Schools Within Schools
by Donna Garner
November 22, 2003

Bill Gates and Dell Computer have gone together to pump $55 M into the Texas High School Project. The education establishment in Texas is ecstatic -- more money is coming their way. The one problem: Strings are attached. One of these strings is that schools which apply for the grants will have to cap their enrollments at 400 students. I like the idea of having small high schools, but I don't like the idea of breaking down already-in-existence high schools into "Schools Within Schools" (SWS.)

In the SWS model, high schools that are over 400 students must be broken into "houses." Each house has a principal, a counselor, a set of teachers, and a set of students (9th - 12th). Each house, for instance, contains four English teachers (I, II, III, IV), four math, four science, four social studies, etc. Students in a house will take classes from the teachers who are a part of that particular house; this is to help teachers and students to develop positive relationships which will continue from year to year. The idea is to make students feel they are important individuals rather than just a number on a list.

The premise of SWS sounds great, and I can see why people would applaud such an idea. After all, students need mentoring. They need caring adults to take a personal interest in them and to help them plan for the future. Students need to feel connected to their schools, and it is this feeling of connectedness and self-worth which may help teens to avoid risky behaviors.

The idea is sound, but it is in the nuts and bolts that the system breaks down. Why must there always be a downside when it comes to a new education fad? Maybe classroom teachers who work each day in the trenches with the students need to be made a vital part of the brainstorming sessions before the education fads are promoted to the public.

In education there are several guiding principles which must not be defied. One of these principles is this: In order for teachers to coordinate their efforts, their curriculum, and to strengthen departmental policies which increase learning and decrease grade inflation, teachers who teach the same courses must be given the opportunity to align themselves on a daily basis; this is called horizontal alignment. (It is similar to a group of dentists getting together frequently to make sure they are all keeping up with the latest techniques.)

For the sake of the students, it is terribly important for English I teachers to communicate regularly with other English I teachers. English I teachers gain strength and insight from their fellow colleagues who also teach English I. They share grading standards, questions, comments, ideas, and changes with one another to make sure that all students are receiving the same level of delivery. Many times these important exchanges are done informally, perhaps even between classes, since in the traditional school configuration, English I teachers are usually located in close proximity to each other in the school building.

In the SWS model, an English I teacher is not put in the same house with other English I teachers; he is not even put in close proximity in the school building to other English I teachers. He is located close to teachers assigned to the same house but who teach English II, III, and IV. Because the curriculum and the needs of students varies tremendously at each grade level, it does little good on a daily basis for an English I teacher to dialogue with English II, III, and IV teachers. English IV teachers have very different problems from those of a freshman English teacher. English I teachers are dealing with freshmen who have their own particular set of difficulties. (Dentists need to spend their valuable time meeting with other dentists rather than meeting with cardiologists, podiatrists, or brain surgeons.)

Typically the early high school years are spent teaching students the more explicit, foundational skills while the later high school years are dedicated to the teaching of more sophisticated concepts. Vertical alignment (French I - IV) should definitely take place within departments at various times during the school year, but it is horizontal alignment which must take place daily for teachers to make sure they are covering and evaluating the curriculum similarly.

Can an English III teacher draw support and strength from a U. S. History teacher who is in his same house? They can certainly try to encourage each other; but because of the course content each teaches, their problems are very different. Even if they share the same students, the problems faced by an English III teacher who is teaching five strands of curriculum (composition, literature/reading, grammar, spelling, and vocabulary) per course are very different from a U. S. History teacher who is teaching one strand of curriculum, usually chronologically organized. A calculus teacher has a very different set of problems compared to those of a Biology I teacher. A German teacher has very different concerns from those of a journalism teacher, a physical education teacher, or an art teacher.

The Schools Within Schools model destroys horizontal alignment because teachers are physically located in the school building within close proximity to those teachers who are in the same house. Their planning period is scheduled with the teachers in their same house. Teachers meet with the principal and counselor in their own house. All business is basically handled through the house model which breaks down interactions and communication with faculty members in the other houses. Teachers who teach in a SWS model typically end up feeling very isolated from their fellow teachers who teach the same subjects they teach but in other houses. When the house system prevents teachers from doing day-to-day horizontal alignment, the tendency is for them simply to seclude themselves in their own classrooms, thus hindering one of the supposed advantages to SWS -- better communication.

Another big disadvantage at the high school level of SWS is the course-scheduling problem. What high school is big enough to have four Advanced Placement English teachers (I, II, III, IV) in it? How many schools have a big enough high school staff to have four Spanish teachers (I, II, III, IV), four French teachers (I, II, III, IV), four German teachers, four Advanced Placement math teachers, four choir teachers, and four art teachers all in the same house? The reality is that a house will have only one calculus teacher in it, but many of the students in the house will never take calculus. How can a calculus teacher truly be a role model or mentor to a student who never even takes the teacher's class?

For the fundamental idea of the house to work effectively (providing opportunities for students, teachers, principals, and counselors to establish close relationships with each other), the same students are supposed to stay within the house for four years. However, it is obvious that the whole principle of SWS breaks down over elective offerings. There is no way that most high school students are going to be able to schedule all their required courses (9-12) from among the teachers assigned to their houses; therefore, students are forced to break out of their houses, particularly for electives.

Then, too, there is the problem with students who fail classes and have to repeat them (e.g., those who have to take both English I and II during the same semester). Scheduling those students within their houses is almost impossible. What happens to new students who may not be taking the same track of classes that the majority of their fellow house students is taking? As the high school years go by, many students are forced to break out of their houses; and the whole basis for establishing houses is lost.

If a student is forced to break out of his house because of scheduling conflicts, who is his principal? Who is his counselor? Is he assigned to the principal who was over his original house, or does he go to the principal who is over the new house? Who is the student's counselor? Is it the person with whom he established a trusting relationship while residing in his last house, or must he form another relationship with the counselor assigned to his new house? If the student changes to a different principal or to a different counselor, all past advantages of a personal relationship are lost; and the whole reason for SWS is lost.

At best, course credits and scheduling are nightmares at the high school level particularly with the ever-changing state-mandated graduation requirements. To add yet another limiting factor such as keeping students within a certain house makes scheduling almost impossible. Each time a student breaks out of a house, the whole premise of SWS is diluted. Add to that the definite problem of teachers being prevented from doing horizontal alignment on a day-to-day basis, and you have real grounds for asking the question, "Of what value is Schools Within Schools anyway?" I appreciate Gates and Dell wanting to help students achieve, but I wish they were spending their time and money on something else besides the Schools Within Schools model.

Donna Garner wgarner1@hot.rr.com
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Gates Gets His Revenge
By ANDREW WOLF awolf@nysun.com , NY SUN, October 17, 2003

William Gates came to town recently bearing a $51 million gift to help create new small high schools in New York out of the much larger failing ones, schools that parents and students alike have come to loathe and fear. To me, it looks like Mr. Gates is finally getting revenge on his old nemesis, the schools chancellor, Joel Klein, who led the Clinton administration's antitrust effort against Microsoft.

To say that New York City's high schools are in trouble is an enormous understatement. Unfortunately, the answer to fixing the high schools will not be found in slicing and dicing all of the existing schools into new cutesy themebased mini-schools.

The answer to our high school dilemma will come when we fix the education that we are providing to our children, from kindergarten through the 8th grade. It is a sad reality that while small victories can sometimes be realized working with older students, it is exceedingly difficult for these kids to "catch up" once they arrive in high school.

The enthusiasm for these small schools is understandable, at least on the surface.After all,smaller seems better than bigger, and the big schools have been synonymous with failure and violence. However, the Daily News recently demonstrated no difference in test results between the old big schools and the new mini-schools. Unquestionably, there will be success stories, but the path the city is choosing,the advice they are taking, and the personnel they are selecting almost ensure that there will be far more failures than successes.

One has to be suspicious of schools such as the Acorn High School for Social Justice (affiliated with Acorn,one of the city's most radical political groups), the El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice (immortalized by Heather Mac Donald for offering Hip-Hop 101 and instructing children in the fine art of graffiti), and the Academy for Careers in Sports (that substitutes courses such as History of Basketball for more traditional academic offerings).

Lurking behind the small schools is another agenda. Many of the key supporters of the mini-schools are also among the loudest advocates for ending Regents exams - and all objective measures of accountability. They favor the use of "portfolios," "roundtables," and other subjective assessments - devices that, in practice, are meaningless.

There is good reason why the small school advocates seek to avoid giving students objective exams. These "activists" know full well that they are unable to deliver the goods."Theme-park" schools, as parent activist Melanie Cissone derisively refers to them, may be more entertaining, but there is little evidence that they can provide what society expects and employers demand.

The moving force of the "small school" movement in New York is New Visions for Public Schools, an organization that has been setting New York City's public school education agenda for nearly 15 years. Incredibly, when Rudy Crew was chancellor,the chairman of New Visions,Richard I.Beattie,served as Mr. Crew's personal attorney in negotiating terms of his contract with the Board of Education.

New Visions is at the very epicenter of what I term the "University-Institutional Complex," the permanent government that runs the schools regardless of who is chancellor.Like all of the "non-profits"in this cabal, New Visions is growing fat with city contracts.In other words,set the agenda and profit ever after.

One would think that the groups that have been so influential in creating the culture of failure in New York's schools would have been banished when Mayor Bloomberg and Mr. Klein took over. But in the "new" Department of Education, they are prospering beyond their wildest dreams.

New Visions was given a foothold (now a stranglehold) in the Bronx by Norman Wechsler, who, until recently, was the Bronx borough high school superintendent. He presided over those schools during the last few disastrous years in this borough of broken dreams.

Last year, the first of the large schools that he reorganized,James Monroe High School, had the distinction of spawning the first of what promises to be a long list of mini-schools that will be placed on the Schools Under Registration Review list of the state's most troubled, failing schools.

Mr. Wechsler was tapped to become one of the 10 "super-superintendents," but at the 11th hour, he was dropped from consideration, and replaced by his thinly qualified deputy, Laura Rodriguez. Not surprisingly, Mr. Wechsler now works for New Visions.

As the Regional Instructional Superintendent of Region 2, which covers the eastern Bronx, Ms. Rodriguez has largely staffed her team with high school division retreads, some from the radical fringe of the anti-testing crowd. She is said to be intent on breaking up every high school in her region into dozens of mini-schools. To accomplish this, she selected Eric Nadelstern as her deputy.

Mr. Nadelstern is a familiar figure among the anti-testing activists. He was principal of the International High School in Queens,which followed a strict anti-testing policy. As the head of the New York Performance Standards Consortium, a group of 30 "alternative" schools that rejected testing in favor of subjective assessments, he frequently criticized any effort to demand higher performance measured by objective criteria.

When his school converted to charter status and the State Education Department demanded that his students take the exams, Mr. Nadelstern and his group took the State Education Commissioner to court - and lost. In the Bloomberg/Klein regime, it is not unusual to empower those at the fringes of the "progressive" ideology.

Mr. Gates would have done our children - and Mr. Klein - a much bigger favor by focusing his efforts on the critical early childhood years. Our children would be infinitely better off if a coherent educational agenda were established, and the philanthropy we accepted supported that agenda rather than dictated our priorities.In a perverse way, Mr. Gates may be helping to ensure the schools chancellor's ultimate failure.