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##  Breaking Up Large High Schools: Five Common (and Understandable)                Errors of Execution. ERIC Digest.                                            

Essentially all of the research on high school size conducted in the            past 30 years suggests that we need to move to much smaller                     schools (Gregory, 2000). In response to these findings, school                  administrators have attempted to subdivide big high schools into                smaller entities. This Digest reviews recent research on the                    movement to break up large schools and discusses five types of error            common among such attempts--errors of autonomy, of size, of                     continuity, of time, and of control. CONSENSUS FAVORING SMALL HIGH            SCHOOLS GROWS, WHILE SCHOOLS GET LARGERResearch on school size              has changed over time. Studies conducted 30 or more years ago tended            to favor larger schools. More recently, research has favored smaller            schools (or called into question the interpretations of earlier                 research). The research is complicated by semantics; "small" to some            means under 200 students; many see a realistic goal to be 400-500               students; and a few see high schools of 800 as small enough. And                size, of course, has little direct effect on how schools function.              It is a set of mediating variables that has the more direct impact              to which we should direct our attention. 
Space does not allow an              adequate summary of the research on school size, but several good               reviews are available (Cotton, 1996; Williams, 1990; Raywid, 1999;              and Gregory, 2000). Even the popular literature of the past few                 years has been sprinkled with articles extolling the virtues and                successes of small schools. This public dialogue is reflected in a              recent national poll of high school parents and teachers; 66 percent            of the parents and 79 percent of the teachers favored smaller high              schools (Public Agenda, 2001). Heeding the message, large high                  schools are now attempting to remake themselves into smaller, more              personal institutions. 
Cotton (in press) reviews a newer body of              research and commentary on the widespread efforts to create small               learning communities in large schools. The Learning First                       Alliance (2001) has provided an extensive treatment of efforts to               downsize that focuses on safety issues, and Nathan and Febey (2001)             describe the reconfigured physical settings of 22 newly created                 small schools in 12 states. Two recent major studies in urban                   contexts document the promise of recent breakup efforts. Stiefel,               Iatarola, Fruchter, and Berne (2000) analyzed cost and achievement              data for all of New York City's high schools, both large and small,             and Wasley et al. (2000) have described in detail the early                     successes of Chicago's small elementary, middle, and high                       schools. 
Despite growing support for smaller schools, high schools            have continued to grow in size. This disparity exists for several               reasons. The high school plays a complex role in its community.                 Reformer Ted Sizer calls it a "diabolically complicated                         system" (1996, p. xi). The high school is often more than a place of            learning. It may be one of the few entities that unifies a                      community--a source of community pride and a central gathering                  place. BREAKING UP LARGE HIGH SCHOOLSAs mentioned earlier, one            response to calls for smaller schools is to break up big high                   schools into smaller entities, each typically serving 200 to 500                students. "Breaking Ranks" (National Association of Secondary School            Principals, 1996), a widely-used manual for breaking up a big school            to create schools within a school (SWAS), suggests a maximum of 600             students. Rather than changing the form of schooling, proposals                 favoring schools of this size seem to be modest efforts--what Wasley            and Lear (2001) term shallow implementations--to personalize a                  familiar model that is fundamentally impersonal in nature. The idea             is not new, dating back at least to the "house" structures of                   the '60s. 
There is little evidence that this strategy is                      successful, even though hundreds of high schools currently are                  pursuing it.1 If the central intent of such breakup efforts is                  simply to create more personal forms of the familiar comprehensive              high school, many recent attempts may have achieved a certain                   success. But the goals of these efforts suggest more; they seem to              seek a cultural renaissance, not a remodeling (National Association             of Secondary School Principals, 1996). 
A pervasive problem is that            characteristics built into the basic design of most breakup efforts             make it impossible for them to cross over into the world of                     successful new small schools which do have very different                       cultures (Meier, 1995; Gregory, 1993). Five common errors--of                   autonomy, size, continuity, time, and control--bar many schools from            crossing the big/small cultural divide. ERRORS OF AUTONOMYAn              oft-stated goal of breakup efforts is that the former, big school               with all its traditions--interscholastic sports, clubs, music                   groups--will remain. These entities are the very--arguably the                  only--cultural glue that still binds together all the disparate                 pieces of big, anonymous schools. Mixed allegiances are difficult to            maintain. The long established big school culture tends to kill off             the nascent small school cultures. Some services--counseling,                   discipline, food service--may also remain centralized, either to                nurture the big-school identity, comply with its notions of                     specialization, or achieve economies of scale in the big building's             infrastructure. Because these services remain the tasks of                      specialists, each tends to become depersonalized and remote from the            more local lives of the SWAS. These factors undermine SWAS efforts              to build their own identities. ERRORS OF SIZEIn breakup                   efforts, SWAS are often designed as administrative units that are               big enough--400 to 600 students--to justify a principal. Then the               faculties of each SWAS are so large--25 to 40 teachers--that they               have almost as much trouble talking to each other as large high                 school faculties do. Socially constructing the vision of the new,               small school becomes more difficult. Consequently, faculties revert             to big-school strategies: either the vision is created by the                   principal and teachers are expected to go along with it, or some                sort of representative governance council is created. Under either              of these circumstances, the vision has to be very persuasive or very            familiar to gain the faculty's endorsement. The latter is frequently            the case, which tends to preserve the big-school culture. ERRORS              OF CONTINUITYEvery high school contains three kinds of students:            beginners who need orientation and acclimation, those who are                   completing their requirements for graduation, and those who are                 somewhere in between. A natural response to these stages is to                  create specialized programs for each of these groups. (The majority             of the proposals received thus far by the U.S. Office of Education              Small Learning Communities grant program entailed the creation of               transition programs for freshmen.) Similarly, some schools seek to              develop senior institutes. But each of these smaller experiences                creates more transitions to be accomplished and segregate older                 students from younger ones. They are predicated on the age-old idea             that only the older generation can teach the young what they must               know to succeed (Mead, 1970). As a result, just as students                     establish themselves in a new setting, they are asked to move on.               Just at the time when they become valuable teachers and leaders of              younger students, they are removed to a new setting where they are              once again off-balance beginners. ERRORS OF TIMEContinuing to             offer esoteric electives across all SWAS is an attractive option in             these subschool configurations. It is seen as a way to maintain the             best of both worlds: the rich curriculum of a large, comprehensive              high school and the more personalized environment of a small school.            To accommodate movement between SWAS, they often adopt a common bell            schedule. But the bell schedule makes it difficult to do much                   programmatically that's different from what the big school was able             to do. It may, for example, make it difficult for an individual                 student or a group of students to leave the campus for one day, let             alone for a week or longer, to pursue learning in the community and             beyond. Responding spontaneously to an unexpected learning                      opportunity--whether it's a visiting author or a full solar eclipse             that will be visible in a nearby state--is almost as remote a                   possibility for the SWAS as it is for a large high school.                      Traditional schedules also promote traditional notions of faculty               load. For example, powerful advising programs that go hand-in-hand              with high levels of independent learning become difficult to                    justify. ERRORS OF CONTROLThat so little independent learning             occurs in big schools is not accidental; such independence is                   antithetical to the levels of control that must take primacy in                 them. Confining so many students in one place creates a situation               that is uncomfortable for the adult community (Sizer, 1984), one                that quickly becomes scary if not kept under tight control. Freedom             of movement is a necessary prerequisite to many powerful forms of               learning. Students must be well-known and trusted for such freedom              to be possible. Even much smaller SWAS still have the problem of                their students being strangers when they move elsewhere in the                  building. Because many control problems of big schools remain in a              big building, many of the control issues that constrain more                    informal teaching and learning also remain. GETTING REFORM                      RIGHT 
Reform is devilishly difficult to pull off, even under the              most favorable of circumstances. Many schools of our future, even               some spawned by breaking up big high schools, will have quite                   different cultures than the archetypical American comprehensive high            school. Large high schools can find help in avoiding the errors                 described here by taking advantage of the extensive technical                   assistance now available. Two regional sources of assistance are                rapidly gaining national status. They are the Small Schools Workshop            at the University of Illinois at                                                Chicago (http://www.smallschoolsworkshop.org), and the Small Schools            Project of the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the                    University of Washington (http://www.smallschoolsproject.org). Both             run conferences and workshops and maintain Web sites rich in                    resources. Several brief but helpful advice papers are available                from the Small Schools Project (Center on Reinventing Public                    Education, n.d.-a,b,c) and Kathleen Cotton's recent review (in                  press) is a must-read for those contemplating breaking up large high            schools. 
Can we expect large high schools to reculture themselves             so completely? Can they do it? Half the responding teachers in large            high schools in the aforementioned Public Agenda survey (2001)                  anticipated widespread opposition from their communities if a                   breakup effort were attempted. In the next 10 years we should know              whether creating truly new small schools out of existing large high             schools is even possible. 
1. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation            is funding the breakup of about 50 high schools in Washington state             alone. REFERENCESCenter on Reinventing Public                             Education. (n.d.-a). Organizing and designing small schools through             conversions of large comprehensive schools. Seattle: The Small                  Schools Project, Center on Reinventing Public Education, University             of Washington. Retrieved December 7, 2001, from                                 http://www.smallschoolsproject.org/tools/toolstouse/conversions12way            s2.pdf 
Center on Reinventing Public Education. (n.d.-b). Questions            to consider about conversions of large high schools. Seattle: The               Small Schools Project, Center on Reinventing Public Education,                  University of Washington. Retrieved December 7, 2001, from                      http://www.smallschoolsproject.org/tools/toolstouse/conversionquesti            ons.pdf 
Center on Reinventing Public Education. (n.d.-c). Thinking            about conversions. Seattle: The Small Schools Project, Center on                Reinventing Public Education, University of Washington. Retrieved               December 7, 2001, from                                                          http://www.smallschoolsproject.org/tools/toolstouse/conversionpoints            .pdf 
Cotton, K. (1996). School size, school climate, and student              performance. Portland, OR: Northwest Regional Educational                       Laboratory. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 397                      476) 
Cotton, K. (in press). New small learning communities:                   Findings from recent literature. Portland, OR: Northwest Regional               Educational Laboratory. 
Gregory, T. (1993). Making high school                work: Lessons from the Open School. New York: Teachers College                  Press. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 401                           608) 
Gregory, T. (2000). School reform and the no-man's-land of               high school size. Retrieved December 7, 2001, from                              http://www.smallschoolsproject.org/articles/download/gregory.pdf                (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 451 981) 
Learning First            Alliance. (2001). Every child learning: Safe and supportive schools.            Washington, DC: Association for Supervision and Curriculum                      Development. Retrieved December 7, 2001, from                                   http://www.learningfirst.org/pdfs/safe-schools-report.pdf 
Mead,               M. (1970). Culture and commitment: A study of the generation gap.               Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, Inc. 
Meier, D. (1995). The            power of their ideas: Lessons for America from a small school in                Harlem. Boston: Beacon Press. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service               No. ED 388 481) 
Nathan, J., & Febey, K. (2001). Smaller, safer,               saner, successful schools. Washington, DC: National Clearinghouse               for Educational Facilities. Retrieved December 7, 2001, from                    http://www.edfacilities.org/pubs/saneschools.pdf 
National                     Association of Secondary School Principals (1996). Breaking ranks:              Changing an American institution. A Report of the National                      Association of Secondary School Principals in partnership with the              Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching on the high                 school of the 21st century. Reston, VA: Author. 
Public                        Agenda. (2001). Teachers, parents find smaller schools appealing,               but see other education reforms as more pressing. Press release,                September 26, 2001 in advance of the full report to be published in             December 2001 or January 2002. Retrieved December 7, 2001, from                 http://www.publicagenda.org/aboutpa/pdf/small_high_schools.pdf                  
Raywid, M. A. (1999). Current literature on small schools. Eric               Digest. Charleston, WV: ERIC Clearinghouse on Rural Education and               Small Schools. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 425                   049) 
Sizer, T. R. (1984). Horace's compromise. The dilemma of the             American high school. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin. (ERIC Document                  Reproduction Service No. ED 264 171) 
Sizer, T. R. (1996). Horace's            hope: What works for the American high school. Boston:                          Houghton-Mifflin. 
Stiefel, L., Berne, R., Iatarola, P., &                     Fruchter, N. (2000). High school size: Effects on budgets and                   performance in New York City. Educational Evaluation and Policy                 Analysis. 22(1), 27-39. Available online under the title, The                   Effects of Size of Student Body on School Costs and Performance in              New York City High Schools. Retrieved December 7, 2001, from                    http://www.nyu.edu/iesp/publications/publications.html 
Wasley, P.             A., Fine, M., Gladden, M., Holland, N. E., King, S. P., Mosak, E., &            Powell, L. C. (2000). Small schools: Great strides--A study of new              small schools in Chicago. New York: Bank Street College of                      Education. Retrieved December 7, 2001, from                                     http://www.bankstreet.edu/html/news/SmallSchools.pdf 
Wasley, P.               A., & Lear, R. J. (2001). Small schools, real gains. Educational                Leadership. 58(6), 22-27. 
Williams, D. T. (1990). The dimensions              of education: Recent research on school size. Working paper series.             Clemson, SC: Clemson University, Strom Thurmond Institute of                    Government and Public Affairs. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service              No. ED 347 006) 
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Tom Gregory is professor of education at              Indiana University, Bloomington. His research interests include the             impact of school size and school reform. 
This publication was                 prepared with funding from the Office of Educational Research and               Improvement, U.S. Department of Education, under contract no.                   ED-99-CO-0027. The opinions expressed herein do not necessarily                 reflect the positions or policies of OERI, the Department, or AEL.           **Title:** Breaking Up Large High Schools: Five Common (and Understandable)                Errors of Execution. ERIC Digest.                                            **Document Type:** Information Analyses---ERIC Information Analysis Products (IAPs) (071); Information Analyses---ERIC Digests (Selected) in Full Text (073); **Available From:** ERIC/CRESS, P.O. Box 1348, Charleston, WV 25325-1348; Tel:                      800-624-9120 (Toll Free). For full text:                                        http://www.ael.org/eric/digests/edorc01_6.htm.                               **Descriptors:** Educational Environment,  High Schools,  House Plan, School                     Administration,  School Culture,  School Restructuring,  School                 Size, Small Schools                                                          **Identifiers:** ERIC Digests                                                                 
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