Each month, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provides all education grantees with a brief on-line newsletter. The newsletter offers research summaries, best practices and profiles, and technical assistance on a specific topic related to school reform and restructuring. Feel free to share this newsletter, and its resources, but please note that the foundation cannot ensure its accuracy once it has been forwarded, altered or excerpted. 

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To undertake the challenge of breaking up large high schools is to confront 50 years of intractability in the American education system. The barriers to change, including district policy, state law and higher education admission standards, are great, but the need for change is critical. The statistics reveal the failure of American high schools today. High school graduation rates hover at 75 percent, and the rate is closer to 50 percent for low-income and minority students.

Yet in select communities across the country, schools and districts are tackling the issue of high school redesign and seeking to create small schools that will help their young people succeed, despite the many challenges, the limited research and resources, and a path that is decidedly less traveled.

Those who have begun the work in their districts and schools can serve as tremendous resources for others throughout the country by providing insight, anticipating challenges, and sharing inspiring stories. We hope the information and stories contained here help to connect schools engaged in this difficult work of transforming large schools.

This digest reviews recent research on breaking up large, impersonal high schools and discusses five common errors made in downsizing attempts: errors of autonomy, size, continuity, time, and control. The author also recommends several technical assistance resources to help reformers avoid the errors described.

Wall to wall: Implementing small learning communities in five Boston high schools. -- Lili Allen with Cheryl Almeida and Adria Steinberg, 2001. Jobs for the Future and the Education Alliance/Northeast and Islands Regional Educational Laboratory at Brown University.

This paper looks at the experiences of five large, impersonal high schools in Boston as they restructure into smaller learning communities. Three years into a district-wide reform effort, the schools provide insight into the opportunities, tensions and challenges faced by large urban high schools as they undertake whole school reform. The authors discuss key findings from the five schools and their implications for reform in other school districts.

Based upon research demonstrating the benefits of small schools, Mountlake Terrace High School in suburban Seattle, Washington, decided to break up its large, 1,900-student high school into small, autonomous schools. School staff began the work in October 2000 with a planning grant from the U.S. Department of Education. The school formed a steering committee to begin the process of designing the new schools. The committee then conducted focus groups with students, community members, parents, faculty, and staff to ensure that all members of the school community were involved in the process.

Currently, staff are writing and submitting school design proposals to the steering committee. The proposals specify the number of small schools to be created and identify the mission, focus and overall design for each. Through additional focus groups, the school community will have the opportunity to comment on each of the proposals. By the end of the school year, Mountlake Terrace expects to select final proposals. During the 2002-2003 school year, staff assigned to each of the new schools will work together to finalize the design plan. Mountlake Terrace's small high schools are scheduled to open in the fall of 2003. For more information, please contact Gwendine Norton at nortong@edmonds.wednet.edu or 425-670-7776.

Best Practice #2 - Julia Richman Education Complex 

In 1993, Julia Richman closed to entering freshmen so the work to convert the large, impersonal high school to small schools could begin. Located in Manhattan, the district was large enough to house the students in other schools for the two years it took to reconfigure the building. During this time students could attend one of a handful of small schools located outside the school building. In 1995, these schools moved into what is now known as the Julia Richman Education Complex. 

Today, the complex houses approximately 1,650 students in six small schools. There are four high schools: Urban Academy; Talent Unlimited, a performing arts school; Manhattan International High School, which serves new immigrants; and Vanguard High. A K-8 school and a middle school for autistic students completes the group. 

The schools are autonomous, each having its own budget, teachers, schedules, and curriculum. While each school has its own separate space within the complex, the schools share a number of common facilities, which include a library, cafeteria, auditorium, ceramics studio, culinary arts room, dance studio, mini theater, art gallery, swimming pool and gymnasiums. 

For more information, contact Ann Cook, co-director of the Urban Academy, who is responsible for coordinating visits to the Julia Richman Complex. She can be reached at 212-570-5394 or via email at ann_cook@cce.org. 

The Small Schools Project provides research, resources, tools, and guidance for schools and districts beginning the process of breaking up large schools into small, autonomous schools. The Web site also provides a network for school and community leaders to share information.

The National Center for Restructuring Education, Schools and Teaching
Teachers College, Columbia University

The National Center for Restructuring Education, Schools and Teaching supports restructuring efforts by documenting successful initiatives, creating reform networks to share new research findings with practitioners, and linking policy to practice.

The Small Schools Workshop
University of Illinois at Chicago

The Small Schools Workshop runs conferences and workshops and maintains a Web site rich in resources.