Amid all the shouting about the failures of our public school system, and all the evidence that standardized-testing manias like the current one have not historically led to anything but short-term improvement in test scores, we know of another educational strategy that actually works--for all kids, but especially for the most vulnerable. There is growing consensus among educators on left and right about what distinguishes the best public schools, leading to a higher graduation rate, more successful college experiences and greater safety and health. Schools for low-income kids are more successful when they are small, when parents and teachers are together by choice, when there is a strong and coherent approach to schooling and when the adults in charge have a lot of authority to make important decisions. And all of this can happen inside the public sector, without charters, vouchers or privatization.
The success of the small-schools movement in New York City's public sector is a case in point, but studies nationwide replicate the good news. Examples include the Central Park East schools that I started in 1974, more than a hundred other schools now in New York City--including Brooklyn's El Puente, the School for the Physical City, Urban Academy, International High School, Beacon School and River East--the Pilot schools in Boston and the small-school developments in Chicago. Like other small-school students, those at Central Park East are at least as "at risk" as their counterparts at larger schools, but they are more likely to get a high school diploma and go on to successful college careers.
In a world in which too many kids of all races and classes are being raised without multi-age communities to help them learn what it means to be a wise or well-educated adult, all kids suffer. But some suffer more than others. Peter Steinfels reported in the New York Times recently that over the past three decades, just as demands for a good education have risen, families are spending twenty-two fewer hours together each week. During the same period, schools have gotten bigger and more anonymous. The closer kids get to being grown-ups, the fewer grown-ups they know well. They take classes with adults in the front of the room, but that's as far as it goes. Yet those kids who belong to special communities, such as extracurricular clubs, that include expert adults have a better chance at beating the odds of poverty.
That's what sets the successful schools apart--they create such communities for all kids. It's not even their particular approach to curriculum and pedagogy that makes them work. It's that the schools are organized to maximize the power of the adults who know the kids best, the strength of their ties with kids and families, and their ability to put together a coherent schoolwide pedagogy and curriculum. They are built around a unique culture, one that wraps kids and adults together in a shared system of values.
In schools like Central Park East, even high school teachers are rarely expected to be responsible for more than forty or fifty students, and they stick with the same kids for many years. The faculties are small and know each other well. The schools are small enough--between 100 and 400 students--for the adults to meet together around a single table and argue things out until they more or less agree. The kids know their teachers well and know that they, like the faculty, are responsible for the work of the school.
The critics say it won't work if applied on a large scale. But it certainly won't work if we keep crippling such schools, putting them down and writing rules that are intended for a big, one-size-fits-all comprehensive school. The bulk of resources and attention is now directed at reform by testing, instead of giving small schools the critical help they need to get off the ground. In a big school there are many secretaries, assistants and deans to respond to central administrative forms, meetings and mandates, whereas a small school can't afford that. So while large schools proliferate, dozens of small schools across the country are right now biting the dust, and we are undermining the ability of others to follow their path.
The critics say the data on small schools are too soft and the approach too mushy. While students at small schools do only slightly better on tests, it turns out that it's the test scores that are mushy. The more we "teach to the test" the more unreliable the results become as predictors of success. The assessment systems most small schools rely on--consisting of oral defenses, portfolios and exhibitions--are better predictors of life success. Real-life hard data--high school graduation rates, college attendance and future work opportunities--all favor small schools, above all for poor and minority youngsters.
Test scores always go up for a while when we decide to focus on tests. But within three to five years they'll plateau, and soon after they'll fall back to where they started--and we'll bemoan again the failure of those intractable city schools. We'll debate whether it's the fault of the kids, their families, their teachers, their unions or the wrong pedagogy. But we will once again have missed an opportunity to use what we know works.
Deborah W. Meier, principal of Mission Hill School in Boston, is the author of the just-published Will Standards Save Public Education? (Beacon).
Document Number: A62266826