Carnegie Reporter, Vol. 4, No. 3 | Small Schools in the Big City: Promising Results Validate Reform Efforts in New York City High Schools, page 5

On the waterfront, directly facing the Statue of Liberty, the area known as Red Hook has been considered one of the city’s toughest corners for ages. But nonprofit organization Good Shepherd Services has long been a bright spot in the neighborhood, providing counseling and youth development, and running community-based education programs. All of which make it an ideal partner for South Brooklyn Community High School—the smallest of small schools, just for truants and dropouts. Here, 150 students ages 16 to 20 benefit from an accelerated program offering the opportunity to earn 15 credits a year, plus an extraordinary support network that extends from school to home and throughout the community.

“Good Shepherd is the engine behind this school,” says history and government teacher Patrick McGillicuddy. “In the past, the city had approached them to run a small program in the basement of John Jay High School, which they did for many years.” Building upon this success, Good Shepherd, New Visions and the Department of Education, designed an innovative school that meets the more rigorous demands for Regents diplomas3 that former dropouts must now meet. The five-year-old school now occupies several levels of Good Shepherd’s modern headquarters, where students enjoy light-filled classrooms, state-of-the-art science and computer labs and a spotless gym on the top floor.

Students who are admitted to the transfer school must be two years off-track for graduation (from course failure or truancy) or have dropped out. They follow a program tailored to their individual needs. Guiding them through the process are advocate/counselors who greet the students at the door every morning, know the details of their lives and help them manage problems. If students don’t show up, their counselor will call to find out why. “The whole school revolves around the fact that it’s the student’s choice to be here,” McGillicuddy explains.

There are a number of signs that this school is different than what students have experienced before; one is that they’re free to call teachers by their first names. Another is the standardized biweekly progress report used to track their performance, which, according to McGillicuddy, makes it quite clear to students what their strengths and weaknesses are, and “transforms ‘Why’d you fail me?’ into ‘Why didn’t you live up to your own expectations?’’’ The school also offers teachers unusually generous latitude to vary the curriculum so that harder-to-reach students find it relevant.

McGillicuddy, who brought a strong background in nontraditional approaches to the school from his prior teaching stint in Hong Kong, was overwhelmed his first year in Brooklyn, when his history and government class “just was not working,” he recalls. Then he decided to try reenacting Supreme Court cases as a way of livening up the lessons, and it took off. “Students finally got past being too cool to care,” he says, “and once that breakthrough happened, I thought, let me turn my whole class into this.” He participated in the Washington, D.C.-based Summer Institute for Teachers run by the nonprofit organization Streetlaw, which brings educators together with justices to talk about their work. He even ended up winning the organization’s Educator Award—and met Sandra Day O’Connor at the presentation ceremony.

Most rewarding of all, McGillicuddy says is that “every year you get to see kids’ lives turn around.” South Brooklyn operates on a three-cycle schedule from September to June, so at the end of each cycle, a group of students becomes eligible to graduate, a good number of them heading off with scholarships to two- and four-year colleges. “These are kids who stand up at graduation and say, ‘My whole life people said I couldn’t do this, but I can and I did.’’’ He adds, “This is a really good job.”

No Easy Answers
When it comes to rescuing failing schools, going small seems to be the best answer. But it’s not an easy answer…nor is it the only answer for all schools. There have been reports of significant bumps in the road since the New Century High Schools Initiative was launched in 2002: Not all community partnerships were sufficiently productive for reasons ranging from unrealistic expectations about their role as partners to inability to cope with school bureaucracy, so some relationships had to be renegotiated or scrapped; other schools’ advisory systems were ineffective at first, meaning more training was required; innovative teaching methods were occasionally lacking, and a few schools have undergone several major leadership changes.

Replacing a huge, troubled high school is a difficult and drastic measure, to be sure. Local residents may resent the loss of a school that’s seen as a central feature of their community—and have little faith that the system will produce a better replacement. Families may object to the phasing-in process when small schools are established, mixing “haves” (students who move into the new school) and “have nots” (those who remain in the old, problem school) in the same building. It takes more than public relations campaigns to win over parents who believe their children are being shortchanged by the system. Only by demonstrating success for students, including investing in students in the phasing-out schools as the DOE had to do, will families come to believe that high schools can be made to function well for their daughters and sons.

What’s clear is that a one-size-fits-all approach to student achievement will never work in New York City, as schools chancellor Joel Klein has observed. The city’s size and diversity call for a system of schools with widely varying characteristics in which all students can earn a Regents diploma and prepare to succeed in college and careers. When neither a large school nor a small one is just right, some schools have found a creative solution. Some mid-performing large schools that aim to achieve the highest graduation rates are redesigning themselves to combine the benefits of both large and small schools—with remarkable results. Hillcrest High School in the borough of Queens, for instance, went from large, lackluster institution to award-winning New York State School of Excellence when it formed small learning communities (SLCs) offering specialized career-focused training in pre-med, business and technology, health careers, public service/law, teaching, theatre and humanities as well as targeted remediation and ELL classes, all under the direction of one principal. The school’s 3,400 students now select one of the seven divisions of less than 500 students each (with its own teaching and guidance staff), or enroll in an immersion program in order to qualify for one of the other SLCs.

“We’ve got the best of both worlds,” says principal Stephen M. Duch. He oversees a team of seven directors, one for each SLC, who have received extensive leadership training from New Visions. They in turn oversee their division’s teachers, making sure their unit adheres to rigorous standards, encouraging innovative solutions to problems and supporting the culture of cooperative learning, intervention and experimentation that keeps the school moving forward. According to Duch, the staff adapted seamlessly to the new organization and interdisciplinary approach, and has remained highly motivated ever since, many teachers going for extra training to become “trailblazers,” as Duch calls them. “This approach isn’t for the worst schools,” Duch advises, “but it can save a marginal one from slipping down and becoming unsalvageable.” Today, a more dynamic Hillcrest enjoys strong support from the highly diverse, mostly middle- and working-class community, with graduation rates just about meeting the Initiative’s 80 percent goal. A recent survey of Hillcrest parents shows that 92 percent expect their children to attend a four-year college after graduation.

Seeing that all New York City high school students meet college and career goals is the New Century High School Initiative’s next objective. An additional $10 million grant from the Corporation aims to help in this effort. “Ambitious, pragmatic reform of urban high school education is possible, and sustaining these gains is essential,” Carnegie Corporation president Vartan Gregorian says, “but the bar must be set higher, and these schools must not only work to maintain high graduation rates but push for even greater achievement.”

“The small schools movement has catalyzed significant change in New York City’s secondary system,” Michelle Cahill adds. “It is proving to be an effective pathway to academic success for many high school students. Now we have to up the ante by strengthening commitment to students’ college readiness and capacity for success. The new grant will help to make curriculum changes and to strengthen leadership and teaching. It will give students greater academic support along with career exploration and training. NCHS is proud of the 78 percent graduation rate that’s been achieved, but college success for all is a new and daunting challenge. New Century is committed to ratcheting up the work in order to achieve college readiness as the norm in every one of its schools.”

Karen Theroux is an editor/writer in the Cor-poration’s Public Affairs department with many years’ experience in educational publishing.