Many such schools exist in our big cities. But not enough.
Size alone is one problem.
High school students in the 74 big-city districts examined by Quality Counts are 25 percent more likely than the average U.S. teenager to attend a school with more than 900 students. Many of these giant schools resemble vast warehouses where students float anonymously through what passes for an education. Where they can skip school and no one will notice. Where the first sight to greet them when they walk through the door each morning is a metal detector or a police officer checking for weapons. In November, the principal of a Baltimore high school suspended 1,200 of the school's 1,800 students after they refused to return to their homerooms to pick up their report cards.