Breaking up schools resisted
By Julia Silverman
Associated Press
LEBANON, Ore. — Hopes were high in this blue-collar town when Lebanon High was broken up into four smaller schools-within-a-school to try to reduce the dropout rate.
At the time, in 2004, the small-schools movement was growing across the country, and it had a powerful backer in Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
But just two years later, complaints from parents and educators have put the future of small schools in jeopardy in Lebanon and across the country.
"We made a mistake trying to push autonomy really hard, and the community blew back at us," said Mark Whitson, a journalism teacher at Lebanon High School. "Parents want us to slow our pace of change until they know what we are doing."
The small-schools concept calls for dividing large high schools into groups of about 300 students with similar academic interests. (Lebanon was divided into "academies" devoted to communications; farming, natural resources and health; arts, business, community and family affairs; and engineering and other technical fields.)
The groups then take classes together for four years, with the same teachers. Proponents say students learn more because they and their teachers get to know each other better.
The concept is being tried in some of Hawai'i's larger high schools.
In Lebanon, scheduling problems abounded and test scores did not budge. Many feared that the student body was becoming too fragmented, a particularly touchy subject in a town where community is forged on the football field and at graduation ceremonies.
Some students were upset at being separated from friends who had been assigned to other "learning academies." Others complained that their choice of courses had been narrowed.
"It really ticked me off," said Dallas Oeder, 16. "I couldn't take all the classes I wanted to."
Parents also fretted that their children were being asked to make decisions about their career paths at the tender age of 14. And in a lumber-mill town, there was outrage that the new system was focused more on college-prep classes than on vocational education.
The complaints were so strong that a Gates-backed nonprofit group withdrew a grant worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, citing the lack of community support.
Other districts have suffered bumpy transitions, too:
Some Honolulu parents have taken their complaints about the way the new system was implemented, saying it doesn't work for all students, including gifted and talented students, to the Board of Education.
Parent Grant Kashiwada said the implementation and design of the smaller learning community was flawed.
"The SLC concept should not be forced upon all of the students, and one curriculum should not be made to fit the bill for all students," Kashiwada told the board in recent testimony.
Kalani principal Randiann Porras-Tang said the results of the small learning community to date have been very good, and she was convinced those who may be unhappy are opposing certain teaching strategies or curriculum rather than the overall concept.
However, she said, "We always have to go back and do reflection about what works and what we can do better."
The small-schools movement has posted some high-profile successes, including in Hawai'i where early analysis shows at least one important change — fewer ninth-graders are being retained in freshmen year in many schools experimenting with small learning communities.
In New York City, the graduation rate at 15 schools that adopted the small-school model shot up to 73 percent this year after previously hovering between 31 percent to 51 percent.
Marie Groark, a senior policy adviser at the Gates Foundation, said going small is not "a magic bullet." In districts where the proposal has failed or suffered setbacks, it is largely "because somewhere along the way, there wasn't full support."
Lebanon Superintendent Jim Robinson conceded that some changes will need to be made, such as restoring some vocational courses. But he said the district will forge ahead without the Gates grant.
"We are staying with it," he said.
Advertiser education reporter Beverly Creamer contributed to this report.
