Come Clean on Small Schools
Big foundations’ history of imposing big ideas on American urban public education is littered with failure. In the 1960s, the Ford Foundation bankrolled community control in New York City. Thirty-five years of mediocrity followed, and in reaction, that system has been replaced by the strongest model of mayoral control in the nation. In the 1990s, the Annenberg Challenge poured hundreds of millions of dollars into education reform without noticeable systemwide impact on student performance. Today, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is leading the charge to reform high schools by reorganizing them into small learning communities. The results in those schools are mixed at best, and fail to tell the story of whole systems—hundreds of thousands of students—disrupted by this ill-planned venture.
But perhaps the most troubling aspects of the Gates program are its failure to engage in any semblance of public accountability, its history of secret evaluations, and its disowning of responsibility for the harm it has caused.
I assume that the Gates work is well-intentioned. But the research underpinnings, while promising, are weak, hardly justifying the billions heaped upon school districts to scale up the design. Like Tribbles, those cuddly “Star Trek” creatures that created havoc when they multiplied, small schools are wildly attractive. To the lay mind, they appear more manageable and less threatening than the stereotypical “blackboard jungle.” Some have achieved astounding results. Well-regarded educators like Deborah Meier have demonstrated their potential impact on closing the achievement gap. They increase...
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