Is a smaller school always a better school?

The two students transferred together from Washington Irving High School two years ago. Like many urban high schools, the school Frenchie and Taina left behind is overcrowded and struggling. Last year, 2,861 students were enrolled at Washington Irving, according to the school's annual report, bumping it to 105 percent capacity. This year, the city's education department website lists enrollment at 3,070 - in part because it absorbed students forced out when nearby large high schools were broken down into smaller schools.

But as much as reformers are eager to see the end of conditions like those at Washington Irving, most agree that while a school's problems may be aggravated by overcrowding, it's not the only challenge failing schools face.

Small schools are absolutely essential to improving education, especially for inner-city students, says Tom Vander Ark, education director of the Gates Foundation. But he also recognizes that while 'small' creates opportunity for success, it certainly doesn't by itself make success.

Some educators argue that rather than simply mass producing small schools, the entire approach to education must be rethought. Otherwise the result may be what one researcher has called "small schools in drag" - all the problems of a big school reproduced in a smaller package.

"Small was just the door," says Michelle Fine, a professor of psychology and urban education at the City University of New York. "Now I think people are worried that people are just creating smaller versions of what we know to be problematic structures."

Of 145 small schools visited by insideschools.org, an independent group that evaluates New York City schools, director Clara Hemphill writes that about one-quarter "replicated many of the problems of the large schools they replaced." These problems include low achievement and demoralized students and staff.

Others worry that the current trend toward judging schools based on standardized test scores will work against the individual approach to education of many small schools. "Information retrieval" and "formulaic writing" clash with what the best small schools offer, says Urban Academy codirector Ann Cook. "Assessment in the end will undo and ruin the promise of small schools," she predicts.

Small schools are not new to the US. Before the 1950s - when the model of the large, comprehensive high school took hold - small schools were the norm. In the 1990s, the national Annenberg Challenge led to the re-creation of small schools across the country.

In the wake of the 1999 school shootings at Columbine High in Colorado, the US Department of Education started a grant program to foster the development of smaller communities within large schools. But never has the cause of small schools been taken up with so much gusto and enthusiasm as in the past few years.

For her part, Meier worries that this breathless drive - and unrealistic expectations - may set small schools up for failure. "Every time we have a good [education-reform] idea that we don't do well," she says, "it increases the cynicism."

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