Can Smaller High Schools Help More Students Succeed?

With college seen as a minimum requirement for a growing number of living-wage jobs, the economic future is not looking bright for the large number of U.S. students who aren’t even graduating from high school. Recent studies show that, nationwide, only 68% of all students entering ninth grade end up with a high school diploma. Among Black and Hispanic students, only slightly more than half will graduate, and only 20% and 16%, respectively, are considered "college ready." Little wonder that high school reform is high on the agenda of Education Secretary Margaret Spellings and other concerned policymakers and educators.

Some are wondering whether shrinking the size of America’s high schools can help, not just to keep more students in school, but, equally important, to prepare greater numbers for college. In recent years, some 400 “small schools” have opened in diverse communities across the country. Some are theme-based, while others follow a more traditional academic model. The majority are public, some charter. All are small and personalized, generally aiming for no more than 100 students per grade level. The point is to have a close-knit community in which students are known, their learning needs understood and addressed. At one such school, teachers start the year by visiting the home of each student to identify his or her interests, strengths, and needs. The resulting information is used to inform a personalized learning plan for each student.

While much research remains to be done on small schools, studies over the past decade have shown that students in small, personalized, and rigorous learning environments are more likely to succeed academically. This promising finding has led to funding for small schools — from a federal grant program to investments by private foundations. Chief among them is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which partners with communities nationwide to start new small high schools and convert existing schools into smaller ones. As of early 2005, the Foundation, working through 180 grantees, had already committed $800 million to fund 2,000 small schools across the country, only a small portion of which have already opened.

Some of this prior funding has supported new small schools in New York City. But on February 15, 2005, the Foundation announced that the Gates Foundation and the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, together, will be providing an additional $32 million to further support this particular urban effort. While many of the small schools that have opened across the country are one of a kind within their districts, the New York City Department of Education is taking a more systematic approach, generating new small secondary schools as one of its key reform strategies.

So how are these small schools doing?

At the request of the Gates Foundation, WestEd recently took a look at five small high schools in the far-flung communities of San Diego, Denver, Chicago, Dayton, and Boston. "We wanted to provide a snapshot of how these schools are doing so far," explains Tracy Huebner, WestEd Senior Research Associate and lead author of Rethinking High School: Five Profiles of Innovative Models for Student Success. “Though long-term evaluations will take several years, it was important to find some basic information in these start-up years. We wanted to know what these schools looked like, whom they were serving, and how their students were doing.”

For each school, WestEd collected data on student performance on state and national tests, attendance, and promotion; conducted interviews with principals; and reviewed existing reports and other school-related artifacts. Preliminary data shows these schools are serving student populations that have been least successful in traditional public high schools. Moreover, preliminary data show that these students are making significant progress:

• Attendance rates at all five schools are higher than the district averages.
• On average, the number of suspensions and expulsions at the five sites is significantly lower compared to their local districts.
• All five schools posted a steady rate of improvement on state academic achievement tests.
• At the one school that had been operating long enough to have a senior class, 100% of seniors applied to and were accepted at college, 80% of them at four-year institutions.

Immediately following WestEd’s review of small schools nationally, the Gates Foundation asked that it also report on the small-school movement in New York City. That work is captured in Rethinking High School: An Introduction to New York City’s Experience, published and released by the Gates Foundation this month.

"As the largest district in nation, New York City schools have a special set of challenges," Huebner explains. Only about half of New York City's public school students complete high school in four years, one third of all ninth graders are not promoted to the tenth grade, and less than 40 percent of students in the district’s large, low-performing schools graduate. Seeking to break this cycle of failure, the New York City Department of Education began the New Schools Initiative, a program that has so far created 109 small high schools supporting 18,517 students. Two hundred more small schools are planned for the next three to five years.

Similar to what WestEd found in the first five schools it looked at, the preliminary data on New York City's small schools are inspiring:

• In the 2003-04 school year, student attendance rates at the city's small schools averaged 90.5%, compared to 83% citywide.
• In 2004, 92.2% of ninth graders in small schools advanced to tenth grade, compared to the citywide average of 68.3%.

“There’s a lot we don’t yet know about how small schools influence teaching and learning,” says Huebner. “But these early data suggest that more research is well worth the effort.”

Download the reports:

Rethinking High School: Five Profiles of Innovative Models for Student Success

Rethinking High School: An Introduction to New York City's Experience

Download the Executive Summary of Rethinking High School: Five Profiles of Innovative Models for Student Success.

For additional information about the studies, contact Tracy Huebner at thuebne@WestEd.org or visit the Gates Foundation Web site.

Contact Information

Tracy Huebner
415.615.3140
thuebne@wested.org