|
The following appeared in The Harvard Education Letter, March/April 1998
"Research Favors Small Schools
... there is ... a large body of research showing that when looking at a group of schools of a variety of levels and sizes, there is a powerful relationship between school size and student success - most of which favors smaller schools.
... Education comes through relationships.... You cannot introduce young people to the idea of what being an educated person is all about in the absence of relationships with adults who represent that.
... Numbers can tell how but not why small schools are better. But researchers and small school advocates echo Meier's emphasis on the power of relationships to transform kids. They often use words like connections, trust, engagement, and democracy to describe their school climates.
... small schools work because they `allow close personal relationships between kids and teachers, kids and kids, and teachers and teachers. For many kids, the personal relationships, the sense of community, the power of community, becomes the conduit for learning.'
... `Adults in these schools are relentless in their nagging. You have a culture of teacher perseverance. There are all these stories teachers tell one another in these schools about different kids they dragged kicking and screaming through resistance to produce quality work. The student resistance never goes away, but neither does the perseverance - it's built into the structure of the school.' But Ancess warns that smallness is only one of the necessary elements: `Relationships have to be used as levers for high academic achievement. If you're not going to use them for that, it's a waste of time."'
|
