Describes how a very small yearbook staff in a small high school worked through the year to produce a yearbook that preserved that year's history. (TJ)

Addresses differences in job satisfaction among 416 principals in Newfoundland and Labrador. Reports that principals of small and intermediate schools in small communities have significantly lower satisfaction than principals of large schools in large communities, overall and for 13 of 20 satisfaction factors. Contains 13 references. (SV)

Notes that most small rural school counseling programs will continue to face resource shortages, but suggests that school counselors can solve many of their problems, expand their services, and increase their resources when they shift their role emphasis from being service providers to being leaders. Discusses the leadership challenge for these…

As a followup to a 1963 study, 2 University of Oregon education professors traveled to 25 small towns to uncover today's adolescents' attitudes toward school and teachers. Like their 1963 counterparts, today's students are more concerned about relationships with teachers than curriculum, homework, and tests--attitudes ignored by current reform…

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…

Since 2002, the New York City Department of Education (DOE) has attempted to reverse the city's severe drop-out crisis through a large scale restructuring of high schools, focused mainly on closing large, comprehensive high schools and replacing them with small high schools that offer a more personalized learning environment. Unfortunately, this…

Charter school administrators weathered start-up woes, among them challenging students with unmet needs, verbal assaults, dwindling student enrollment, and a first-year budget deficit exceeding $200,000 to implement a reading improvement strategy that holds promise for helping at-risk students read better, a point particularly underscored…

This report examines the impact of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) on student achievement and teacher quality in rural school districts and the challenges those rural districts face in complying with the Act. It also analyzes differences in responses to NCLB between rural districts and urban or suburban districts. Findings are drawn from the…

In an era of prolific funding for varied small-school models, there is a growing emphasis on schools that alter the landscape of educational design. Some of these models attempt to redesign schools to place students at the center of learning and provide powerful examples of very different ways of thinking about teaching and learning (some examples…

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…

Democratic trends paint a seemingly bleak picture for small schools. Declining school enrollments and school closures have led to an unprecedented trend towards school closures and amalgamation of schools across Canada. Since student enrollment is the most common basis for funding formulas in Canada, small schools typically receive a smaller…

The ills of urban schools are well documented. The challenges of recruiting and retaining quality teachers, student mobility, poor conditions of school facilitates, and lack of parent involvement are only a few of the issues related to urban schools. Large comprehensive high schools are a staple of many urban school districts. This model of…