Bigger schools try small on for size
Fresh-faced adolescents with earring studs and baggy pants shuffle down the same hallways and sit in the same classrooms. "Dorchester High" is still etched in stone above the entrance, but the building known for weekly fire alarms and a culture one administrator described as "emotionally abusive," has been reborn. Today, it houses three public schools: Three very small public schools.
Tech Boston Academy, on the first floor, has 150 students. The Economics and Business Academy on the second floor has 350 students, and the Academy of Public Service on the third floor has 300. The three schools have separate missions, budgets, administrators, teachers, and schedules. They share a library, cafeteria, sports teams, and the conviction that size matters.
"Kids respond to relationships; they are motivated through relationships," said Mary Skipper, headmaster of Tech Boston Academy, who said the small size of her school, now comprising ninth and 10th grades, ensures teachers connect with every student and keep tabs on their progress. "High school kids do better in the subjects where they feel more connected to the teacher; it has nothing to do with content."
More than 40 years after a Harvard president trumpeted the benefits of large, "comprehensive high schools" offering a smorgasbord of courses, conventional education wisdom has reversed. Today, the smaller-is-better mantra dominates urban school reform and has middle-class communities seeking ways to make big high schools feel intimate. Nationally, university and nonprofit centers are pushing school downsizing while the US Department of Education and groups, such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, are investing millions to break up large schools into smaller ones.
Craig Howley, an education professor at Ohio University in Athens who studies school size, said research shows students in poor districts perform better in smaller schools, graduating at higher rates. Optimal school size may vary, but Howley said schools should not exceed 1,000 pupils, "even in the most affluent community in the nation." "You can give all the range of courses that the most finicky and ambitious parents could want or the most finicky and ambitious kids would want in a school of 1,000," said Howley, who noted those who choose private schools do so because they want a small school environment.
That's what Karen McQuade, director of Cornerstone Academy, a 28-student K-4 school in Northborough, said appeals to parents. "Everything is individualized."
But if private schools can choose students and tailor learning to suit them, public schools have a more challenging charge. Even affluent public high schools struggle with offering variety while still creating intimacy.
Some large schools have tried to create small learning communities by developing "houses" based on random assignments or thematic "academies."
"This is a very hot idea," said Valerie Lee, professor of education at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Lee said breaking schools into sub-units or separate schools "is an absolutely fabulous idea" in theory, but it raises tough questions.
For example, Lee said, if students are allowed to choose, top students will congregate, creating an imbalance in which some sub-units are stronger than others. What happens when student interests don't parallel themes such as science and health or English and politics? Van Seasholes, principal of Lexington High School, which has 1,850 students, has wrangled with this matter for years, notably as principal of Newton South for 24 years. Today, he has a loose "house" system at Lexington High with two homeroom periods, but said grouping systems require tough tradeoffs. Seasholes said it's problematic to insist a student take courses with the English teacher in their house instead of one they want in another house just "so people in your house can get to know you better."
In Weymouth, which next fall will open a new 426,000-square-foot, 2,200-student high school, there is worry about school size. "It will be beautiful. It will be state-of-the-art. But there is concern kids will be getting lost," said Elizabeth Foster-Nolan, cochairwoman of the Townwide Parent Council.
Weymouth Superintendent Robert West said the concern is not overblown. "If I had the money, one of the first things I would do is shrink the size of those schools," he said. "It's good for kids to be known."
That point resonates more today than it did 40 years ago.
At Dorchester High, Jack Leonard, headmaster of the Economics and Business Academy, sees a sea change in school climate from last year when EBA was just a series of courses, to this year, when it exists as its own school.
"In previous years, students used anonymity to their advantage," said Leonard. In the past, he said, "every time a fire alarm would go off, your stomach would tighten, your neck would tighten." Leonard described confrontations with students who swore, smoked in bathrooms, pulled fire alarms, and drew police to the school. The climate, he said, "would wear you down."
This year "feels really different," he said. Leonard has seen no graffiti and is devoting more attention to student achievement. He reviewed the first-term grades of all ninth-graders -- and found 15 who failed every course. His response: "Pull those kids out and do something now, instead of blowing off the first year," said Leonard, noting 34 percent of his students have special needs.
On the third floor at Dorchseter High, Academy of Public Service headmaster Dionne McLaughlin, an assistant principal at Lexington High last year, sees more intimate staff relations in a smaller school. At Lexington, she said, some teachers went weeks without seeing one another. With 26 teachers instead of 200, "it is much easier to communicate," she said.
Some students say such closeness is welcomed. At Tech Boston Academy, sophomore Xavier Holland, 16, said teachers recognize his handwriting.
Dominique Johnson, 17, a senior who last year attended Dorchester High, admitted in the past she "just came to chill with my friends." This year, enrolled in EBA, she said it's tough to just slide by. "I do a lot more work now. I'm actually going to graduate."
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