Leonie wrote:
A very thoughtful article about the limitations of the small schools movement – esp. now the Gates money is beginning to dry up.
“Jack Gerson, a teacher at Castlemont's Leadership Preparatory Academy and a teacher union leader, said the small schools movement has brought a welcome sense of calm and community to his East Oakland campus. But that's not enough, he said. Students at his school need smaller class sizes, well-supported, well-trained teachers, and interesting lessons that aren't narrowly focused on standardized testing preparation.”
These conditions – especially smaller classes -- were all considered essential to the leaders of the small schools movement when it started years before, but were purposely ignored by the Gates foundation and those intermediary organizations that were eager to take the Gates money, here in NYC and elsewhere.
Oakland's small schools movement, 10 years later
By Katy Murphy
Oakland Tribune
http://www.insidebayarea.com/localnews/ci_12302840
It is often said that there are "two Oaklands," and the city's public education system is no exception to this divide. Some schools are largely attended by the middle class and affluent, and others by the poor and working class. The Interstate 580 freeway, which traces the city's rolling foothills, provides a crude boundary.
About 10 years ago, a group of mothers from the flatlands of East Oakland saw their children languishing in overcrowded, chaotic schools while their peers in the hills received a far different kind of education. Through Oakland Community Organizations, an alliance of community and religious leaders, those concerned mothers and thousands of others pushed for the creation of new, small schools — excellent schools, with innovative practices and high expectations — in their own neighborhoods.
At that time, a movement to create small schools was beginning to catch fire in urban districts across the country. Small schools were touted as a tool to curb sky-high dropout rates and the growing "achievement gap" between poor, often minority students and their middle-class counterparts.
Proponents, including philanthropist Bill Gates, were willing to trade the wide array of course offerings and other resources available at traditional high schools for a more intimate, innovative learning environment. They believed this would give students from
impoverished, violent neighborhoods the extra attention, security and sense of community they needed to succeed, academically.
The Oakland school district signed on. In 2000, the board approved a small schools policy that led to the creation of nine new schools in the first three years. From 2003 to 2007, the district closed seven large, middle and high schools and at least seven elementary schools — those in the city's poorest neighborhoods — and reopened smaller, themed ones in their place. Teachers and principals had to reapply for their jobs.
More than 40 new schools later, the Oakland school district is transformed, at least on the surface. But many of its problems — low test scores, high dropout rates, staff turnover — remain.
Recent studies from Stanford University and Brown University's Annenberg Institute for School Reform have highlighted the successes of the decade-long effort, including its staying power; the movement has survived a state takeover, four superintendents and three state administrators.
"We are poised for a huge breakthrough in the flatlands schools," Lillian Lopez, a prominent parent organizer for Oakland Community Organizations, said at a celebration in April when the Annenberg report was released.
Still, the school district's enrollment has plunged from 55,000 in 2000 to fewer than 40,000 today, a decline most acute in some of the very neighborhoods in which the reform was focused. Since school funding in Oakland is largely driven by enrollment — and since families can choose schools outside their attendance boundaries or one of the city's 32 tuition-free, independently run charters — some of the new schools have struggled financially, eliminating counselors, librarians and key teaching positions.
Such problems, paired with a state budget crisis and an institutional tendency to jettison yesterday's big education reform in favor of the latest trend, have some supporters worried. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which funneled millions of dollars into the effort, has shifted its national focus from small schools to high school reform. The $25 million that fueled the Oakland school district's bold reinvention has run out.
Praise, mixed results
Oakland's new schools are safer, calmer and more welcoming to families than the institutions they replaced, according to surveys conducted by the Annenberg Institute and the dozens of teachers and students interviewed for this story.
Matthew Duffy, principal of Elmhurst Community Prep Middle School in East Oakland, said the transition from a large to a small school has turned him from a "glorified cop" into "an instructional leader." Now, he said, "The conversations I have with teachers are really about teaching."
Some of the new schools in the flatlands, such as Elmhurst Community Prep and ACORN Woodland Elementary in East Oakland and ASCEND in Oakland's predominately Latino Fruitvale neighborhood, have seen their state test scores rise markedly, as have many of the district's traditional elementary schools.
Last spring, the small, Fruitvale-area elementary school Think College Now was named a California Distinguished School at the same time as Hillcrest, an elementary school in one of Oakland's wealthiest neighborhoods. At LIFE Academy, a bioscience-themed high school in East Oakland that opened in 2001, about 40 percent of last year's graduates were admitted into the University of California system, one of the highest acceptance rates in the district.
Other schools have embraced the innovative spirit of the reform. MetWest, a 130-student high school near Laney College that opened in 2002, tossed the traditional high school model aside and instituted student internships and research projects.
Evidence of the movement's effectiveness isn't just anecdotal. In the fall, Linda Darling-Hammond, a researcher from Stanford University, found that students at Oakland's new schools made greater test score gains during the previous three years, on average, than children of similar socioeconomic backgrounds who attended larger schools.
For all the success stories, however, a troubling fact remains: The reading and math scores, particularly those of the district's older students, remain low.
Last year, at all but three of Oakland's new high schools, more than 80 percent of the student body scored either "below basic" or "far below basic" on state math tests, according to an analysis of data provided by the school district's research division.
Dropout rates have improved by most accounts, but they remain high. In fall 2002, for example, the senior class at the old Fremont Federation High School in East Oakland was 62 percent smaller than it had been in the ninth grade. Last fall, the combined 12th-grade enrollment of Fremont's four new, small schools had shrunk by 47 percent over three years — a smaller attrition rate, but still nearly half.
The small schools movement has few vocal critics, but some are disheartened by how their schools have fared in the shuffle. Two of Oakland's new schools, Kizmet Middle School in West Oakland and East Oakland Community High School, were shuttered in 2007 because of low enrollment and other problems. The district recently announced it would phase out three more — BEST High School (McClymonds campus), Paul Robeson School of the Visual & Performing Arts (Fremont campus) and Peralta Creek Middle School (Calvin Simmons campus) — and has signaled that more mergers could follow.
Critics, as well as some supporters, say much of the initial reform effort was consumed by structural and organizational changes, rather than more deeply rooted educational challenges. They note many of Oakland's new schools are grappling with the same old problems: high teacher and principal turnover and limited resources for students — and teachers — who need extra support.
Jack Gerson, a teacher at Castlemont's Leadership Preparatory Academy and a teacher union leader, said the small schools movement has brought a welcome sense of calm and community to his East Oakland campus. But that's not enough, he said. Students at his school need smaller class sizes, well-supported, well-trained teachers, and interesting lessons that aren't narrowly focused on standardized testing preparation.
"You can't just ride on the good feeling," Gerson said. "Eventually you need to provide more, educationally."
One of the central tenets of the movement, for example, is to make it easier for students to form bonds with their teachers, and for teachers to develop closer ties with one another and with the students' families, said LaShawn Route Chatmon, director of the Bay Area Coalition for Equitable Schools, a nonprofit that has played a major role in the effort.
While that has certainly happened to a degree, Route Chatmon said, "It becomes difficult to argue a level of personalization when kids are learning new adults year after year after year." She added, "We cannot underestimate the impact of teacher retention on small schools."
Gerson says his school lost 50 percent of its teaching staff in 2008 and 32 percent in 2007 — not counting instances of teachers who left in the middle of the school year.
The movement's future
Steve Jubb, Route Chatmon's predecessor who described himself, half-jokingly, as "a grandfather to this movement," said he felt as though the school district has been "adrift" during the past 2½ years and he was disappointed with the progress made at some of the small high schools.
"We're still far from the dream that I was holding then and still hold today," he said.
Jubb and other small schools proponents say the healthier, saner environment they have seen in these new startups is a far cry from the legendary chaos that once afflicted some of Oakland's toughest schools. They say with the right focus and imagination, and enough attention to recruiting and supporting teachers, the reform will flourish.
But faced with an increasingly tight and uncertain budget, some Oakland school district officials have publicly contemplated the possibility of closing or merging more schools. "We may need to look at whether we are able to maintain the tiny schools that we are maintaining," interim superintendent Roberta Mayor said at an April 22 school board meeting.
It's not a new proposition. In the fall, Mayor and her staff went around the city, PowerPoint slides in tow, to tell the public how urgently the school system needed to cut expenses. She raised the possibility of closing more than 15 "tiny" schools to save overhead and administrative costs, and was rebuffed. Hundreds of parents, teachers and students, many of them organized by the same group that began the grass-roots movement years ago, made their point. The district backed off.
But Oakland's financial challenges have since deepened, and the district is preparing to hire a new superintendent this spring, whose inclinations are unknown. Troy Flint, the district's spokesman, said a major rollback is unlikely, considering the time, effort and money that has been invested in the reform effort.
"It would be a monumental stupidity, I think, to go backward at this point," Jubb said. He added, "We can't go backward, and we can't stay here."
Showing posts with label small schools. Show all posts
Showing posts with label small schools. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 06, 2009
Monday, July 14, 2008
Big Hurdles for Small Schools
Big Hurdles for Small Schools
by Christopher Jones, Vice President for Research, RPA
Education reform is a tough business. The more it succeeds, the more it runs into internal contradictions. One of the latest reform movements—replacing large elementary and high schools with small neighborhood or theme-based schools—is racking up a growing number of examples with impressive results. Two of these, bothNew York City New York Harbor School Fort Greene New York City New Jersey
by Christopher Jones, Vice President for Research, RPA
Education reform is a tough business. The more it succeeds, the more it runs into internal contradictions. One of the latest reform movements—replacing large elementary and high schools with small neighborhood or theme-based schools—is racking up a growing number of examples with impressive results. Two of these, both
So what’s the problem? Well, it turns out that one of the critical ingredients is a precious commodity that these schools have accumulated. Like metal being pulled toward a powerful magnet, this resource is drawn to the most inspiring schools. Some call it dedication, energy or personal attention. It is all of those things, but if you have to measure it, it comes down to time. It’s teachers and principals working 60-hour weeks. It’s parents stealing time from their jobs and their family to go to parent-teacher conferences, work on school committees and volunteer in the classroom. It’s Department of Education administrators devoting work hours to these new schools because they’ve invested so much in their success. Without a doubt, skilled and creative education professionals can do a lot more with the time they have than others, and without training and experience, dedication will only get you so far. But it’s this often neglected element of work hours – how many education professionals are capable of and willing to put in – that you seldom see in job descriptions but that clearly makes an enormous difference.
From the perspective of education outcomes, the “dedication” model works incredibly well for those schools that are able to attract the staff and families that are able and willing to put in these hours. Small schools have an advantage because they provide a payoff, not only in terms of better test scores and graduation rates, but also in the satisfaction of seeing that you can make a difference and of developing the personal relationships that are possible in smaller communities. And like any other endeavor, the small schools that have the most financial support and the most effective leadership are the ones that are going to attract the parents, teachers and students who are most willing to give of their time.
As successful as this can be for individual schools, there is a big question as to how sustainable and replicable this model is. Will everyone involved—teachers, administrators, parents and students—be able to keep up a herculean effort over time? Are there enough qualified professionals with the motivation and drive to expand this model throughout the system? The School for Law and Justice, for all its success, also highlights these challenges. The energetic principal who guided it through its initial years, is leaving to become an assistant superintendant for a group of charter schools. The school has also lost many teachers, most of whom are in their 20s, to higher paying or less stressful jobs—just as they are gaining the classroom experience to go along with high energy. Few have time to put in these kinds of hours and have children of their own.
When asked about this dilemma, Chancellor Joel Klein responded: “When people are part of the world of changing things for children, they don’t view it as work.” Right. I’d like to give the Chancellor the benefit of the doubt and assume he knows better. No matter how dedicated these professionals are to the cause, it’s hard work, and they still have lives to live and bills to pay. But really, what else could he say? Right now there’s not enough money in the education system to have enough teachers and support staff to give every student all the attention they need, or to compensate those who go well above and beyond their job requirements.
That brings us back to the perennial issue of funding. If we know what works, do we have the political will to give it the resources it needs to succeed on a large scale? Higher salaries, smaller classes and more support would attract more high quality professionals and reduce the level of turnover and burnout.
More dollars are certainly needed, but that’s not the only issue. We also have a fundamental problem with the way that our education system meshes (or doesn’t mesh) with the changing demands of work and family life. We’re not only asking more of teachers and students, we’re also asking more of parents, whether it’s reading more with their children at home or getting involved with their children’s school. This is a good thing, since parental involvement is one of the best predictors of academic success. However, these rising expectations are also coming at a time when there are fewer families with a stay-at-home parent, when work loads and time pressures are increasing in many occupations, and when sleep deprivation seems to be reaching epidemic proportions.
As any working parent knows, it’s difficult to juggle these competing demands. For single parents, it can often be overwhelming. Some of these parents are also the very teachers and principals that we are expecting to come early and work late to make our schools work better. There are no easy answers to these larger conflicts, although better child care options and more flexible work schedules would help a lot. But relying on high expectations and exceptional motivation alone won’t resolve them. In fact, the more we succeed with these tools, the more we will confront their limitations. Dedication, energy and attention are not a zero-sum game, and we can increase the supply with settings that allow them to flourish. But neither are they inexhaustible resources. It is exciting and encouraging that we are finding more ways to inspire students and educators, but that only makes it more urgent that we find the methods and means to sustain and expand our successes.
Monday, November 19, 2007
REPORT RIPS SMALLER HIGH SCHOOLS' DIP-LOW-MAS
Small schools graduate students w/ disproportional no. of lower grade diplomas – that will be ruled out next year.
By YOAV GONEN
November 19, 2007 -- New, smaller high schools graduated 20 percent more students than the citywide average last year, but a report charges that a majority of the grads earned low-standard diplomas that are headed the way of the dinosaur.
A comparison found that 10 New Century High Schools, managed by the reform group New Visions for Public Schools, graduated 78.2 percent of their students in 2006 while 10 similar public high schools graduated 60.6 percent of theirs.
But the D.C.-based Policy Studies Associates' report notes that more than half of New Century's grads earned local diplomas, which require a score of 55, rather than 65, on five Regents exams - and which the state is scrapping starting next year. Only about 30 percent of the traditional-
New Century supporters acknowledge the need to prepare more students to graduate with Regents diplomas, but they note that their schools are saving kids who would otherwise drop out.
Indeed, the report says 17 percent of the traditional schools' Class of 2006 left without graduating, compared to just 3 percent at New Century schools.
Eighty-three New Century High Schools have opened in the city since 2002, many of them on the campuses of large high schools dismantled after years of abysmal graduation rates.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Testimony on the small schools initiative
My testimony Friday on the small schools before the City Council is below.
Bob Hughes of new Visions spoke before me. He made two statements that I disputed in my oral testimony -- and added to the footnotes below.
First, he said that the rooms taken over by the small schools at Kennedy HS had been mostly unused or underutilized. I pointed out that the space he was referring to was used by the Automotive repair program -- one of the best such programs in the city, which kept kids in schools and guaranteed them good paying jobs after graduation.
Despite pleas by students and staff and a great column by Sam Freedman of the NY Times, the program was ruthlessly eliminated to make room for the new small schools. (for this column see http://susanohanian.org/outrage_fetch.php?id=231 )
After astute questioning from Robert Jackson, Hughes also admitted that despite the claim in the WestEd report that the method used to calculate their graduation rates was the same as the state uses, students who were discharged from the small schools to GED programs or alternative schools were not counted as dropouts. Therefore the figures in the WestEd report are as fundamentally unreliable as the city's claim of a 58% graduation rate.
Leonie Haimson
Class Size Matters
124 Waverly Pl.
New York, NY 10011
212-674-7320
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Testimony on the small schools initiative
Leonie Haimson, Class Size Matters
February 16, 2007
The Department of Education and New Visions have been boasting about the success of their small school initiative, and the results of the first crop of small schools in the
But let us take a step back, to the independent evaluation of these same schools, completed in March 2005 by Policy Studies Associates, which New Visions attempted to suppress, until it was leaked to the NY Times nine months later. [2]
By gaining access to records for the entering high school class for which this new WestEd study examines outcomes, the PSA analysis substantiated what DOE officials to this day continue to deny: that these schools enrolled students with better scores, attendance, and grades than the students in the large schools who were left behind.
The students at the small schools had eighth grade math and reading scores significantly higher than their peers in the comparison schools; Only 10% of NCHS students scored below basic in their 8th grade ELA exams, compared with 35% at their host schools -- with a similar disparity in seen in math. Moreover, 97% had been promoted in the prior year, compared with only 59% of the students at the comparison schools.
They had better attendance records (91% compared to 81%), and were less likely to have been suspended. They were much less likely to need special education services. Only 6% of Bronx NCHS students had IEPs, compared with 25% at the comparison schools; and none of the NCHS students had the most serious disabilities.[3] Indeed, teachers at the new small schools praised their principals for "recruiting more high-performing students".
Moreover, since that study was released, more attention has been drawn to the fact that these schools are exempt from enrolling any special education or ELL students for the first two years of their existence. This led to a civil rights complaint by the Citywide Council on High schools, as well as recent reports by the Immigration Coalition, Advocates for Children, and the New York Lawyers for Public Interest, showing the discrimination against these students continues to this day .[4]
Our main concern, however, is the issue of class size, and that all students in NYC public schools receive the smaller classes they need to have a better opportunity to learn.
While class sizes at the larger high schools averaged 30 students or more, class sizes at most of the new small schools were between 13 and 20 students, as the first year PSA evaluation noted. As a result, according to observers, students were on task 82% of the time in any given time. [5]
The fact that these schools provided much smaller classes was observed by students to be their most valuable aspect: students “said that they liked the small class sizes, the willingness of teachers to provide extra help…” Another student said, “I like the close thing with teachers and that you can discuss your problems with them.” According to another, “I like that it’s small, and we each get attention. There’s not one person who doesn’t get attention from our teachers. And they treat us all the same. In a normal high school, they don’t talk to you when you have a problem. They don’t care.” [6]
This contrasted with the dreary picture of conditions at the large high schools. As a student interviewed for the second year evaluation pointed out, "the teachers I have had at other schools never knew me." Another: “My friends are in larger schools and have problems I don’t have, including the problem of teachers who are never available to give extra help.” Indeed, without smaller classes it's hard to see how these small schools could have succeeded in their mission at all. [7]
We now have official DOE class size data to confirm that class sizes are smaller at many of the new small schools than the large schools in which they sit. At Pelham Prep, for example, a school with an openly selective admissions process, most classes average 22-24 students per class, as compared to 27-28 at Columbus HS, in which it is located and has many more high-needs students.
The High school for Teaching and Professions provides classes that range from 20-25 students, as compared to its host school, Walton, which has classes of 29 in most subjects, even though it has been failing for many years.
Yet the small classes as well as the administrative and cluster spaces required by every new school put increased pressure on their host schools, as well as the system as a whole, already severely overcrowded. As noted by the PSA study, many of the host and neighboring schools began operating at 150% capacity as a result, since the “number of 9th graders entering the new schools did not match the number of nine graders being turned away from schools that were being phased out.”[8]
In the PSA report, both teachers and principals noted the hostility from staff and students at the host schools that followed: "According to them, the tension stemmed from host schools being overcrowded and resenting having to give up resources and space to the small schools...Another [teacher] said..."Our students fight with the students from the other schools --- that's the extent of [our relationship with them.]” [9] Clearly, the fact that most of the schools with smaller schools placed within them subsequently became Impact schools was not coincidental.
Many others noted the negative effects of the small schools initiative not only on their "host" schools but on nearby high schools as well -- as a huge influx of transfers, including many "at risk" and special education students who were being excluded from these schools flooded other schools nearby.
See for example, the comments of Robert Leder, principal of Lehman High school, who wrote that "one of the most serious negative results ”of the small schools initiative “ ....has been to transfer thousands of displaced students, often the most at-risk to other, already overcrowded schools."
He reported an increase in 50% of the number of special education students at Lehman, "because of the system's failure to include these students proportionately in the new school registers...
Clearly, the smaller schools appear to have better graduation rates, though the actual figures cited in the WestEd report appear to be significantly inflated, just as DOE’s figures are.[11] But why should this be surprising? If, as we have seen, if the smaller schools enrolled stronger students and provided them with smaller classes, it should be obvious that their outcomes would be more successful than those of other schools.
The more meaningful questions one should ask are the following: is this initiative equitable, has it led to systemwide improvements, and is it sustainable?
I think we can now safely conclude that it is not equitable, if lower-achieving, special education and ELL students are unfairly excluded, and facing even more overcrowded conditions as a result.
Has it led to systemwide improvements? The evidence is not clear. Though the DOE claims graduation rates of 58%, the highest in 20 years, the State Education Department reports that the actual NYC graduation rate is closer to 43%. In addition, high school attendance continues to fall, and discharge and suspension rates have increased sharply over the last four years.
Is it sustainable? Indeed at this point, there is not even an explicit plan on the part of the administration to ensure that the smaller classes provided by these new small schools will survive. As a national evaluation of the Gates-funded schools observed, budget pressures and a lack of sufficient planning led to a sharp increase in class size at two thirds of the schools they studied nationwide in their second and third years, which severely undermined their chance of success.
According to this study, “In school designs dependent on close teacher-student relationships that enable personalized learning, these [class size] increases have a pronounced effect. Teachers frequently cited their ability to spend time one-on-one with students as what makes these schooling environments possible; with more students in each class, such personalized attention became much more difficult to deliver.”[12]
The DOE official class size data reveals that currently, in many of the new small schools, 9th grade classes are significantly larger than 12th grade classes, suggesting that the trend towards increasing class sizes may be occurring in NYC as well.[13]
And what about the majority of
In a New Visions interim report, there is a timeline in which by 2010, "innovative educational methods from NYC's small high schools" are supposed to "improve teaching and learning at the city's traditional high schools." [14] This is critical, since even if its ambitious goal is achieved of 200 new smaller schools, fully two thirds of NYC students will continue to attend larger high schools.
As the class sizes of the small schools appear to be their most successful elements, without a plan to eventually provide smaller classes and more individualized instruction to all high school students, it is difficult to see how this will occur. And yet the administration has no plan to reduce average class size in any grade higher than third – even with more than $5 billion in additional funding. If there is no attempt to reduce class sizes in our large high schools, which average 30 students or more, the small schools initiative will continue to be a zero-sum game, with worse conditions for all of those students locked out and left behind.
I would be remiss if I were not to mention the fact that in the New York State legislature, a bill is about to be introduced by Assembly Members Nolan and Lancman, requiring that a minimum of 25% of the additional state funds our schools will receive over the next four years be used to phase in smaller classes in all grades to levels that exist in the rest of the state.
I hope that this committee, and the Council as a whole, supports this legislation, so that all our children, not just those who attend small schools, will eventually receive the smaller classes they need and deserve.
Thank you for your time.
[1] WestEd, Rethinking High School : Inaugural Graduations at New York City org/online_pubs/gf-07-01.pdf
[2] Michael C. Rubenstein, Elizabeth R. Reisner et.al., “New Century High Schools: Evaluation Findings from the Second Year,” March 16, 2005.
http://www.policyst
David M. Herszenhorn, Study Raises Issues on Small High Schools
New York Times, November 4, 2005; http://www.nytimes.
[3] None of the small school students had the most serious special education diagnoses (autistic, deaf, emotionally disturbed, or brain impaired) while 3% of them did in the comparison schools.
[4] “Small Schools, Few Choices,”
http://www.nylpi.
[5] Elizabeth R. Reisner, et.al., “Evaluation of the New Century High Schools Initiative: Report on Program Implementation in the First Year,” December 15, 2003;
http://www.policyst
“Two classroom features emerging from the classroom observations offer promise for the schools’ future development, however. These are small classes and generally high levels of time on task. The English language arts classes observed for the evaluation averaged 16 students present per class, with most classes serving 13 to 20 students. The largest class we observed numbered 25 students and the smallest class served only one student. During the 249 instructional segments for which data were recorded, an average of 82 percent of students were on task in any given 10-minute segment.” (44)
[6] Ibid, 1st year report, p. 59. More comments from students about the class size at small schools: “Teachers listen to you and get your opinion.” “In a normal high school, they don’t talk to you when you have a problem. They don’t care.” Another student said, “Slipping through the cracks? Not at this school!”
[7] Second Year Evaluation, p.34 .
[8] Ibid., p.4.
[9] Second year evaluation, p. 44. There was good reason for the students at the large schools to feel resentful. Despite the claim made by Robert Hughes in his City Council testimony that there were many unused or underutilized spaces at
[10] See letter from Robert Leder, principal of Lehman HS, to Marlene Filewich, Local Instructional Superintendent, dated March 3, 2005. Deteriorating conditions were observed at many high schools throughout the city as a result of the way in in which the small schools initiative was implemented. See related article by David C. Bloomfield, Professor at
[11] In the WestEd report, there are many confusing and contradictory statements about the methods used to calculate the graduation rates of the small schools. At one point, the authors claim that “the calculations reported are for a four-year cohort as defined by NY State.” Yet according to the testimony of Robert Hughes of New Visions at the NY City Council hearings on February 16 , students discharged to GED programs were not counted in the cohort, which is contrary to the methods used by NY State, the US Dept. of Education, as well as every independent agency, and inflates the results.
[12] These researchers suggested that instead of continuing to establish more new schools, without a plan to sustain the features that make them successful, the Gates foundation and its grantees should instead “focus more of their energy and resources on protecting the schools that have already been started.” American Institutes for Research and SRI International, “Creating Cultures for Learning: Supportive Relationships in New and
[13] The other possible explanation is that large numbers of students are dropping out or have been transferred out of these schools before 12th grade, putting into question their reported graduation rates.
[14] New Visions, “New Century high schools and the small schools movement in
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