Small schools and high school reform were on the agenda Sunday through Tuesday at a conference in San Diego hosted by the Education Writers Association. Fifteen reporters and bloggers from around the United States, plus one from Canada, attended the conference, where a wide range of educators spoke on different aspects of small school reform. We also visited two San Diego Unified high schools as well as a high school that is chartered through San Diego Unified. The conference occurred with San Diego Unified’s looming and enormous budget woes as a backdrop,
What follows will be a very brief synopsis of the conference.
Clara Hemphill from the Center for New York City Affairs at The New School said the Big Apple has had the “longest,” “largest” and “most successful” small schools experiment. She defined small schools as having 400 or fewer students. But she said research has shown that the longer they’re open, the worse small schools perform; that they suffer from declining attendance over time; and by definition have limited curriculum. On the positive side, she and others at the conference said small schools are most effective in high poverty, high minority areas with large numbers of English language learners. Another problem Hemphill cited: “What are we going to do with all these giant buildings?”
David Bloomfield of Brooklyn College is not a proponent of small schools, at least yet. He said small schools in New York were a “political invention” of Mayor Michael Bloomberg to make it appear he’s doing something about education. He said the jury is still out. “They’re too new and were incubated in a manner meant to make them look good.” He said the small learning community phenomenon has been “inadequately studied.” He said small schools “suck up a lot of dollars. They drain funds from the largest schools.” He also said even after early successes, small schools often suffer when the original principal leaves. And he said special-education students often are excluded.
Karen Hunter Quartz of UCLA’s Graduate School of Education spoke of the massive school construction projects in Los Angeles. She is a believer in small schools and said the research is “clear.”
Regis Shields of Education Resource Strategies said “the essentials of good schools are the essentials of good schools … It’s not all about small.”
W. David Stevens of the Consortium on Chicago School Research proposed questions for school superintendents and principals, including, “How are schools of choice reaching kids who don’t have the family structure that is involved in choosing a school?”
Karin Chenoweth of The Education Trust said successful schools have several factors in common, among them:
*They have educators “who believe kids can achieve, and act on it.” She added, “It is up to adults to figure out how to teach the kids.” She said most educators blame children and their families if they fail, but the successful educators take responsibility.
*She also said that at successful schools, the staff ensures that each student “feels known and cared about.”
She said the best question to ask when evaluating the efficacy of changes in a school or district is whether the changes have to do with improving instruction. She cited The Widget Effect, a report by The New Teacher Project, which criticized most schools’ efforts in evaluating the performance of teachers. According to the report, 63 percent of teachers are receive their evaluations based on less than one hour of observation by those judging them. “This is a management problem,” she said.
Chenoweth said very few high schools with predominantly poor and minority populations are performing well. She cited one that was doing moderately well — Granger High near Yakima, Wash. The school has 324 ninth- through 12th-grade students, many of them migrant students. Chenoweth said, however, that Granger should not be confused with high-achieving schools, but rather seen as a relative success compared to schools with similar populations.
Michael Klonsky of Small Schools Workshop and the Center for Innovative Schools said the best schools are ones where teachers have collective bargaining rights. Klonsky believes in small schools. “If anybody thinks size doesn’t matter, ask them to go back and do their homework,” he said. But he said schools can only do so much. “There is not going to be a real miracle in the schools until we change the conditions of life for those children,” he said.
Libia Gil of the American Institutes of Research there can be a “whiplash effect” of change that affects morale and strategies and can “lead to cynicism.” She said changes in instruction lag behind changes in structure. She said many small school programs do not prove to be sustainable beyond five years. She said underserved students benefit the most from small schools, and that “some of the best and worst schools are small.” She said “staffing and hiring teachers who want to be there is crucial.”
Rob Atterbury of ConnectEd California spoke about why reforms fail. He cited a lack of staff buy-in, cutting corners, a failure to include all stakeholders in designing new structures, and making structural changes without making improvements to instruction. Klonsky piped in that “top down doesn’t work.” Atterbury is of local note because ConnectEd has provided funding to SUSD’s SLC conversion (I won’t get into the merits of those reforms in this post).
The panelists were asked whether there were “false positives” — things that would seem to indicate successful reforms when in fact the reforms were ineffective. The panelists said “happy kids who aren’t learning anything,” are a potential false positive. They said it’s a lot easier to create a cozy atmosphere students enjoy than to create an effective program. But there was some acknowledgment that for some students who have difficult home lives, a warm atmosphere at school has value.
On Monday, the conference attendees visited two San Diego high schools — Kearny High and Lincoln High. On Tuesday, we visited a charter school, High Tech High. I’ll be providing details of those visits in another blog post in the coming days.
Odds and ends from a small schools conference
Small schools and high school reform were on the agenda Sunday through Tuesday at a conference in San Diego hosted by the Education Writers Association. Fifteen reporters and bloggers from around the United States, plus one from Canada, attended the conference, where a wide range of educators spoke on different aspects of small school reform. We also visited two San Diego Unified high schools as well as a high school that is chartered through San Diego Unified. The conference occurred with San Diego Unified’s looming and enormous budget woes as a backdrop,
What follows will be a very brief synopsis of the conference.
Clara Hemphill from the Center for New York City Affairs at The New School said the Big Apple has had the “longest,” “largest” and “most successful” small schools experiment. She defined small schools as having 400 or fewer students. But she said research has shown that the longer they’re open, the worse small schools perform; that they suffer from declining attendance over time; and by definition have limited curriculum. On the positive side, she and others at the conference said small schools are most effective in high poverty, high minority areas with large numbers of English language learners. Another problem Hemphill cited: “What are we going to do with all these giant buildings?”
David Bloomfield of Brooklyn College is not a proponent of small schools, at least yet. He said small schools in New York were a “political invention” of Mayor Michael Bloomberg to make it appear he’s doing something about education. He said the jury is still out. “They’re too new and were incubated in a manner meant to make them look good.” He said the small learning community phenomenon has been “inadequately studied.” He said small schools “suck up a lot of dollars. They drain funds from the largest schools.” He also said even after early successes, small schools often suffer when the original principal leaves. And he said special-education students often are excluded.
Karen Hunter Quartz of UCLA’s Graduate School of Education spoke of the massive school construction projects in Los Angeles. She is a believer in small schools and said the research is “clear.”
Regis Shields of Education Resource Strategies said “the essentials of good schools are the essentials of good schools … It’s not all about small.”
W. David Stevens of the Consortium on Chicago School Research proposed questions for school superintendents and principals, including, “How are schools of choice reaching kids who don’t have the family structure that is involved in choosing a school?”
Karin Chenoweth of The Education Trust said successful schools have several factors in common, among them:
*They have educators “who believe kids can achieve, and act on it.” She added, “It is up to adults to figure out how to teach the kids.” She said most educators blame children and their families if they fail, but the successful educators take responsibility.
*She also said that at successful schools, the staff ensures that each student “feels known and cared about.”
She said the best question to ask when evaluating the efficacy of changes in a school or district is whether the changes have to do with improving instruction. She cited The Widget Effect, a report by The New Teacher Project, which criticized most schools’ efforts in evaluating the performance of teachers. According to the report, 63 percent of teachers are receive their evaluations based on less than one hour of observation by those judging them. “This is a management problem,” she said.
Chenoweth said very few high schools with predominantly poor and minority populations are performing well. She cited one that was doing moderately well — Granger High near Yakima, Wash. The school has 324 ninth- through 12th-grade students, many of them migrant students. Chenoweth said, however, that Granger should not be confused with high-achieving schools, but rather seen as a relative success compared to schools with similar populations.
Michael Klonsky of Small Schools Workshop and the Center for Innovative Schools said the best schools are ones where teachers have collective bargaining rights. Klonsky believes in small schools. “If anybody thinks size doesn’t matter, ask them to go back and do their homework,” he said. But he said schools can only do so much. “There is not going to be a real miracle in the schools until we change the conditions of life for those children,” he said.
Libia Gil of the American Institutes of Research there can be a “whiplash effect” of change that affects morale and strategies and can “lead to cynicism.” She said changes in instruction lag behind changes in structure. She said many small school programs do not prove to be sustainable beyond five years. She said underserved students benefit the most from small schools, and that “some of the best and worst schools are small.” She said “staffing and hiring teachers who want to be there is crucial.”
Rob Atterbury of ConnectEd California spoke about why reforms fail. He cited a lack of staff buy-in, cutting corners, a failure to include all stakeholders in designing new structures, and making structural changes without making improvements to instruction. Klonsky piped in that “top down doesn’t work.” Atterbury is of local note because ConnectEd has provided funding to SUSD’s SLC conversion (I won’t get into the merits of those reforms in this post).
The panelists were asked whether there were “false positives” — things that would seem to indicate successful reforms when in fact the reforms were ineffective. The panelists said “happy kids who aren’t learning anything,” are a potential false positive. They said it’s a lot easier to create a cozy atmosphere students enjoy than to create an effective program. But there was some acknowledgment that for some students who have difficult home lives, a warm atmosphere at school has value.
On Monday, the conference attendees visited two San Diego high schools — Kearny High and Lincoln High. On Tuesday, we visited a charter school, High Tech High. I’ll be providing details of those visits in another blog post in the coming days.