Small School Advocates Should Be Cautiously Optimistic

Policy researchers at MDRC recently released a brief with updated findings on New York City’s small public high schools (referred to as small schools of choice, or SSCs, throughout the report). The publication builds on previous MDRC studies by providing data on the college enrollment of four cohorts of students. Its findings? Students who attended small high schools had higher on-time high school graduation rates and higher rates of college enrollment than students who attended other high schools. Data show these findings also hold for students of color, low-income students, and students who entered high school below grade level. While encouraging, does this research indicate that smaller high schools are a silver bullet policy solution?

MDRC used data for roughly 12,000 students across four cohorts (2005-06 through 2008-09) and 84 small schools. Schools are considered small if each grade (9-12) has a maximum of only 100 to 120 students. There are no entrance requirements in NYC’s small public high schools; students rank their first-choice schools, and then are chosen based on a lottery system when more students apply than can be admitted.

The study found that students in SSCs had consistently better outcomes than peers who applied but wound up attending larger high schools. SSC students had a higher graduation rate than their peers in other high schools (72 versus 62 percent, respectively) – a difference of more than 9 percentage points. They were also 8 percentage points more likely to enroll in college than students who attended other public high schools. The gains were particularly high for black male students at small high schools, who were 11 percentage points more likely to enroll in college than black male students in large high schools.

While these findings encourage optimism around the potential of smaller high schools to produce better student outcomes, I think it pays to be cautious about them. Why have small schools in New York succeeded where others have not?

The findings in smaller high schools encourage optimism around their potential, but it pays to be cautious.

MDRC’s brief points out that further analysis of small schools, and particularly of the hallmark features of NYC’s SSCs they identified as important for driving policy decisions, is needed. At least four features make New York’s small high schools unique. First, these schools are in New York City, which is an environment in which innovation, creativity, and education reform are in the air. Second, the small schools were formed through a competitive process with an eye toward innovation. They are not turnaround schools, or simply pieces of larger schools that broke away. They were thoughtfully designed. Third, they had the support of high-profile organizations for funding and implementation. And finally, these schools combine small size with an academically rigorous environment, a focus on relationship-building between faculty and students, great teachers, and an emphasis on the real-world application of skills and learning.

The New York City small schools example suggests that their successes may be a testament to more than just their size—a point that MDRC’s brief repeatedly emphasizes. As a result, we should be wary of extrapolating NYC’s results to other places. For example, NYC’s SSCs foster smaller learning environments as well. Other districts may reduce the number of students without increasing the number of teachers, resulting in large class sizes that mitigate the benefits of small schools.

For two years, I taught in a small high school with students from similar backgrounds as in the New York schools (high proportions of students of color, and those who were low-income and/or performing below grade level), where class sizes tended to hover around 30 students or more per class. This made it difficult to provide targeted instruction for struggling students and to effectively manage the classroom. Other districts seeking to experience the same level of success as NYC’s schools may focus less on community partnerships or quality staffing than the NYC schools have. These distinctions raise an important question: For small high schools to work, do they need to have all of the same essential parts as NYC’s small schools? Or could piecemeal implementation of New York’s model work in other places?

Moreover, while the NYC SSCs have outperformed other high schools in the city, their results indicate they still have a distance to go to be considered a full-fledged success. Some 30 percent of students in New York’s SSCs still do not graduate on time; few academic improvements are seen in students’ performance on math exams; and 31 percent still aren’t enrolling in college upon graduating from high school. Why not? And MDRC’s report also recognizes the need to explore if an increase in students enrolling in college will later translate to an increase in students earning degrees; college enrollment is not the same as college completion. Will it? Before branding small schools as a silver bullet solution, policymakers must grapple with the many questions that remain.