Small High School Research Articles

Competitive Foods in Schools: Availability and Purchasing in Predominately Rural Small and Large High Schools

ObjectivesSchools have an important role to play in obesity prevention, but little is known about the food environment in small, predominately rural schools. The primary purpose of this study was to compare the availability and student purchasing of foods sold outside of the reimbursable meals program through à la carte or vending (ie, competitive foods) in small (n=7) and large (n=6) Kansas high schools. MethodsA cross-sectional observational study design was used to capture the number of à la carte and vending items available and purchased, and the fat and energy content of all available and purchased items on a single school day between January and May 2005. ResultsSmall schools had significantly fewer vending machines than large schools (median 3.0 [range 2.0 to 5.0] vs 6.5 [range 4.0 to 8.0], P<0.01]. Vending and à la carte items at small schools contained a median of 2.3 fewer fat grams per item (P≤0.05), whereas vending products contained a median of 25 kcal fewer per item (P≤0.05) than at large schools. Significantly less fat (median −15.4 g/student) and less energy (median −306.8 kcal/student) were purchased per student from all competitive food sources and from à la carte (median −12.9 g fat and −323.3 kcal/student) by students in small schools compared to students in large schools (P≤0.05). ConclusionsThe findings, which highlight less availability and lower energy content from competitive foods at small compared to large schools, have implications for understanding how small schools support their foodservice programs with limited dependence on competitive foods and the influence that food and nutrition professionals can have on school environments by providing more oversight into the nutritional quality of foods available.

Mission matters: The cost of small high schools revisited

With the financial support of several large foundations and the federal government, creating small schools has become a prominent high school reform strategy in many large American cities. While some research supports this strategy, little research assesses the relative costs of these smaller schools. We use data on over 200 New York City high schools, from 1996 through 2003, to estimate school cost functions relating per pupil expenditures to school size, controlling for school output and quality, student characteristics, and school organization. We find that the structure of costs differs across schools depending upon mission—comprehensive or themed. At their current levels of outputs, themed schools minimize per pupil costs at smaller enrollments than comprehensive schools, but these optimally sized themed schools also cost more per pupil than optimally sized comprehensive schools. We also find that both themed and comprehensive high schools at actual sizes are smaller than their optimal sizes.

Big School, Small School: (Re)Testing Assumptions about High School Size, School Engagement and Mathematics Achievement

In an effort to increase both adolescents' engagement with school and academic achievement, school districts across the United States have created small high schools. However, despite the widespread adoption of size reduction reforms, relatively little is known about the relationship between size, engagement and outcomes in high school. In response, this article employs a composite measure of engagement that combines organizational, sociological, and psychological theories. We use this composite measure with the most recent nationally-representative dataset of tenth graders, Educational Longitudinal Study: 2002, (N = 10,946, 46% female) to better assess a generalizable relationship among school engagement, mathematics achievement and school size with specific focus on cohort size. Findings confirm these measures to be highly related to student engagement. Furthermore, results derived from multilevel regression analysis indicate that, as with school size, moderately sized cohorts or grade-level groups provide the greatest engagement advantage for all students and that there are potentially harmful changes when cohorts grow beyond 400 students. However, it is important to note that each group size affects different students differently, eliminating the ability to prescribe an ideal cohort or school size.

The Impact of High School Size on Math Achievement and Dropout Rate

The study explores the ways in which school size influences two important student outcomes commonly used in school effects research: growth in mathematics achievement and dropout rate. Past research suggests that smaller high schools can lead to increased benefits for students. In this study, multilevel analytic models of the first two waves of the Educational Longitudinal Study (ELS) of 2002 are used to better understand mediating factors in the small school size effect. Results support the benefits of smaller schools: students in smaller schools were less likely to drop out than their counterparts in large high schools. The relationship between high school size and math gain, however, is curvilinear; students attending very small (&lt; 674) or very large (&gt; 2592) schools have the largest math gains, while students in schools with intermediate enrollment sizes demonstrated smaller math gains. Implications for school size decision making are discussed in light of these results.

Supporting Classroom Assessment Practice: Lessons From a Small High School

Assessment, particularly formative assessment, is critical to knowing how a student is performing academically and how best to support that student. Teachers, especially new teachers, need ongoing support in developing and using both summative and formative assessments as an integral part of their instructional practice. Written collaboratively by a researcher, school coach, and teacher, this article offers a framework for developing and improving assessments. It examines how a small urban high school focused on improving assessments across the curriculum. It describes how the teacher, working with the school coach, developed his assessment practice, especially of students' writing, and how work with teachers is connected to a schoolwide staff development program. Consistent with the authors' framework for developing classroom assessments, the staff development program makes teachers' assessments public in order to share promising practices and support reflection. The article argues for a comprehensive, ongoing, multilevel approach to developing classroom assessment practice.

Wounded Healing: Forming a Storytelling Community in Hip-Hop Lit

Background/ContextOver the past 5 years, there has been a growing body of scholarship that examines the intersections of hip-hop culture and classroom pedagogy. Although recent scholarship has persuasively demonstrated the classroom potential of hip-hop texts for promoting student engagement, scaffolding sanctioned forms of knowledge, and nurturing critical consciousness and activism, little work has been done to unpack the complex relations of power that emerge in such classrooms. In particular, we know very little about the ways in which students and teachers are (re)positioned within classrooms that engage in hip-hop-centered pedagogy. This article contributes to the current literature in hip-hop based education, culturally relevant pedagogy, and critical pedagogy by examining the some of the issues and tensions that emerge when teachers engage in hip-hop-centered classroom pedagogy.Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of StudyThis study details how the articulation of personal narratives within Hip-Hop Lit, a hip-hop-centered high school English literature course, produced a practice of “wounded healing,” in which people bearing the scars of suffering shared their stories in ways that provided a form of release and relief for themselves and others. This article highlights the complex relationships that students forged with the course's hip-hop texts, many of which resonated with their own lived experiences. I then illustrate how these relationships enabled the classroom discussions and interactions from which the practices of wounded healing emerged. Finally, I highlight some of the dilemmas and tensions that emerged as my coteacher and I attempted to privilege the stories and experiences of our students and ourselves within the classroom.SettingData for this study were collected at “Howard High School,” a small comprehensive urban high school in the northeastern United States.Research DesignData for this 1-year ethnography were collected using field notes, formal and informal interviews, document analysis, and video data.Conclusions/RecommendationsThis article shows how Hip-Hop Lit operated as a space in which members offered and responded to various types of individual and group narratives through the practice of “wounded healing.” Through this practice, students were able to recognize the commonality of their experiences, challenge various ideologies, and produce new knowledge. In doing this, the members of the class forged a cohesive community replete with multiple roles and relations of power. This article points to the need for critically interrogating the ostensible virtues of hip-hop-based education, as well as critical and culturally relevant pedagogies more broadly. This article also underscores the need for more ethnographic research that unpacks the complexities, contours, and contradictions of curricula, and pedagogy that responds to the lived experiences of students.

“These are Our Children!” An Examination of Relationship-Building Practices in Urban High Schools

This article examines a recent reform effort that has opened hundreds of small high schools in poor urban communities in New York City, The New Century Schools Initiative (NCSI). Founders hoped that the small schools strategy would create personalized environments where relationships could develop between teachers and students, leading to improved outcomes for poor students and students of color. Looking at three of the NCSI high schools in the Bronx, this ethnographic study reveals that small schools size does not always lead to relationship-building between teachers and students. Teachers need support and training which is currently missing from NCSI’s theory of action. The study suggests that NCSI can be strengthened with incentives and support for teachers to develop relationships with their students.

Who cares if small high school auditoria sound any “good” for music?

High school music instructors, high school music students, and acoustical consultants certainly care if their auditoria sound good for music, but not all high school districts or architects appear to be all that interested. Examples of some recently completed small high school (multipurpose) auditoria are presented. Some of these have not proven particularly satisfactory for music, and (thankfully) some have. Basic programming and design criteria to achieve satisfactory music performance and listening environments in small mulitpurpose auditoria are suggested.

Contrasting Paths to Small-School Reform: Results of a 5-year Evaluation of the Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation's National High Schools Initiative

Background/Context In 2000, the Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation began an ambitious initiative intended to catalyze the fundamental transformation of American high schools. This article summarizes the results of a 5-year national evaluation of the first stage of the foundation's initiative. Purpose/Objective This article focuses on two contrasting strategies to small-school reform: starting new small high schools, and converting large schools into smaller learning communities. For each strategy, it reports on the progress of the reform in its first several years, student outcomes, and key implementation factors that shape progress and outcomes for startup and conversion schools. Research Design The evaluation summarized in this article used a mixed-methods design. Data and analyses in this article come from surveys of teachers, students, and school leaders; case study site visits that collected a range of qualitative data; the collection and analysis of teacher assignments and student work; and district records of attendance and achievement. Findings/Results Results show that although both strategies have the potential to promote learning environments that are more personalized and that encourage students to work to higher standards, start-up schools in their first several years showed positive results in terms of attendance and some indication of student achievement gains, whereas these outcomes did not emerge for conversion schools during the timeframe of the study. Conclusions/Recommendations Results reported by the evaluation must be taken in the context of the typically slow pace of significant educational reform. Despite the many tasks facing start-up schools in their first 3 years and the challenges posed by limited budgets and incompatibilities with district systems, these schools were quickly able to establish strong and supportive school climates without apparent compromise to student academic achievement. Conversion school progress was slowed by an early focus on structural changes and the challenges of equitable reassignment of existing staff and students, with less initial clarity of vision for the learning environment or initial emphasis on instructional change. More evidence is needed concerning the long-term outcomes for students in these schools and the feasibility of creating small schools at scale, and therefore the degree to which either strategy is likely to support the ultimate goal of promoting educational excellence and equity for all high schoolers.

Erasure and Survival: Creating a Future and Managing a past in a Restructuring High School

Background/Context With the growth of the small-school movement, many urban districts have restructured large underperforming high schools into new, small high schools or schools-within-a-school designed to engage adolescents in rigorous and meaningful learning along with strong teacher-student relationships. In the case of this study, the culmination of state and city school system regulation and support, the involvement of the teachers union and persistent community demands led to the closing of this comprehensive high school. Known for its persistent academic failure, it was reopened as a complex of several new schools and a phaseout school to better serve this multiracial, predominantly Latino, poor and working-class community. Focus of Study The study findings focus on the multiple dimensions of small-school restructuring, underscoring the fragile balance between creating a future and managing a past in a newly restructured former comprehensive urban high school. Research Design This was a qualitative, ethnographic study examining the first year of school restructuring. Data Collection Primary data collection methods were semistructured interviews, participant observation, and archival study. We interviewed community leaders, school system officials, and 36 individuals from a representative sample of teachers and parents. Additionally, we conducted six student focus groups. Findings and Conclusions Extending the literature on small schools, reconstitution, and organizational change, this study provides a close look at the dilemmas of the opening year of a restructuring high school. Noting how frequent acts of erasure were employed in response to many first-year challenges, we link these acts of erasure to the fundamental desire on the part of schools to survive their first year. Key to the conceptualization of erasure is its relationship with the intent on survival. We note a contradiction evident in our conceptualization: Although we underscore the immense potential for educational change through the process of restructuring, we also suggest that these processes of erasure and survival have the potential to suppress the kind of conflict and turbulence often necessary for productive institutional transformation. The phenomenon of erasure in relation to survival has troubling implications for efforts to preserve a community's legacy of struggle and a history of resistance toward distant, often antagonistic, educational bureaucracies. The study poses questions about the use of school closure in current school accountability policy enactments and, more broadly, emphasizes the complexity of the school restructuring process.

Small High Schools on a Larger Scale: The Impact of School Conversions in Chicago

This study examines 4 years of small school reform in Chicago, focusing on schools formed by converting large traditional high schools into small autonomous ones. Analyzing systemwide survey and outcome data, the authors assess the assumptions embedded in the reform’s theory of change. They find that these schools are characterized by more collegial and committed teacher contexts and more academically and personally supportive student contexts. There is some evidence of decreased dropout rates and increased graduation rates for the first cohort of students but not for the second cohort. The authors do not find stronger instruction, nor do they find student achievement has improved. They discuss implications for reformers and policy makers who are interested in small schools in particular and high school reform in general.

Performance-Enhancing Technologies and the Values of Athletic Competition

For decades, the American criminal justice system has been engaged in a on that critics say cannot be won. enthusiasm for that war has been flagging for some time; a 1989 issue of the Quarterly (then called QQ) featured an article by Claudia Mills titled The War on Drugs: Is it Time to Surrender? In amateur and professional sports, however, the war on performance-enhancing drugs has been steadily escalating in recent years. Major doping scandals have roiled several sports, and drug testing has become ever more stringent. Yet at the time of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where concerns about doping were pervasive, a few voices called for surrender. Some commentators argued that the war on doping was futile, since the technological sophistication of the dopers would always outstrip, if only for a few critical weeks or months, the capacity to detect their work. Others, however, argued that even if the war could be won, it wouldn't be worth fighting. As John Tierney wrote in the New York Times, all know the body can be improved. We all know Olympic athletes have the highest-functioning bodies in the world. They can call themselves natural, just as they used to call themselves amateur, but at some point that claim may seem the most unnatural thing of all. To bolster his case, Tierney noted that the fans themselves include people laser-corrected eyes, chemically whitened teeth and surgically enhanced anatomies. Not to mention the pharmacopeia coursing through our veins. These are still minority opinions. Just a year before the Olympics began, Barry Bonds broke Hank Aaron's lifetime home run record to a chorus of denunciation from sports pundits for his reported steroid use. Several months later, that chorus grew even more strident with the release of the Mitchell Report on doping in professional baseball, which gave Bonds lots of company and his detractors a surfeit of new targets. Along with cycling, the subject of frequent scandals involving widespread steroid use, baseball has now submitted itself to an intensive regime of drug testing and monitoring. But even in the unlikely event that anti-doping measures are successful in their narrow objective of deterring illegal drug use, they are ill-equipped to deal with a wider range of biotechnological interventions, which may bring far more significant changes in the performance capabilities of athletes. Unlike steroids, whose possession is illegal and whose use is widely regarded as unhealthy, these new technologies, genetic modification in particular, may at some point become legal and safe. Also unlike steroids, these technologies won't all be intended to confer a competitive advantage. Some, like the prosthetic limbs of runner Oscar Pistorius, will be designed to restore function lost to disease or disability; others, especially genetic modifications, will be intended for more general enhancement purposes. And in some cases, such as germline genetic engineering, the interventions will be undertaken not by the athletes themselves, but by their parents. To ban such technologies would be to ban whole classes of athletes, including some who would be incapable of compliance and others who would not be responsible for their enhancements. Moreover, a ban on biotechnological enhancement would be hard to justify or maintain without a ban on other technological enhancements, like the performance-boosting swimsuits that predominated at the Beijing Olympics, and whose cost is bankrupting many small high school and college teams. attempt to distinguish forbidden from permitted modifications on the basis of their external or internal location, or their natural or artificial character, has proven a particularly futile exercise in casuistry. Rather than criticize recent efforts to make such distinctions, I will just observe that the continuing uncertainty about the grounds for distinguishing forbidden and permitted modifications is likely to undermine the moral authority and practical efficacy of any regulatory regime. …

Our Girls

Our Girls Alice McDermott (bio) Our girls are fair and witty. They take their vocabulary words seriously and say inexorable and obdurate in ordinary conversation. They sing—belted show tunes, bebop, Christmas songs, of late, or simply the nasal imitation of some popular hit that nevertheless strikes us (their mothers) as lovely, promising. You're as good as, we tell them. You're better than. As good as and better than we tell our girls, who play piano or field hockey, who sketch portraits and design clothes and speak French, who smile endlessly at the poor souls in the old folks home or the soup kitchen or the after school program for damaged kids. Our girls shop. They see every movie. They have boyfriends, and boys who are friends. They have lovely hair and straightened teeth and contact lenses, not glasses—except at night, at home, when their own languor and the soft pajama bottoms that drape their thin hips make glasses seem a sophisticated and lovely choice. They are sophisticated and lovely, our girls. Brilliant, we tell them. Talented, we tell them. And they are miserable, miserable, miserable. "How's Ellie?" Charlotte asks the girl's mother. Ellie of the pale skin and freckles and sturdy legs. Honor student, track star Ellie, namesake of the Eleanor, Queen of Aquitaine (adorable as a child to tell you the history of her patroness), dark hair with a royal wave to it and a sweet shy grin. "Off to college by now, I suppose." "Eleanor's doing better," comes the reply. "She should finish high school, finally, in the spring." After the depression and the addiction, Ellie's mother explains, and the truancy, and the flight to her father's apartment in another [End Page 363] city and now, finally, Zoloft and a small expensive high school where there are no more than seven in each class and talk therapy is on the curriculum. The two women share, sadly, their mutual surprise, both women recollecting what a fine student Eleanor had been, how smart and sure of herself, in sixth grade, in eighth grade. What happens to our girls, they wonder? What happened? Which well could be asked, Charlotte tells Ellie's mother (by way of commiserating) of pretty little Lizzie Nash, who was only a few years behind Eleanor in grammar school. "Do you remember Lizzie?" Face like an angel, blonde hair down her back. Sent to the best prep school where she flourished academically but took to pulling out her hair, not in single strands but in clumps. At first just in the back, underneath (Charlotte shows Eleanor's mother the back of her hairline, as Lizzie Nash's mother had shown Charlotte in the supermarket a week ago), but then at her temples and behind her ears until, finally, there were bare patches all over her head. Her parents thought it was some strange disease, something like whatever it was that other Princess, the one in Monaco, had suffered. But, no, they discovered, she was doing it herself. Which was a relief, in some ways, Lizzie's mother had said in the produce aisle, leaning on her cart. In some ways, it was even worse. A more specific disease, Lizzie Nash's mother had said, would have meant a more specific cure. "It's life," Eleanor's mother says now. "The stress. It hits the smart girls even harder." They are in the shopping mall, two weeks before Christmas. It's mid-morning and the place is filled with women. There are caravans of handsome young mothers pushing elaborate strollers that are loaded down like Hannibal's pachyderms with juice boxes and water bottles, diapers and baby wipes, Cheerios in zip lock bags. There are the mothers of school-aged children walking singly, determinedly, in the clothes they will wear to the gym, shopping bags slapping their [End Page 364] thighs. There are older mothers, like Charlotte, who have time to chat when they meet friends, who have mostly simple items on the lists in their hands, gloves or a scarf, a gift certificate or two, something for an elderly neighbor, something else for her own teenage daughter whose...

A New Approach in Meeting the Needs of Latinos in American Schools: Students’ Views on Attending a Redesigned Small High School

A New Approach in Meeting the Needs of Latinos in American Schools: Students’ Views on Attending a Redesigned Small High School

The Deracinated Self: Immigrants, Orphans, and the "Migratory Consciousness" of Willa Cather and Susan Glaspell

THE DERACINATED SELF: IMMIGRANTS, ORPHANS, AND THE "MIGRATORY CONSCIOUSNESS" OF WILLA CATHER AND SUSAN GLASPELL Martha C. Carpentier Seton Hall University On May 10, 1931, in the New York Times, Brooks Atkinson bewailed the awarding of the Pulitzer Prize to Susan Glaspell for her play Alison s House, performed by Eva Le Gallienne's repertory company . "Ifthe drama prize were for Miss Glaspell personally," he writes, "every one would purr with satisfaction. For nearly a quarter of a century she has been an influence for good in the literature of this country ." But Alison's House "does not represent her fairly" and Atkinson castigates the Pulitzer committee for "passing silently over 'Brook Evans,' the novel she published three years ago" which he calls "the finest transcript of her mind." This is reminiscent of another Midwestern woman writer who similarly won the Pulitzer Prize for a work that was not considered her best, One of Ours, and who similarly should have won it for a novel she had published four years previously , My Antonia. Indeed, Atkinson compares them: "Like Willa Cather, who also comes out of the Middle West, Miss Glaspell has been seeing life steadily and seeing it whole. . . . Those who come from that wide, freely populated territory, where farming is still a basic industry, are likely to have a breadth and tenderness of mind that is no longer common among Eastern writers."1 Situating their comparison in a common sense of place is appropriate for these writers, both of whom were deeply affected by the migration of their families from east to west; in Glaspell's case, not during her own lifetime as was the case with Cather, but during the waves of migration westward of the 1820s-1850s, first to Ohio and Kentucky and finally settling in Davenport, Iowa. Although Glaspell did not live through the westward migration herself, as her most recent biographer Linda Ben-Zvi has shown, her paternal grandmother and namesake, a "spinner of a mythology of pioneering," lived with the family throughout Glaspell's childhood and influenced her profoundly . Ben-Zvi writes that the word and concept that "remained constant" throughout her work on Glaspell was pioneer. "Pioneer . . . defines the direction of Glaspell's own life and the ways in which she continually pushed against fixed boundaries, assuming an independence that she saw as a legacy from her ancestors."2 But this is only the beginning of the remarkable parallels between the lives and work 132Martha C. Carpentier of Susan Glaspell and Willa Cather. Born three years apart, Cather in 1873 and Glaspell in 1876 (ironically , Cather claimed the centennial year for her birth while Glaspell disavowed it, dropping six years from her age), both of them became prototypical turn-of-the-century "New Women." Both were well versed in the classics and pursued academic university educations "at a time when less than two percent of American women attended college " (Ben-Zvi, viii). Cather was "excused from the 'first prep' year typically required ofstudents from small high schools"3 when she went to the University of Nebraska, while Glaspell entered Drake University in Des Moines as a junior, "waiving two years because of her Latin certificate" (Ben-Zvi, 35). Both took rigorous courses of study including Greek, Latin, French, and English literature, Cather graduating in 1895 and Glaspell in 1899. Both were involved while at college in literary, journalistic, and oratorical pursuits, publishing essays in their respective college journals, the Hesperian for Cather, and the Delphic for Glaspell. Both had significant careers in journalism that began very early: "just out of high school" Glaspell began contributing to the Davenport Morning Republican and published a weekly column, "Social Life," in the Weekly Outlook from 1896 to 1897, while Cather "was not yet twenty years old" when she began "doing a regular column for the Nebraska State Journal as well as miscellaneous reviews" (BenZvi , 30; Stout, 38). After graduation both women returned home where they continued working for newspapers to make money, Glaspell at the Des Moines Daily News, where she covered the state legislature and the murder trials that were to influence her work later on. For both writers journalism provided an important apprenticeship and...

Stability in Student and Teacher Characteristics in the First Ten Years: A Study of Small High Schools in New York City

Growing concern about the quality of public education in the United States has driven numerous educational reform efforts across the last three decades. These reforms include increased accountability as exemplified by No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the introduction of new curriculum and instructional methods in response to the standards movement, and the redesign of American public high schools, including an increased focus on small learning communities. Several national foundations and city school systems have invested considerable resources in reducing school size as a way to improve poorly performing schools and revitalize urban high school systems. But while research has shown that small high schools may facilitate the creation of positive learning environments, urban school systems face a host of challenges — such as the transience of teacher and student populations — that may influence the implementation of this reform. Indeed, changes in student or teacher populations may affect small high school environments more intensely than larger schools, because of the interpersonal and interdependent nature of small schools (Wasley et al, 2000). Because most studies of small high schools are conducted with data from only a few school years, little is known about whether transience is an issue for small high schools, and how changes in student and teacher demographics may impact small high school operations or school development over time. The New York University Institute for Education and Social Policy (IESP) conducted a two-year mixed methods study to explore the process and outcomes of small high school development in New York City over the past decade. We examine how school-level student and teacher populations change over time in small New York City public high schools, the organizational and instructional practices that contribute to positive small school learning environments, and how changes in these populations over time may influence school practices. The results from these analyses are available in the companion publication, The Effectiveness of Small High Schools, 1994-95 to 2003-04. The current report focuses specifically on how student and teacher populations at these new high schools change from year to year as they develop during their first ten years. We anticipate that our findings will have important implications for how new small urban high schools are established and supported, as well as for the development of mechanisms to help new small high schools achieve the necessary stability.

The Effectiveness of Small High Schools, 1994-95 to 2003-04

Growing concern about the quality of public education in the United States has driven numerous educational reform efforts across the last three decades, including the redesign of American public high schools and an increased focus on creating smaller schools and small learning communities. The New York University Institute for Education and Social Policy (IESP) has conducted mixed methods study to better understand the process of small school development over time and its relationship to student achievement. Specifically, we examine student and teacher demographic characteristics and student outcomes over time, and the organizational and instructional practices that contribute to positive learning environments in small schools. Our quantitative analyses indicate that, on average, small high schools in New York City attract less qualified teachers and serve student populations with greater needs than large high schools. Despite these apparent disadvantages, however, the small high schools in our sample had higher outcomes, as measured by graduation and dropout rates, compared to the citywide high school average. Our qualitative research showed that all small high schools are not the same. High-performing small schools showed cohesion of pedagogical and non-academic practices, such as instructional practices that embodied a shared pedagogical philosophy, the implementation of learning routines that focused students on academic work, and a consistent application of rules and procedures, not found in the low-performing small schools.

The Chemistry Merit Program: Reaching, Teaching, and Retaining Students in the Chemical Sciences

The Chemistry Merit Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana�Champaign directly responds to the challenge of having sufficient numbers of trained citizens in the science and technology sectors. The main objective of the program is to recruit and retain students in science-oriented curricula, particularly in the chemical sciences. Special importance is placed on recruiting underrepresented minorities, women, and students from small high schools. It is designed to support and encourage students in their studies of chemistry. This report describes how the Chemistry Merit Program has grown since its inception in 1993 and highlights some of its long-term and short-term successes in more detail.

Conspiracy Theory: Lessons for Leaders from Two Centuries of School Reform

If school leaders are to bring about successful reform, they must thwart the forces that have conspired against it since the 19th century. Mr. Nehring identifies six conspirators--destructive tendencies so deeply embedded in our culture that they often operate unnoticed--and offers practical suggestions for rooting them out. ********** GENERALLY, I am not an alarmist, but my research into the history of American school reform has led me to believe that there is something of a conspiracy against thoughtful schooling that is deeply embedded in our culture. I have come to believe also that by understanding the sources of this conspiracy, we might marshal the resources necessary to create and sustain thoughtful schools. During my years as an educator, I have been fortunate to work in a leadership role in the start-up of three small public high schools. These experiences have given me a front-row seat in the theater of school reform. I have also spoken with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of like-minded school reformers about our related efforts, and what strikes me is how similar the challenges are across demographics and across geographic locales. And so, I have been led to ask, What is the source, the common source, of all these challenges? In recent years I have gone after this question in a focused way through research that blends history and contemporary experience. Driven by a hunch that these common challenges to thoughtful school practice are culturally embedded, I have attempted to connect the dots between the problems faced by school reformers today and the problems faced by school reformers fifty, a hundred, and even two hundred years ago. If the same problems that we face today surface across the historical record, then it's reasonable to conclude that they are somehow embedded in the culture. In exploring carefully selected cases of school reformers from the 19th and 20th centuries and comparing their experiences with contemporary efforts, I have come across several themes. From these themes and from the experiences of school reformers across generations, I have developed some practical strategies for school leaders as we face these cultural conspirators in our own schools and districts. Before moving on to the conspirators themselves, of which there are six, let me explain why I use the term conspirator. Okay, it's catchy, I admit. But beyond that, these culturally embedded tendencies, like conspirators, are hidden in plain sight. You will probably not be surprised by them when you see what they are. You will surely recognize most, if not all, of them. And yet, despite their visibility, we tend to look right past them without recognizing their destructive impact on our schools. A second reason that the term applies is that, like conspirators everywhere, these tendencies work together--in this case, to tear good schools apart. Their combined impact is much greater than their individual effect. A third and final reason is that, once we're aware of the identity of the conspirators, we will probably conclude, as all good conspiracy theorists do, They're everywhere! Kidding aside, it is important to understand that these tendencies, because they are culturally rooted, can surface anywhere in our school practice. To the extent that we are products of our own culture, they reside in our own hearts and minds. Whenever we are inclined to point out these tendencies in others with whom we work, we would do well to ask where we find these same traits in ourselves. On to the conspirators. I have identified six that appear in both historical and contemporary records. As you learn about each one, consider the places in your own school setting where you see it at work. After identifying all six conspirators, we will examine the experiences of two representative school reformers from an earlier generation and consider some practical lessons for school leaders today. …

High Schools on a Human Scale: How Small Schools Can Transform American Education

707 Children, Youth and Environments Vol. 17 No. 2 (2007) ISSN: 1546-2250 High Schools on a Human Scale: How Small Schools Can Transform American Education Toch, Thomas (2003). Boston: Beacon Press; 141 pages. $15. ISBN 080703245x. Since 2001, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has invested more than $700 million in high school reform efforts focused primarily in urban districts around the United States (Miner 2005). With the funding has come much publicity highlighting the merits of small high schools – defined by the Foundation as schools with fewer than 400 students – and emphasizing the inability of the nation’s large, comprehensive public high schools to meet the needs of most students today. What the majority of urban comprehensive high schools lack, the Gates Foundation asserts, is the means to deliver the essential “three R’s” of the 21st Century: rigor, relevance and relationships. In High Schools on a Human Scale, the publication of which was underwritten by the Gates Foundation, education writer Thomas Toch adds his voice to the litany against large high schools, making the case for a more intimate secondary education that connects students with the skills, motivation and support they need to succeed in college and in life. Toch has become a leading proponent of school reform, having written about education policy and trends for U.S. News and World Report throughout the 1990s and served as writer-in-residence at the National Center on Education and the Economy. This is his second book on the subject, and it wholeheartedly supports the Gates Foundation’s mission to replace the nation’s comprehensive high schools with small, specialized schools. It serves to augment the promotional efforts of the Foundation more than to provide a critical, research-based perspective on the high school reform debate. Teachers in training and experienced educators interested in small schools, members of school boards, parents of high school students, school facility designers, and others with an interest in school reform trends will appreciate the book for its emphasis on 708 practice and its clear writing. In his introduction, Toch describes how American high schools ballooned throughout the 20th Century in the name of efficiency, and how isolated small-school reform successes in the 1980s inspired the current effort that has gained widespread support, thanks to an influx of funding and research. The heart of the book is comprised of separate profiles of small high schools that have received Gates Foundation funding: Julia Richman Education Complex in New York City; Urban Academy, located within the Julia Richman complex; High Tech High inSan Diego, California; The Met in Providence, Rhode Island; and Minnesota New Country School in Henderson, Minnesota. The profiles highlight ways in which each individual small school approach has produced results around student and teacher satisfaction, educational achievement and the creation of real-world opportunities that help students find their talents and build relationships with adults in their communities. In an epilogue, Toch reiterates the essential qualities of successful small high schools and makes the case for “Scaling Up” school reform efforts. The appendix lists model high schools nationwide. The case for connecting American high school students with their abilities, their teachers and their communities has been convincingly made by many in recent years, including environmental psychologist Herb Childress (2003), and educator Dennis Littky (2004), whose book, The Big Picture: Education is Everyone’s Business, describes in detail the progressive philosophy and approach of The Met, one of the schools Toch profiles. But the concept that small schools can help students achieve their potential by becoming an indispensable part of a close-knit community is nothing new. In response to the high school consolidation drive of the 1960s, researchers Roger Barker and Paul V. Gump conducted a series of studies in urban and rural areas of the country to find out whether student experiences in large high schools and small high schools differed significantly. They found that students in small schools generally had richer experiences: Good facilities provide good experiences only if they are used. The educational process … thrives on participation, enthusiasm, and responsibility. Our findings and our theory posit a negative relationship between school size and individual student participation. What seems to...