NPR's Take On B'more's Small School Reform

Just two weeks ago Baltimore City teachers and students we enjoying a much need time off. It was Spring Break! While some teachers hung around B’more, and others visited exotic destinations like the Dominican Republic and Turkey, I chose to drive 16 hours to visit my sister in Mississippi. It was on the return trip that I was privy to something that both excited and frustrated me.

Throughout my drive I entertained myself with the exhilarating guitar riffs of Led Zeppelin, episodes of the highly acclaimed television drama “Battlestar Galactica, and doses of NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered. Having been addicted to my local NPR affiliate over the past two years, it was comforting being able to tune into these staples of news as I made my trip across the country. On Wednesday, April 11th just thirty miles outside of Memphis, NPR broadcasted a story as part of “Tales from Northwestern,” their continuing series examining the impact of No Child Left Behind and urban school reform through the lens of Northwestern High School here in Baltimore City.

This particular story focused on the small school/learning community movement that has become popular in pretty much any urban setting across the country. When Steve Inskeep read the plug for the story “Trouble Schools Turn Around by Shrinking” I was excited. I thought, “Great NPR will present an objective look at the small school movement in Baltimore City!” By the end of the story I was no longer excited, but frustrated and very disappointed.

The story begins by describing how the idea of the large comprehensive high school like Northwestern was a response the need to educate the baby boomers while reducing cost by eliminating redundancies in administrations. But, now in the modern urban setting they fail to appropriately education our children. The story showcases several small schools in Baltimore including Digital Harbor High School and Baltimore Talent Development High School. It touts the benefits of smaller schools including the ability to “reduce overhead.” Additionally, “’New schools are just easier,’ . . . Comprehensive high schools are more challenging, because "the number of supports that you need in these comprehensive high schools are significant.’” The CEO is even interviewed where she discusses Baltimore’s larger plan for developing many smaller high schools throughout the city"

. . .there will be no more "zoned schools." Instead, she says, Baltimore students will be able to choose their school, "understanding that they can go to the school that will help them implement their career options and choices."

The story presents a pretty rosy picture of the state of the small high schools in Baltimore city, and a doomsday one for the large comprehensive high schools. Nevermind that two of the best schools in the state of Maryland are comprehensive schools located in Baltimore. Based on the evidence in this story it would seem that moving to a small school model would be a no-brainer, but unfortunately it is far from reality. All it would take is to ask a teacher at one of Baltimore’s many other small schools to see not all is as it may seem. Even their description of Digital Harbor seems a bit from the truth when you talk with a teacher that works there.

What frustrates me the most about this story is that it reflects what seems to be a common theme in the media – small schools are perfect. Article after article, and story after story seem to present small schools as the cure-all to the educational problems afflicting our urban youth. Nowhere in the media have I seen an honest and open discussion of the painful realities of these small learning communities.

This story by NPR and many like it seem to say that the comprehensive high school has nothing going for it. But is that really true? After all how many of us went to a comprehensive high school? Is it really the large school model that inhibits our students from getting the education they need and deserve or is it something else? After all I teach at a “small” school that doesn’t seem any more successful than Northwestern. What really causes a school to succeed? Are small schools really cheaper to run?

I see this article as a warning sign to where the small school movement is leading us: All we need to do, and all we will do, is make the schools smaller and this will lead our students to academic success. This is wrong, and it is the easy out that many of us would like to take in order to avoid asking the hard questions.

Large or small there are benefits. Large or small there are disadvantages. But, large or small, schools must be run right or, large or small, any school can fall. But, if they are run right then, large or small, any school can stand tall.