Differences on small school vision emerge

District pushes ahead on plan for 28 new, smaller high schools.

by Sheila Simmons

Is "small" a size or an intimate cultural environment?

Are strong academics the key to success for small schools, or is it equally important to build personal ownership, group accountability, and community engagement?

Whatever the answers to these questions, the School District's multimillion dollar "Small Schools Transition Project" is now underway, promising to create at least 28 new high school options for Philadelphia students by 2008.

Several of the 28 will be new buildings, but most of the small schools are being created by dividing up existing large high schools, making annexes or branches into separate schools, and converting middle schools to high schools.

The District effort to create more small high school choices follows in the path of a national movement that takes aim at high school failure by downsizing big schools to provide a more intimate and manageable learning environment.

Philadelphia's large neighborhood high schools have rebuffed years of reform efforts. Safety issues persist despite zero tolerance policies and growing police forces.

So with three private companies hired as "transition managers," promises of more select magnet schools, and funds taken from the $1.5 billion Capital Improvement Plan, the School District is taking steps to dramatically alter the landscape of its high schools.

But the manner in which the School District is pursuing this highly touted restructuring project has drawn criticism from a number of parties who have high hopes for small schools.

Critics say the District's vision runs counter to national evidence of what has contributed to proven models of small school success. Teachers, principals, students, education advocates and community members - despite the District's avowed outreach efforts - complain of feeling like little more than observers.

Meg Wise, director of Scholars and Civic Engagement for the Philadelphia Education Fund, testified to the School Reform Commission in February that exemplary small schools across the country "succeed because their stakeholders participate in the ways their schools operate day to day and are genuinely engaged in, proud of, and respected by their schools. They are schools of and for the community, and the community was engaged in the process to create them."

Indeed, the District's efforts focus less on the from-the-ground-up, culture-changing concentration of one small school at a time. The District's Small Schools vision more accurately reflects a sort of "Field of Dreams."

CEO Paul Vallas commented, "I look at these schools in this way: build a magnet, and they will come."

Field of Dreams

District officials say the 28 new schools would all have college-preparatory programs and dual-college credit opportunities, and 24 of them would have fewer than 500 students.

Nine would be special-admissions magnet schools, modeled after such exemplary Philadelphia schools as Creative and Performing Arts, Masterman, and even Chicago's Whitney M. Young High School. The remaining 19 schools would boast magnet programs (see School District continues expansion of small high school options).

Fifteen of the schools ("Phase One") are in operation this year, and 13 more ("Phase Two") will be launched in the next three years.