The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funds a 5-year program supporting the start-up of new small high schools of no more than 400 students and the conversion of larger high schools into smaller, more personalized schools or learning communities. This report focuses on the program's first year and compares new small schools, large high schools…

The Community for Learning program (CFL), also known as the Learning City Program, a school-based intervention program, is described. A major premise of this program is that the national standards of educational outcomes can and must be upheld for all students, including those at risk. At the core of the program's design is over 20 years of…

High schools organized into schools-within-schools (SWS) have the capacity to create social capital, a sense of trust and connection among teachers and students that can be used in the service of teaching and learning. These differentiated social groupings, or subunits, can influence members' sense of identity during the transition to high school,…

Schools in East Oakland (California) serving minority groups experienced overcrowding, poor attendance and graduation rates, and violence. Community groups pressured the school district into opening six new, small charter schools and creating schools within schools at the high schools. Cooperation among community groups, the district, and the Bay…

School design must reflect deep-seated changes in educational practices such as using outcome-based education, reorganizing traditional grade structures, grouping students in "houses," and mainstreaming handicapped children. Describes designs for five school buildings that are intended to enhance and undergird what goes on in classrooms.…

Uses space problems of a 15-year-old South Carolina middle school to illustrate the importance of a proper facility-design process. Planning principles such as change of space function, flexibility, accommodation of technology, structural quality, adequate supervision, and proper maintenance should be revisited. Time is a good test of design and…

Research has established that small schools create intimate learning communities where students can be encouraged by caring adults, reduce student alienation, reduce negative effects of low socioeconomic status, and encourage teachers to help students succeed. Strategies for creating small learning communities within large schools and findings on…

In 1969 the Newark, New Jersey, Board of Education began the School Within A School Program for gifted and talented inner-city high school students. The program, offering an eleven-month school year plus five major subjects, uses the resources of business and industry to prepare students for a college education. An advisory board consisting of…

The architects, with the teaching staff, administration, students, and community, worked as a team to make a coordinated statement of the physical, functional, and esthetic proposals for a new school. The space and functional requirements of each teaching area have been documented and analyzed to arrive at a realistic appraisal of need for the…

A 2-year study of small Chicago schools found that small schools, especially small high schools, help students succeed. The study focused on about 150 small schools founded in Chicago during 1990-97 and their progress through 1999. Elementary schools had fewer than 350 students; high schools fewer than 400 students. Quantitative analyses covered…

Growing student diversity, reports and government mandates, ninth-grade transition problems, and middle-school influences have produced new enthusiasm for high-school reorganization. Restructuring approaches such as block scheduling, differentiated instruction, academic teaming, house plans, career academies, heterogeneous grouping, and integrated…

Urban schools' success depends on their responsiveness to student, parent, and community needs. Responsive programs include alternative high-engagement, remedial, or "last-chance" schools; charter schools; full-service schools providing health and social services; immersion programs for single-gender African-American students;…

Project ORDER is a pilot project tested in an urban middle school in Houston, Texas. The program was intended to improve the general school atmosphere; to improve students' attitudes toward the school, its program, faculty, and administration; to show significant improvement in pupil behavior; and to substantially improve teaching-learning…

In 1992, a collaboration of educational reform organizations, the New York City Board of Education, a teachers' union, and private funders created a model of urban high school reform that was practitioner-driven. Two failing high schools, one in Manhattan and one in the Bronx, were phased out while 11 new, small autonomous high schools were…

Increasing numbers of middle school educators believe that the education of young adolescents can be enhanced when teachers and students are members of classrooms and small team groups characterized by long-lasting relationships. This book describes how to offer students the benefits of smallness within increasingly larger schools by ensuring…