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From: Research Reports
Date: 18 Aug 2004
Time: 19:37:44 -0400
Remote Name: 172.201.95.35
The "super-sized" high school trend has been well documented nationwide, as districts began building larger schools during the l960s (The Conant Report) to help keep costs down while increasing academic offerings. But subsequent research showed that smaller schools, those with 500 or fewer students, often spur significant achievement gains. That led districts to scale back. Much of the current movement to build small schools is financed by private donors. Last year, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation donated more than $51 million to build 67 small high schools in New York City. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, about one of every six US students attend a large urban school. Although large schools typically offer a broader curriculum research shows that some students flounder in the expansive settings. Smaller schools also aid in narrowing the achievement gap between White middle-class or affluent students and ethnic minority or poor students (Education Commission of the States). Opening smaller performance high schools could prove fortuitous in Robeson County where the majority of students are of ethnic minority background and in a district with the highest rate of school dropouts in the State of North Carolina (Asian l7.9%; Black 42.2%; Hispanic 40.2%; Indian 52%, and White 27.2%. (Harvard Civil Rights Project - 4-Year Attrition Rate 2000-02 to 2003-2004 - Four-Year Graduation Rates). Boosting specialized education options could help turn the devastating attrition rate around. Performance schools (comparable to magnet schools for which Robeson County is not eligible because it does not have either a court-ordered or voluntary school desegregation plan) could be a "win win" for our schools. Renovating blighted existing structures and investing in some of the plants and facilities that have been closed could significantly impact costs for expanding new buildings as high schools get larger and larger at the load in but not in the out put. Performance schools would not be vocational schools, but they would be specialized academic schools where students would likely earn community college credit toward such courses as nursing, business, science or teacher assistant degrees. Better known in North Carolina as "middle-college" programs, it expands on the Community College's outreach programs for GED and ABE and partners with the public schools to provide options to dropping out of school. Even if some jobs do not require college degrees, such performance schools could increase chances of being hired and promoted later for many students who fail to pursue options other than dropping out of school. Some unique performance schools have been First Responder Academies, Computer-Based High Schools, Bioscience Technology High Schools, and just a focused high school on core academics. Isn't it time to think outside the box? Or will we continue to get lost in deciding whose box we'll look at, which box we will use, what color box, what size box, and whose holding the box while our children continue to depart from our schools.