A study of enrollment forecasting procedures in Los Angeles County has yielded data that provide guidelines for making accurate enrollment projections. (WD)

High school attendance rates are affected by the size of the school, the percentage of required courses offered as phase electives, and the population density of the community. (IRT)

Presents several questions and answers about small high schools based on Public Agenda (a nonprofit research organization in New York City) survey of 920 public high school teachers and 801 parents of students enrolled in public high schools. Discusses community issues related to reducing school size. (PKP)

Student dropout rates of 272 public secondary schools of different sizes and organizations are compared using analysis of variance. Results are interpreted to support the suggestion that a secondary school can reduce its dropout rate by keeping the total enrollment over 400 students and by including grades 7 through 12. (MJL)

Redesigning education to recreate an ecologically sustainable community is a critical societal need. Educators should focus not on technological fixes, but on formulating new cultural assumptions. As Wendell Berry realized, genuine improvement will begin only in the country. Rural schools should stop emulating urban and suburban schools and attend…

Despite their reputation for excellence, private schools cannot absorb the burden of educating all youngsters desiring to flee public education. Private schools are expensive and succeed because of effective leadership, small school size, and parent involvement. Public schools must be freed from the stranglehold of teacher unions and central…

Argues that educators must "think outside the box" to improve school performance. Suggests several areas for expanded thought, including school size, curriculum coverage, grading practices, use of time, organization of students, time management, and belief statement. (PKP)

Using 8th-, 10th-, and 12th-grade data for the same students from the 1988 National Education Longitudinal Study, researchers examined achievement growth for schools with 100 to 2,800 students. Math achievement rises as school size increases to about 600 students, holds steady to about 900 students, and then diminishes. Overall, students gained…

According to the 21st annual Gallup/Phi Delta Kappa poll, the public favors school choice, a more standardized national curriculum, improvement of public school quality in poorer and innercity areas, reduction of class size in early grades, afternoon school and summer programs for children of working parents, and increased state and federal…

The following are the 10 top problems of the public schools as viewed by the public: lack of discipline; integration/busing; lack of proper financial support; difficulty in getting "good teachers"; size of school/classes; use of drugs; poor curriculum; crime; lack of proper facilities; and pupils' lack of interest. (Author)

In attempting to adopt characteristics of free schools, the public schools adopted teaching methods. This attempt failed to caputre the essence of free schools because what was innovative about them was political--changes in administration and organization--rather than pedagogical. (Author/IRT)

Highly visible roster of villains--people who have retarded or damaged public education--would encourage those in power to exercise more perspicacity. Top baddies are Congress (for lobbying for curative instead of preventive programs), Lewis Terman (for advocating tracking), James Bryant Conant (for advising high schools to become larger). All…

The content of public education policy will increasingly be concerned with the organization and operation of schools. A plan that might meet the needs of this area is school-site management, which involves a shift of decision-making responsibility from the school district to the school site. (Author/IRT)

This document examines rural education in the member nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Within these nations the range of conditions and communities that are called rural is enormous. Nevertheless, the allocation of human and financial resources to rural education has increased despite generally adverse economic…

Large school size adversely affects attendance, school climate, student involvement. Dividing large schools into small units creates a learning and teaching context that is more stable, intimate, supportive, interdisciplinary. Kohn-Holweide, a comprehensive German secondary school, groups all students at a given grade level with the same teachers…