A participatory model for small high schools

by Tim McDermott

Educator and small schools advocate Dennis Littky called for participation in transforming the city’s persistently low-performing high schools during his April appearance at the Philadelphia Education Fund.

Littky highlighted the celebrated Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center (The Met) he co-founded in 1996, in Providence, R.I.

The Met is a cluster of progressive small public high schools whose participatory model is being replicated nationwide through a series of schools overseen by Littky’s organization, the Big Picture Company.

“Philadelphia,” Littky urged, “is as good a place as any to start a school based on The Met Center model. Anyone and everyone can be involved.”

Tim Jenkins, who will be the principal of a Big Picture Company school set to open this fall in Camden, accompanied Littky.

Littky said that normally, students describe school as boring, and even more disturbing, society knows it.

The Met provides students with what they feel is a more relevant life experience, Littky said. Rather than evaluating students by tests, Met schools emphasize development of real-life skills with internships, portfolios, and oral presentations.

At The Met, there are no bells, no police presence, and no violence, Littky said.

Littky credited the Met’s 15 to 1 student/ advisor ratio that allows students to be in situations where they are known. Advisors stay with the same group of students for all four years. A staff of specialists helps students with learning disabilities.

At the heavily low-income-student school in Providence, which serves mostly students of color, 100 percent of graduates have been accepted into colleges, with 80 percent going on to attend.