural Junior-Senior High Schools

Does High School Size Matter for Risky Behaviors and Mental Health of Low-Income Teenagers? Evidence from New York City

We evaluate the impacts of small high schools on youth risky behaviors and mental health in New York City, using rich student-level administrative and survey datasets and Medicaid claim data. We use distance between student residence and school to instrument for endogenous school enrollment, using a two-sample-instrumental-variable approach that combines enrollment information from the educational administrative data with information on outcomes from the Medicaid claim data. We find that girls enrolled in old small schools (opened before 2003) are less likely to get pregnant before age 18 or to be diagnosed with substance use disorders between age 15-18. Boys in old small schools are less likely to be diagnosed with mental and substance use disorders. By contrast, we find that enrollment in more recently opened small schools increases the likelihood of violence, for both girls and boys, and the likelihood of mental disorder diagnoses for girls. Utilization of contraception treatment and access to school-based health facilities do not explain the findings. A close look at school characteristics suggests that the higher per student expenditures and lower student-teacher ratios in older small schools may contribute to the finding that they improve health outcomes. Conversely, lower teacher quality and higher probability of co-location with large schools in newly-opened small schools may explain their relatively poor performance. These results indicate that improving a package of both schooling organization and inputs is likely more effective than reducing school size alone in addressing youth risky behaviors.

Marginalized Urban Indigenous Youth and the Virtual World of Second Life: Understanding the Past and Building a Hopeful Future

A small independent high school in the Canadian West is using the affordances of the virtual world of Second Life to explore and reconstruct the colonial past of their students: marginalized urban Indigenous youth. The affordances of the virtual world make it possible to reconstruct the past, deconstruct the present and create a possible hope-filled future. This process is underpinned by pedagogies of engagement and emancipation on three virtual islands (sims) in the virtual world. The past was reconstructed and can be deconstructed on the Negan Tapeh sim. Negan Tapeh is a Cree phrase meaning “look to the future.” When the activities and quests associated with exploring and understanding the events of the past and their impact on the present are complete, participants are transported to the virtual present on the Boyle Street sim.Boyle Street is an inner-city area in Edmonton, Alberta, where most of the youth live or gravitate to. In Canada and the United States, inner city areas have historically been synonymous with depressed and run-down parts of the city where petty crime, violence and substance abuse are woven into the fabric of daily life. On Boyle Street, the youth are tasked with completing assignments (quests or hunts) distributed by teachers (scripted agents) in the sim’s Boyle Street High School. When the three quests are completed, participants receive their key to the future. The future unfolds on the third sim Urban Hope.This paper underlines the importance of the virtual world in educational projects with marginalized youth.