Small School Reform Research Articles

The multiplexity of professional learning communities: exploring the co-evolution of teacher social networks

ABSTRACT Research on teacher professional learning communities (PLCs) has found that part of their benefit comes from increased collegiality. And yet, while the nature of such collegiality is theoretically multifaceted and includes a combination of instrumental, expressive and substantive relationships, this multidimensional nature of PLCs is almost never studied directly. In this paper, I fill that gap by examining the dynamics of relationship formation and evolution in a multiplex social network of 70 teachers during the first year of a small school reform. Using longitudinal social network models I analyse the within and between network dynamics of three types of discussion networks: course-related, personal, and, reform-related. Results show that the formation and evolution of ties within particular discussion networks were shaped by preference for similarity in demographic characteristics and attitudes. They also show that co-evolution between networks was shaped by reform-related discussions operating as a bridge connecting personal and course ties.

Equity, Access, and Mathematics Coursetaking Within Purposefully Created Small High Schools

An extensive body of research describes the stark social and academic disparities that characterize large, comprehensive public high schools. Advocates have argued that smaller high schools, with their necessarily more constrained curricula, have the potential to improve student academic outcomes and their equitable distribution. Using propensity score matching within a multilevel modeling framework, we explore this assertion in New York City, which has been at the center of small school reform. We find a small, positive impact of attending a new, small high school on progress through the math curriculum for low-achieving students, but no effect for average-achieving students, and a negative impact for higher achieving students. Despite any positive findings, the typical small school student still failed to complete Algebra II/Trigonometry—the lowest level course deemed “college preparatory” by the district.

Does Small High School Reform Lift Urban Districts? Evidence From New York City

Research finds that small high schools deliver better outcomes than large high schools for urban students. An important outstanding question is whether this better performance is gained at the expense of losses elsewhere: Does small school reform lift the whole district? We explore New York City’s small high school reform in which hundreds of new small high schools were built in less than a decade. We use rich individual student data on four cohorts of New York City high school students and estimate effects of schools on student outcomes. Our results suggest that the introduction of small schools improved outcomes for students in all types of schools: large, small, continuously operating, and new. Small school reform lifted all boats.

Do small schools improve performance in large, urban districts? Causal evidence from New York City

We evaluate the effectiveness of small high school reform in the country’s largest school district, New York City. Using a rich administrative dataset for multiple cohorts of students and distance between student residence and school to instrument for endogenous school selection, we find substantial heterogeneity in school effects: newly created small schools have positive effects on graduation and some other education outcomes while older small schools do not. Importantly, we show that ignoring this source of treatment effect heterogeneity by assuming a common small school effect yields a misleading zero effect of small school attendance.

Small School Reform

This qualitative ethnographic case study explored the evolution of a public urban high school in its 3rd year of small school reform. The study focused on how the high school proceeded from its initial concept, moving to a small school program, and emerging as a new small high school. Data collection included interviews, observations, and document review to develop a case study of one small high school sharing a multiplex building. The first key finding, “Too Many Pieces, Not Enough Glue,” revealed that the school had too many new programs starting at once and they lacked a clear understanding of their concept and vision for their new small school, training on the Montessori philosophies, teaching and learning in small schools, and how to operate within a teacher-cooperative model. The second key finding, “A Continuous Struggle,” revealed that the shared building space presented problems for teachers and students. District policies remain unchanged, resulting in staff and students resorting to activist approaches to get things done. These findings offer small school reform leaders suggestions for developing and sustaining a small school culture and cohesion despite the pressures to revert back to top-down, comprehensive high school norms.

Leading through the challenge of change: African-American women principals on small school reform

The context of education is changing based upon social, political, and accountability factors. As a result, many large urban districts have turned to small school reform in efforts to address student learning outcomes. Research demonstrates that effective leadership influences school achievement and culture. This qualitative study examines the leadership of two African-American female principals charged with implementing small school reform in an urban district. Each principal experienced challenges related to race, gender, and age, as well as challenges in harnessing district support to implement the reform with integrity. The tenets of Afrocentric feminist epistemology are used to explicate the experiences of these Black female principals.

Do Small Schools Improve Performance in Large, Urban Districts? Causal Evidence from New York City

We evaluate the effectiveness of small high school reform in the country’s largest school district, New York City. Using a rich administrative dataset for multiple cohorts of students, we estimate a model of school outcomes using instrumental variables with multiple types of endogenous school interventions. Using student residence to instrument for endogenous school selection, we find substantial heterogeneity in school effects as newly created small schools have positive effects on education outcomes while older small schools do not. Importantly, we show that ignoring this source of treatment effect heterogeneity yields a misleading zero effect of small school attendance.

Small Urban High School Success: A Case Study

Restructuring large schools into smaller, more personalized learning communities focused on developing students academically, socially, and emotionally has the potential to produce better outcomes for students. Although small school reform in large urban high schools has been the focus of the research literature on school reform in the last several years, the research is lacking with regard to the leaders who found (establish) and lead these schools. This article examines the perspectives and experiences of a new leader responsible for creating a small school. Implications for leadership and district support for reform implementation are discussed.

(Un)Planned Failure: Unsuccessful Succession Planning in an Urban District

Leader succession is often the result of a broken system, resulting in the loss of leadership gains from the exiting leader and leaving the incoming leader without proper support for success. This system needs replacing, with a system of dynamic succession planning that is carefully planned and an integral part of a school's improvement plan. To examine and understand these challenges in successful succession planning, I undertook a qualitative instrumental case study of a founding high school principal and her successor in an urban district engaged in small school reform. The findings suggest that these leaders’ lack of sustainability was influenced by a lack of district support and mentoring. These supports (or their lack thereof) affected the school's and district's effectiveness in transitioning the successor, planning for new leadership, and anticipating the supports needed for the school and its leaders.

Against the odds: insights from one district's small school reform

Against the Odds offers an in-depth look at the Mapleton, Colorado, school district s transformation of two traditional high schools into seven small schools, each enrolling fewer than four hundred students. This even-handed account chronicles both the heartening successes and frequent frustrations of a district-wide embrace of the small school model.

Everything You Want to Know About District-wide, Small School Reform: An Essay Review of Against the Odds. Review of Against the Odds: Insights from One District's Small School Reform. Harvard Education Press.

Everything You Want to Know About District-wide, Small School Reform: An Essay Review of Against the Odds. Review of Against the Odds: Insights from One District's Small School Reform. Harvard Education Press.

Thinking Big about Getting Small: An Ideological Genealogy of Small-School Reform

Background Support for small schools, and specifically for the creation of small, autonomous schools of choice, has grown considerably in the past decade—particularly in the context of urban schooling. Funded by private and public monies, small-school initiatives have been implemented in most of the nation's city school districts and have become a favorite reform strategy among grassroots community groups, corporate foundations, advocates for teacher autonomy, social activists, policy makers, and school superintendents alike. Although some opposition to small-school reform has emerged in recent years, criticism has primarily been confined to issues of how the strategy is being implemented and by whom and is rarely directed at the concept of the reform itself. Purpose The purpose of this article is to explain the widespread appeal of small-school reform. It asks, Given the multiple school reform strategies that have emerged over the past quarter of a century, why does the creation of small, autonomous schools of choice attract such varied and strong support? I seek to answer this question not by looking at small-school reform on the ground, but rather through an investigation of the ideas and beliefs on which the reform is based. Specifically, I offer an ideological genealogy of small-school reform by tracing the public arguments offered in support of the reform back to a set of assumptions about the political, cultural, and economic purposes of public education. Research Design I conducted my analysis by examining the vast array of popular and scholarly writing on small-school reform, as well as media reports, unpublished papers, conference proceedings, e-mail lists (LISTSERVs), Web sites, promotional brochures, requests for proposals, and other documents related to the reform effort. These sources allowed me to identify the salient beliefs and assumptions embedded within support for small-school reform and to explore how the reform strategy functions as a unifying framework for reformers with disparate goals and agendas. Analysis I begin by examining the political purposes ascribed to small-school reform, which I argue join together ideologies on the political left and right through an emphasis on local empowerment that reduces the role of the general citizen in educational governance. I then explore the cultural goals associated with small-school reform and assert that they are largely embedded in nostalgia for the small, bounded communities of yesteryear that seek to reconfigure the large public square into multiple, and narrowly drawn, small ones. Finally, I consider the economic purposes attached to small-school reform and find that they are rooted in the twin assumptions that a central function of schooling is to increase productivity and that the best way to achieve this objective is to model schools after businesses that compete with one another in an open educational marketplace. Conclusions This analysis demonstrates that although tensions and contradictions exist both within and across the various strands of support for small-school reform, they are unified in promoting a notion of public schooling that privileges private interests and constructs the “public” in public education in narrow and fragmented terms. Thus, the widespread appeal of small-school reform should be understood as part of a broader trend in the United States to reduce the role of the citizen in educational governance and to frame the public purpose of education as a private good.

Does “Connectedness” Matter? Evidence from a Social Network Analysis within a Small-School Reform

Background/Context Though cast in many styles and given different labels, the notion that one can improve schools by improving or changing the social context of learning is a common thread that runs through the arguments of many education reformers and scholars. Indeed, a common assertion in education reform is that one needs to create school environments with stronger community, where people are “better connected.” At the heart of such claims—and the topic of investigation for this article—is the notion that the nature of social interactions in schools is a crucial part of schooling. Purpose/Objective In this article, we use social network analysis—a powerful yet underused method in educational research—to gain insight into how social relations give rise to relative advantage within a group of students at a large public high school engaged in small-school reform. More specifically, we ask three questions of this sample of students: First, to what extent is academic performance “contagious” among peers? Second, after accounting for individual characteristics, is a student's location in a social network, as indicated by network density, associated with academic performance? If so, is a norm-enforcing or horizon expansion mechanism primarily responsible for this association? Third, is there a joint effect of peer achievement and network density on academic performance? Setting A large urban public high school implementing a school-within-a-school reform. Population/Participants/Subjects Grade 10 students within one of the schools-within-a-school. Research Design We connect variations in network composition and network structure to hypotheses about the interpersonal mechanisms at work between students. We combine detailed network data on the social relations between students with individual-level data from school records and then attempt to exploit variation in network characteristics across students to make inferences about the role of social relations with respect to academic performance. Data Collection and Analysis The specific data come from two sources: (1) school administrative records that contained information on student grade point averages, absences, standardized test scores, and demographics, and (2) the administration of a Web-based social network survey asking students to cite those with whom they interact in several academic and social contexts. Conclusions We find that network composition (as measured by lagged peer achievement) and network structure (as measured the density of ties between a student's peers) have no average association with student performance after accounting for individual-level characteristics. However, when interacting network composition and network structure, we find a significant joint effect. This implies that the advantages and disadvantages arising from a student's social relations are context dependent and, moreover, suggests that in order to diagnose the impact of building stronger community in schools, it is necessary to consider the network structure of students’ relationships when examining the influence of peers.

Small-School Reform through the Lens of Complexity Theory: It's “Good to Think With”

Background/Context In light of the consistent underperformance of the comprehensive high school, districts across the country, mostly urban, have begun creating small schools, believing that they may offer a more personalized, supportive, and demanding learning environment. To explore this assumption, this article examines small-school reform through the lens of complexity theory, considering both the promise and problems associated with this approach to educational change. Purpose/Objective With complexity theory as an analytic lens, this article looks at extant research in the area of small-school reform. Specifically, the article draws on fundamental features of complexity theory (e.g., initial conditions, distributed authority, control parameters, fractals, and synergy) as a way to assess both the problems and promise of small-school reform. Intervention/Program/Practice This article focuses on the effects of small-school reform— specifically, the impact of small schools, defined in general as those that enroll between 300 and 450 students, have an explicit thematic focus, promote broad democratic participation for all community members, and attempt to personalize students’ education as a means to enhance educational achievement. Research Design Drawing on the lens of complexity theory, this article offers a secondary analysis of research that I and others have conducted. Employing specific features of complexity theory, this article offers an analysis of these studies from a new analytic perspective. Conclusions/Recommendations Overall, complexity theory is “good to think with.” It offers a systematic way to conceptualize and direct reform in a dynamic, nonlinear system. It is not precise, and certainly not predictive, but complexity theory—with its attention to changed interactions, initial conditions, distributed authority, control parameters, and fractals—offers a holistic framework for understanding the systemic nature of educational reform. Too often, efforts at educational change have been atheoretical, ignoring the multiple, interrelated, and interacting elements of our schools and school systems. Viewing the educational system as composed of isolated and discrete structures, such efforts assumed that complicated phenomena could be understood by analyzing their constituent parts, when in fact the sum of the whole was greater, and more complex, than the sum of the individual parts. Consequently, reforms modified one or two elements in a system apart from related elements, assuming that these actions would produce the intended outcome through a linear, cause-and-effect relationship. But often, the status quo endured. Rather than assuming such predictable and linear interactions among discrete elements in an educational system, complexity theory draws attention to the evolving interrelationships among system elements at various levels of the system. It offers a means to analyze emerging patterns and trends to illuminate how the disparate system parts are, or are not, working together.

Small Schools, Large Districts: Small-School Reform and New York City's Students

Background/Context High school reform is currently at the top of the education policy making agenda after years of stagnant achievement and persistent racial and income test score gaps. Although a number of reforms offer some promise of improving U.S. high schools, small schools have emerged as the favored reform model, especially in urban areas, garnering substantial financial investments from both the private and public sectors. In the decade following 1993, the number of high schools in New York City nearly doubled, as new “small” schools opened and large high schools were reorganized into smaller learning communities. The promise of small schools to improve academic engagement, school culture, and, ultimately, student performance has drawn many supporters. However, educators, policy makers, and researchers have raised concerns about the unintended consequences of these new small schools and the possibility that students “left behind” in large, established high schools are incurring negative impacts. Research Design Using 10 years (1993–2003) of data on New York City high schools, we examine the potential systemic effects of small schools that have been identified by critics and researchers. We describe whether small schools, as compared with larger schools, serve an easier-to-educate student body, receive more resources, use those resources differently, and have better outcomes. Further, we examine whether there have been changes in segregation and resource equity across the decade contemporaneous with small-school reform efforts. Findings/Results We find that, although small schools do have higher per-pupil expenditures, lower pupil-teacher ratios, and a smaller share of special education students than larger schools, their students are disproportionately limited English proficient and poor, and their incoming students have lower test scores. Thus, the evidence is mixed with respect to claims that small schools serve an easier-to-educate student body. Systemwide, we find that segregation is relatively stable, and although there have been some changes in the distribution of resources, they are relatively modest. Conclusions/Recommendations If small schools do eventually promote higher achievement (considering their student mix and other factors that differentiate them from larger schools), many more will be needed to house the 91.5% of the students still attending large schools. Otherwise, strategies that work for the vast majority of students who do not attend small schools will need to be identified and implemented.

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.

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

Background/Context In 2000, the Bill & 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.

The Contemporary Small-School Movement: Lessons from the History of Progressive Education

Background/Context The contemporary small-school movement traces its roots to the alternative schools of the 1960s and the development of small urban schools in the 1980s. However, the small-school movement has its roots in the progressive movement of the early twentieth century. Although there is a significant amount of research on the early progressive schools and the alternative and small-school movements of the 1960s and 1980s, there is no research that connects these movements historically, nor that compares some of their most important schools. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study The purpose of this article is to examine the historical roots of the small-school movement through the use of two progressive independent schools founded in the early part of the twentieth century, the Dalton School and the City and Country School, and relate them to one of the models of the contemporary small-school movement, Central Park East Secondary School in New York City, founded in the 1980s and reorganized in 2004. Within this context, we will examine the relationship between the current small-school movement and earlier progressive reforms, and examine briefly the history of Central Park East, which implemented many of the practices of the earlier progressive schools. Finally, using the histories of all three schools, we discuss lessons from the history of progressive schools with respect to curriculum and pedagogy for low-income students, leadership, and sustainability. Research Design Using historical analysis, ethnographic fieldwork, and interviews, this study examines the history of the three schools and provides a comparative historical analysis of the relationship between the early progressive schools and the small-school movement. Findings/Results Our findings suggest that the small-school movement initiated at schools such as Central Park East in the 1980s mirrored many of the practices of early-twentieth-century progressive schools such as the Dalton School and the City and Country School, albeit with more diverse student populations and a more explicit commitment to social justice. The histories of the Dalton School, the City and Country School, and Central Park East Secondary School indicate that there are important lessons to be learned from the history of education with respect to curriculum and pedagogy, leadership, and sustainability. Finally, the success of Central Park East under Deborah Meier suggests that progressive education can work with low-income students. Conclusions/Recommendations Our research suggests that many contemporary progressive educational reforms, especially many in the small-school movement, have their origins in the early child-centered schools, and that progressive education is sometimes made more difficult by No Child Left Behind and other standards-based reforms, particularly in the public sector. Nonetheless, we are not convinced that schools such as the old Central Park East Secondary School cannot succeed. Researchers need to examine schools such as Urban Academy and the newly created schools founded by New Visions for Public Schools to see if this is the case. Administrators and teachers at these schools should study the history of contemporary small schools like Central Park East Secondary School, as well as the histories of the early progressive schools such as Dalton and City and Country, for lessons for successful small-school reform.

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...

Implementing Small Theme High Schools in New York City: Great Intentions and Great Tensions

In this article, Jacqueline Ancess and David Allen use New York City as a case study to examine the promises and the perils of the small high school reform movement that is sweeping the nation. They analyze the varying extent to which New York City's small high schools have implemented curricular themes in order to promote academic quality and equity. After identifying a wide range in the level of theme implementation in the city's small schools, Ancess and Allen suggest that small theme high schools have the potential to boost student engagement and achievement. However, the authors also express concern about the manner in which curricular themes may serve as socioeconomic, academic, or racial codes that threaten to merely repackage old patterns of school stratification and segregation.