Jack and the Giant School

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first artificial object into Earth's orbit. Dubbed Sputnik, the satellite measured only two feet in diameter, but it had a profound impact on the American psyche. Sputnik provided an undeniable demonstration of Soviet technological superiority and, more significantly, the power and reach of Soviet rockets.

Among its many impacts, Sputnik galvanized a movement to modernize and enlarge America's schools. The best and the brightest agreed that small schools burdened our ability to win the Cold War. The campaign to abolish them was led by Harvard University President James Bryant Conant, who contended that those who resisted school consolidation were "still living in imagination in a world which knew neither nuclear weapons nor Soviet imperialism"

State and local governments began aggressively closing small schools and herding kids into larger facilities. In 1930, one-room schoolhouses accounted for nearly 70 percent of the nation's public educational facilities. Between 1940 and 1990, the number of elementary and secondary schools decreased from 200,000 to 62,000, despite a 70 percent rise in U.S. population. Average enrollments skyrocketed from 127 to 653.

The trend toward giantism continues. The number of high schools with more than 1,500 students doubled in the last decade. Two-fifths of the nation's secondary schools now enroll more than 1,000 students. Some schools have as many as 5,000 students and enrollments of 2,000 or 3,000 are common.

Proponents argue that big schools allow for more courses, advanced equipment and significantly lower cost, per pupil year, than small schools. But, a growing number of critics are asking, do big schools produce better students? In the 1970s a handful of educators began to question whether the failings of the nation's schools weren't directly related to their size. Large schools, they believed, bred alienation and isolation, which in turn fostered poor student achievement, violence and high dropout rates.

Today, riding on a wave of real-world success and a mountain of empirical evidence, a full-fledged small schools movement has emerged. It's transforming public education in several big cities and, in rural areas, reinvigorating a long-standing fight to wrest local schools from the jaws of consolidation.

The movement has received endorsement from high offices. In May 1999, prompted largely by the shootings at Columbine High, a school with 2,000 students, Vice President Al Gore criticized the practice of "herding all students into overcrowded, factory-style high schools" A panel of school security experts was convened by Education Secretary Richard Riley. Their top recommendation had nothing to do with gun control, metal detectors or police on the premises. Rather, they said, reduce the size of the nation's schools. Small schools are a powerful antidote to the sense of alienation that can lead to violence.

In September, Riley told the National Press Club that the nation needs to "create small, supportive learning environments that give students a sense of connection. That's hard to do when we are building high schools the size of shopping malls. Size matters." According to the U.S. Department of Education's report, Violence and Discipline Problems in U.S. Public Schools: 1996-97, more than half of small school principals report either no discipline or minor discipline problems, compared to only 14 percent of big school principals. Furthermore, compared to schools with fewer than 300 students, big schools (1,000 or more) have 825 percent more violent crime, 270 percent more vandalism, 394 percent more fights and assaults and 1000 percent more weapons incidents.

The federal government now provides a small amount of money to districts seeking to restructure large high schools by breaking them into small learning communities or autonomous schools housed within the same building. But the real action is at the local and state level, where the notion that large schools offer superior learning opportunities persists, despite substantial evidence to the contrary.