Survey says smaller best
by Jane Eisner
(KRT) Knight Ridder Newspapers

    Sometimes it takes years of exacting, exhaustive research to prove what common sense might tell us if we only asked.

   The results of the largest survey of its kind ever conducted in the United States, released a week ago, found that students who attend smaller schools tend to feel more connected to their teachers and to one another and are less likely to engage in risky behavior such as drug use, violence or early sexual activity.

   The researchers carefully surveyed nearly 72,000 students in 127 representative schools across the country to confirm what anyone familiar with teen-agers knows all along: They need our attention, no matter what they say.

   “In smaller schools, students, teachers and school administrators all have more personal relationships with each other,” Robert Blum, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Adolescent Health and Development, said in the introduction to the study he authored.

   Blum’s research adds to what educators already know about the academic value of smaller school environments—that test scores, attendance rates and graduation rates improve when high schools are home to several hundred, rather than several thousand, students. This is especially true for poor and minority students.

   Yet the average enrollment in the nation’s public schools is creeping upward. For elementary schools, it has held steady for the last few years, but at the highest rate in 15 years. For regular secondary schools, average enrollment is as high as it’s ever been in that time frame.

   There are high schools in this country with more than 5,000 students. That’s the size of a small army. And while schools of that size are rare, the proportion of schools with 1,000 or more students is increasingly steadily while the percent with 400 or fewer students is shrinking.

   As with everything else in education, there are caveats. Small is better but it is not perfect. Size does not always predict student achievement. And educators themselves don’t agree on the definition of “small.”