Faced with state and federal mandates to reverse the course of failing rural schools--in some cases, by replacing teachers and principals--districts and researchers say just finding bodies for empty spots is no longer enough. Increasingly, money and attention are turning toward programs that hand-pick promising rural teaching candidates and school…

Even in Lynnville-Sully Elementary School school with just 188 pupils, it was hard for teachers to offer intensive instruction to children who needed extra help while juggling the needs of the rest of their students. The school's reading-support staff created lesson plans that didn't always relate to regular classroom work. Teachers felt they had…

The impending closure of the Manual Education Complex in Denver is sparking a conversation about what can be learned from the experience at a time when the nation has pinned high hopes on improving secondary schools by turning them into smaller, more personalized environments. The Denver high school, which subdivided into three schools in 2001,…

A major strand in the current national push to improve secondary education is the movement to scale down schools into smaller, more personalized units, especially for students facing the greatest obstacles to success. Hundreds of small schools and learning communities have cropped up in recent years, famously helped along by the Bill & Melinda…

A coalition of small high schools in New York state is challenging the notion that using standardized tests and curricula is the best way to prepare all students for college-level work. The New York Performance Standards Consortium is a network of 40 schools that have agreed to use common performance assessments as a requirement for graduation,…

Explains how the West Clermont Local School District (Cincinnati) turned both its high schools into six smaller schools and improved educational quality. Community and parental involvement are addressed as is a discussion on school size versus academic improvement. (GR)

New York City is far from alone in embracing the concept of smaller, more personalized high schools committed to challenging academic standards for all students. Thanks in part to an outpouring of philanthropic and federal funding, school districts across the country are opening new small high schools and breaking down existing ones into smaller…

Major initiatives in New York City and Chicago to close unsuccessful schools and create small schools in their wake are stirring criticism from some community activists, local politicians, and others. Critics charge that the growing scale of the efforts is producing negative ripple effects on other schools in these cities. In Chicago, the chief…

Examines the apparent disconnect between society's view that smaller schools are better and the continuing trend to build larger schools. Discusses the pros and cons of smaller versus larger schools. (GR)

At Midway High School (Kansas) and other small schools of the Midwest and West, eight-man football is the biggest show in town, allowing participation by many students and rousing community support for the school. Supporters say the teams are essential to school and community identity. In Kansas, however, special state funding that keeps small…

Prodded by an outpouring of philanthropic and federal largess, school districts and even some states are downsizing public high schools to combat high dropout rates and low levels of student achievement, especially in big- city school systems. For longtime proponents of small schools, the upswell in support for their ideas is making for heady…

Chicago is embarking on a major initiative to convert at least 10 percent of its schools into small schools, most of which will be run by private operators. Mayor Richard M. Daley portrayed his plan, called Renaissance 2010, as a way to "shake up the system," introduce fresh ideas that could save its lowest-performing schools, and…

In 1954, when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in "Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka," the South Lawndale neighborhood on Chicago's southwest side was home primarily to Polish and Czech immigrants. In the decades since, South Lawndale has undergone dramatic change. Eastern Europeans moved out, and people of Mexican…

Five years into an eight-year study of its high school improvement efforts, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is shifting its strategy for evaluating the $1.3 billion grant program. The foundation's initiative, which is underwriting change efforts in more than 1,800 schools, is the nation's largest privately funded attempt to improve high…

This article reports the results of the evaluation on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's national high school initiative. The new evaluation offers a decidedly mixed picture of the early returns the foundation is getting from the roughly $1 billion it has invested in the initiative so far. The in-depth study, commissioned by the foundation,…