New Vision:
Crossroads Section
It’s a matter of scale
Smaller high schools work better
By DANIEL GREGO
Visit an eighth-grade classroom in the city of Milwaukee and ask 10 students to stand. Look them in the eyes.
Now guess which five or six will graduate from high school. If the 10 on their feet are African-American males, try to predict which three will earn diplomas. Instead of the usual economic calculation of the annual “cost per student,” consider the “cost per graduate.”
Can we afford to continue an approach to secondary education producing these results?
It is not that high school teachers and administrators in the current system do not care or do not work hard. They do. However, our large comprehensive high schools were never designed to educate all students to high standards.
As educational historian Joel Spring pointed out, in an industrial economy, high schools functioned as “sorting machines,” separating those who would go to college and into management and the professions from those who would work in factories. It is not a coincidence large high schools often resemble factories.
The economy has changed. Our approach to secondary education has not. Thomas Vander Ark, executive director for education at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, wrote, “Our (comprehensive high) schools are not failing - they are obsolete.”
How should we replace them? What are the purposes of secondary education in the 21st century?
If we want all of our children to learn to use their minds well, to read with comprehension, to write clearly and persuasively and to think critically; if we want all of our young people to engage in what radical educator Paulo Freire called “the practice of freedom”; if we want all of our adolescents to make a successful transition to productive adulthood equipped for real economic opportunities, we have to create ways to ensure they all graduate from high school ready for college, ready for work and prepared to be contributing citizens.
We need a new vision of secondary education in Milwaukee. Small schools are part of that new vision.
Ted Sizer, founder of the Coalition of Essential Schools, has argued for two decades that to teach students well, teachers must get to know students well. That cannot happen for all students in the large, comprehensive high schools.
Some young people thrive in them: academically gifted students, star athletes, extroverts. However, too many students remain anonymous, just tolerating school until they can get on with their lives. Far too many disengage completely and drop out.
We will never reach the goal of leaving no child behind by perpetuating a system that leaves so many students unknown. We need to create learning environments where everybody can be a somebody and nobody is a nobody.
Strong relationships are crucial to adolescent development. When relationships are strong, we can demand more from high school students, and they can expect more from us. Across the United States, teenagers are literally dying because we are not asking them to learn and work for the common good.
We cannot afford to continue to waste their talents and energy. It is time we told all the young people in Milwaukee they matter. We need them. Working with a diversity of adults is certainly one of the best ways to educate them.
Teachers also benefit from small schools. Teachers working in large high schools who transfer to (or, better yet, create) small high schools discover the freedom to do what they entered the profession to do: help young people create their identities, develop their minds and chart a course to responsible maturity. The small schools movement provides opportunities for teachers to work in (or create) the schools they dream of working in.
Good teachers know there is no one best way to educate all adolescents. We have to make room for many different kinds of schools. There may be “great books” schools, schools that focus on science and technology, arts schools, schools centered on ecology and environmental studies. There may be military-like academies, schools with very specific teacher-created curricula or schools that are student-centered and project-based.
To be successful, however, all schools will have to become communities of learners with a shared focus, a common mission and a consistent philosophy that provide the rigor, relevance and relationships adolescents need.
One of the major problems with the larger high schools is that teachers are hired based on their content expertise, not on whether or not they share a common philosophy. Seniority often determines whether they stay at a school or move on. Well-intentioned professionals clash over the direction of the school, or there simply is no direction at all.
A successful school is like a symphony orchestra. Although different people will play different instruments, everyone has to be playing the same piece and in tune. Harmony is much easier to achieve when a school is small.
In Milwaukee, we have created many ways small schools can be started and sustained, an entire ecosystem of governance structures.
The Milwaukee Common Council, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee Area Technical College and Milwaukee Public Schools can sponsor charter schools. If low-income parents prefer religious or other types of private schools for their children, the Milwaukee parental choice program provides the resources needed to make those choices.
The MPS Board of School Directors has endorsed Superintendent William Andrekopoulos’ bold blueprint to reorganize high schools and create many different types of small schools.
This diversity is our strength. It offers ways for more of the public to become more fully involved in the education of our children.
Small schools are necessary for achieving a new vision of secondary education, but simply creating new schools or shrinking existing ones is not sufficient. Education is the work of the entire community, all of us. Young people are learning all the time: from their families, their neighbors, their peers, the media, as well as in schools.
Whether we admit it or not, we are all already part of the educative process. We must embrace that responsibility. It really does take an entire village to raise healthy children.
To succeed with our youth, the entire Milwaukee community will have to rethink its approach to education.
Daniel Grego is the executive director of TransCenter for Youth Inc., a non-profit agency that operates Shalom High School, NOVA, El Puente High School, The CITIES Project and the Technical Assistance & Leadership Center (TALC New Vision).
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