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Schools Deal With Shrinking Pains; Students Aren't the Only Ones Learning As District Creates Smaller Communities

Posted on: Saturday, 12 November 2005, 15:00 CST

By SARAH CARR

LaRoy Saddler, a freshman at the Milwaukee Learning Laboratory & Institute, likes the size of his new school. He likes the teachers, too, who he says "give people a lot of chances."

But he wishes that the school had a swimming program and a basketball team, and he dislikes being "packed into one small hallway" in the midst of Bell Middle School.

The high school reform movement in Milwaukee that led to the creation of Saddler's school is rooted in the concept of staying small, but it is experiencing some growing pains.

A new report on the initiative shows extreme variability, with many boasting attendance rates well above district averages, but some falling below. In general, the schools that struck out on their own are outperforming those that arose when an existing high school, such as Washington, was broken down into a multiplex of smaller schools.

Although overall they are making progress in areas such as attendance and suspensions, the small schools are having little luck thus far in keeping students at their schools from year to year. Last year, the stability rate the percentage of students remaining enrolled between school years for schools in the high school redesign was 51%, while for other high schools it was 65%.

"You're not going to see graduation rates go up 15 percent after two years of having small high schools," said David Coyle, the lead teacher at the Learning Lab, which has an 86% attendance rate, higher than most Milwaukee Public Schools high schools.

"People just need to be patient and ask questions."

Milwaukee became part of a national shift toward small high schools more than two years ago as a way to foster more personal connections, and in the hopes of keeping more students in school. The school district in partnership with other groups received a $17.25 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

A second grant of $2.5 million will go the district and a national non-profit group, the Institute for Research and Reform in Education, to create "small learning communities" but not entirely separate schools in several existing high schools, including Pulaski and Bradley Tech.

Success and challenges

Particularly in the early years, some of the academic and extracurricular diversity of larger schools is sacrificed in the effort to build close-knit learning communities.

At a Milwaukee School Board meeting this week, dozens of teachers, parents and students spoke in support of the small schools. But they also spoke of the challenges. Among other things, the district sends students with severe special education needs to schools without special education teachers, they said, and students are randomly enrolled at schools they know nothing about.

At the Learning Lab, about one-third of the kids who arrived at the start of the school year had special needs. One student's individual education plan stipulated that, because of his cognitive disability, he should receive instruction in a specially outfitted room that the school does not have.

"Our whole idea was to have kids who liked the program and wanted to be here, but we ended up just taking kids to keep the school," Coyle said. Because the school didn't have its charter and location until last spring and started with only a freshman class, only four students were enrolled as of May. Coyle expects recruitment to be easier in the coming years.

Because the curriculum is project-based, students learn different subjects by focusing intensely on one topic for several weeks. On Thursday morning, the students in teacher Kathleen End's class worked on a presentation on how to reduce crime in Milwaukee. The students spent the last month looking at the crime rate from all angles. They learned about everything from a crime reduction plan in New York City, to the "broken windows" theory, which posits that a community's response to minor damage sends a message about whether greater damage will be tolerated, to the lyrics of rap star Tupac Shakur.

End asked how Shakur could be used in their presentation.

"All he does is talk about his life," said one student.

Another added: "No, he talks about changes that need to be made in the world."

End coaxed the students to consider what research will be needed to convince the audience of their arguments.

The concept of project-based learning "is just weird" to a lot of the students at the start, Coyle said. He said the first couple of months have been a learning experience for students and the teachers. "This is professional development right on the job," he said.

Multiplex vs. independent

Yet the independent high schools such as the Learning Lab are faring better than most of the schools in the North Division Multiplex and the Washington Multiplex at least when it comes to attendance.

At the Washington High School of Expeditionary Learning, for instance, the attendance rate for the first six weeks of school was 45.5%, the lowest of all those involved in the redesign.

Douglas Ready, an assistant professor at the University of Oregon who has studied the multiplex model across the country, says it's no surprise that some of the multiplex schools are struggling more.

"In most of these places, the small school reform template is placed on a regular existing high school, and you can do that and not change the culture at all," he said. Whereas, if you are starting from scratch, "you've actually hired teachers that believe in the reform."

At Washington, some of the students say they weren't aware that their school had been turned into three schools over the summer.

Greg Ogunbowale, the administrator in charge of the School of Expeditionary Learning, said the teachers are making progress in recognizing their students and keeping them in their designated hallway for each of the new schools. He said most of the teachers who initially came up with the idea for the program left before it got off the ground, but others decided to keep it going.

Ogunbowale points to the large group of students in detention as a small, if ironic, sign of progress.

In the old Washington High, he said, many of those students wouldn't have bothered showing up for detention. But now they know that their teachers know them and will take the time to call their homes.

Still, he can see that in some ways it might be easier to build a school from scratch. "When you are new, you are starting your own culture."

Here "we have to reacculturate them."

72.5%

Average attendance of MPS high schools in the small school redesign from Sept. 1 to Oct. 15

64.9%

Average attendance of six larger MPS high schools over the same period

Attendance comparisons

Average attendance rates, Sept. 1, 2005, to Oct. 15, 2005

MPS high schools in the small school redesign: 72.5%

Six larger MPS high schools: 64.9%

Washington High School of Expeditionary Learning: 45.5%

Washington High School of Information Technology: 59.7%

Washington High School of Law, Education and Public Service: 52.8%

Source: Milwaukee Public Schools

Copyright 2005, Journal Sentinel Inc. All rights reserved. (Note: This notice does not apply to those news items already copyrighted and received through wire services or other media.)

Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

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