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Baltimore's 'Innovation Schools' Yield Higher Test Scores

Posted on: Wednesday, 19 December 2007, 06:00 CST

By Greg Toppo

The five-year effort to break Baltimore's big high schools into smaller, more autonomous schools seems to be paying off with better academic results and attendance, offering new evidence backing a reform that has stalled nationwide in recent years.

An analysis released this week by the Washington-based Urban Institute finds that scores on required state math and English tests in the city's six "innovation schools" are higher than those of students in larger comprehensive schools, neighborhood schools and other schools, even after controlling for skill levels before entering high school. On average, innovation high school students score 14 to 30 points higher on a scale from 240 to 650.

The schools also offer more supportive environments, and innovation school students go to school 16 to 40 days more a year than other students.

Innovation high schools basically operate like publicly funded private schools, freed from most restrictions on hiring, curriculum and spending.

But the study, which used student records and student and teacher surveys, also found that they enroll a slightly more accomplished student body, with fewer "academically challenging students" than other schools.

Study author Becky Smerdon says she had been expecting to find larger gaps between students in innovation high schools and those in the city's elite, selective-admissions high schools. The innovation schools, she says, "looked a lot more like the selective schools than I would have expected."

But she also says that even with the improved results, Baltimore students' skills "remain low overall" -- only one in four students who took the state English exam in 2005-2006 passed it.

Reformers over the past decade have touted small high schools, but disappointing results and high expenses in a few big cities have slowed the pace of new efforts. In Baltimore, where the small-schools push began in 2002, a handful of big high schools are still waiting to be broken up.

Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank, says the study is helpful if people can use it to learn from innovative schools' example. "It's not such a good thing if you're seeking a cookie-cutter solution."

USA TODAY has profiled Baltimore Talent Development High School; it is run through a cooperative agreement between the city and Johns Hopkins University.

"One of the reasons innovative schools tend to perform higher is directly related to our autonomy to tailor our programs to match the needs of the majority of our students," says principal Jeffrey Robinson. (c) Copyright 2005 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

Source: USA TODAY

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