Researchers: Small schools within a school can work
![A teacher reads to her second grade class in Baldwin....](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.newsday.com%2Fimage-service%2Fversion%2Fc%3ANWFmNTc2YmQtOGRhMC00%3AYmQtOGRhMC00NmVmMWUx%2Fbaldwin.jpg%3Ff%3DLandscape%2B16%253A9%26w%3D770%26q%3D1&w=1920&q=80)
A teacher reads to her second grade class in Baldwin. (Sept. 2, 2010) Credit: Newsday / John Paraskevas
Hempstead school officials looked to schools nationwide and in New York City when they moved to create three smaller schools within the high school this year.
Researchers say small schools can work - if teachers and staff are committed and if the small schools maintain a separate identity and are not just for show.
In 2002, New York City closed more than 20 underperforming public high schools, opened more than 200 new secondary schools, and introduced a centralized high school admissions process in which about 80,000 students a year indicate their school preferences from a wide-ranging choice of programs, according to a recent study conducted by the New York-based research group, MDRC, and commissioned by the Gates Foundation.
At the heart of these reforms were 123 new "small schools of choice" - academically nonselective, four-year public high schools for grades 9 through 12.
Research released earlier this year looked at 105 of these schools, including some that opened within the same building, and found that by the end of their first year of high school 58.5 percent of the students were on track to graduate in four years, compared with 48.5 percent of their larger school counterparts. After four years of high school, overall graduation rates rose 6.8 percentage points.
"They were personalized," said Gordon Berlin, MDRC president. "In a school with 100 kids in each grade versus a school with 1,000 kids in each grade, you are not going to fall through the cracks."
Attendance and graduation rates are higher at the small schools than at the large schools they replaced, confirmed a 2009 study by the Center for New York City Affairs at The New School. But they work only if educators are on board, said Clara Hemphill, senior editor at the Center for New York City Affairs.
"You can't just divide the school and say, 'Magic - you are three different schools,' " she said. "You have to use the size to change the relationships within the school so you create a sense of community and groups of teachers take responsibility . . . You need to have distinct identities so kids feel they belong to a real community and not just the second floor."