Small Schools Hard To Start, Report Finds

By Caroline Hendrie

A new evaluation of a national grant program to create smaller, more personalized high schools concludes that the initiative is yielding some promising early results. But it also finds that getting the new high schools off the ground is proving harder than expected.

Jointly conducted by two prominent research organizations, the study charts the progress of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's effort to support the launch of hundreds of new, small high schools and convert hundreds of large high schools into smaller units. To date, the foundation has committed $400 million to the program.

"The road to significant, lasting high school reform is both long and bumpy," says the study, which was scheduled to be released in Chicago this week at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association. "School staff need to prioritize the issues they will address, and funders and supporters need to be patient backers if this groundbreaking...