An Electives Program in a Small High School? It Works!

Background/Context This study investigates the teacher's role in the student advisory process, which to date has generated limited research literature. Teachers who serve as student advisors assume a role that extends beyond the more traditional instructional role, and includes implied or explicit expectations to provide student advisees with academic and nonacademic support. Part of this nonacademic support role involves providing social and emotional support to students. This study particularly focuses on the advisor role and advisory programs in small high schools, which places a premium on strong student-teacher relationships, rendering advisory programs a central structure. Organizational theory that distinguishes role complexity from organizational complexity further frames the study, which explores the complex teacher-advisor role in an organizational setting that has intentionally decreased the number of differentiated professional roles. Research Question How do teachers in small high schools enact their advisor roles, specifically their roles relative to the social and emotional support of students? Participants Teachers assigned the role of advisor in three small public high schools. Research Design This is a qualitative study with a theoretical framework based on Giddens’ structuration theory. Conclusions Advisors were found to possess identifiable characteristics that impacted how they enacted their roles, and ultimately, provided support and guidance to their students. These characteristics concerned advisors’ background knowledge, relevant experience, skills and guiding principles about advising. Teacher education, either in preservice or professional development settings, contributed minimally to the personal resources and schemas, or guiding principles, that teachers used as they enacted the advisor role. Advisors with lower levels of personal resources, and less developed role schemas, tended to struggle more with the role, while advisors bringing more of these assets to their work experienced greater comfort and effectiveness with it. Implications are discussed for the small schools movement, teachers’ potential to provide social and emotional support to their students, and role complexity within organizations.

Do students from small high schools show fewer understandings and more misconceptions of biology concepts than students attending large high schools? Fifty students attending large high schools (enrollments exceeding 900 students) and fifty students attending small high schools (enrollments less than 150 students) were randomly selected and than evaluated on their understandings and misunderstandings of four biology concepts: diffusion, homeostasis, food production in plants, and classification of animals and plants. Students attending small high schools showed less instances of understanding and more instances of misunderstanding the concepts of diffusion and homeostasis. These differences could be related to a higher percentage of students in large schools capable of formal operations; sound understanding of diffusion and homeostasis required students to use formal operations. No difference was observed between the large and small school samples for the concepts of food production in plants and classification of plants and animals. Students in the small school sample lived in agricultural communities and their daily experiences allowed them to develop some understanding of food production in plants and prevented instances of misunderstandings from being developed. Classification of animals and plants required concrete operations to understand; therefore, students in small schools were capable of developing sound understanding as well as students from large schools.

A simplified model is constructed to analyze the role played by vocational training programs In high schools. The model assumes that there are two kinds of educational programs in high schools, vocational and general. It also assumes that there are two types of jobs for high school graduates. One job requires training that either can be obtained from a vocational program in high school or as general training on the job. The other job has no special training requirements. The model is used in two ways. First, it is used to examine how the equilibrium outcome is affected by limitations on the number of places in the vocational training program and by the minimum wage. Second, it helps to determine what can be. learned from studies that take what has become a standard approach to evaluating high school vocational training programs -- attempting to estimate the productivity of this program by comparing the earnings of vocational and nonvocational program graduates. We conclude that whether or not limitations on enrollments In vocational programs and minimum wages influence the wage difference between vocational and nonvocational program graduates, findings based on the standard approach to cost-benefit analysis of high school vocational training programs may prove to be highly misleading guides for policy.

Previous articleNext article FreeEducational WritingsA Survey of Five Small High Schools The Small High School. John Rufi David GustafsonDavid Gustafson Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Volume 35, Number 8Oct., 1927 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/438571 Journal History This article was published in The School Review (1893-1979), which is continued by the American Journal of Education (1979-present). PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

It is only natural for a teacher in the Midwest to be interested in the small high school and to recognize that a school of this type has special problems of its own. My personal interest in these problems was heightened by our experiences in re-writing the Iowa Course of Study in Secondary School Mathematics a few years ago. We soon discovered that one of our major tasks was to make provision for the needs of the small schools; indeed, it is essentially true that the course of study was written for these schools.

Simply carving up a large comprehensive high school into several smaller schools does not guarantee improvement. But Mr. Copland and Ms. Boatright find that key lessons garnered from numerous small-school conversions can guide school leaders through the cultural changes that must accompany the structural ones if small schools are to fulfill their potential. IN RARE contemplative moment, Steven Gering is scratching his head and thinking. Over the past 18 months, assistant principal Gering has been leading the effort to reshape massive suburban Mountlake Terrace High School into a collection of autonomous small schools, and his frenetic schedule has left him with little reflective time. The school now perches on the precipice of change. It is late July, and in a few short weeks Terrace's nearly 1,900 students will split into five new ninth- through 12th-grade schools of no more than 400 students, each with its own unique mission, goals, course offerings, faculty, and schedule. Gering and his colleagues continue to work out the remaining details for the transformation, including not-insignificant final decisions about exactly how each of the new small schools will be led. Pondering the question of leadership, Gering notes, We've changed our view of teacher leadership and administration. Small schools just take more leaders than large schools, more people to step up and provide the knowledge and skills we need at any particular moment. You've heard how it's important to have teachers as generalists in small schools. Well, we also need leaders as generalists. For school administrators and teachers, the process of change begun by Mountlake Terrace -- just one of numerous comprehensive high school conversion projects across the U.S. -- raises some fundamental questions for those seeking to create and lead a different kind of secondary school experience for America's young people. How should leadership in a small high school differ from leadership in a large one? What unique leadership opportunities do small schools offer? And what new challenges or old di-lemmas remain? Moreover, what leadership lessons can those who seek to transform large comprehensive high schools derive from the knowledge base that is emerging on small schools? What is certain, to Gering and others like him, is that leadership must adapt if the current movement to downsize high schools is ever to matter much. If educators can learn anything from more than two decades' worth of efforts to restructure schools, it is that structural changes alone are not enough to improve schools for the students who attend them or the professionals who work in them.1 Without key shifts in the emphasis and disposition of leadership, the new small schools that emerge from the transformed large schools run the risk of winding up simply as smaller versions of their former giant selves. Transforming the Behemoth Gering and his colleagues at Mountlake Terrace High School are among many secondary educators currently seeking to transform large comprehensive high schools into collections of smaller learning communities, a movement gaining momentum nationwide. Significant investments made in this reform strategy suggest that educators and policy makers place considerable stock in smaller learning communities as a way to improve schooling for students and teachers. Along with grants from the U.S. Department of Education totaling well over $145 million annually, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation initiatives have so far funneled some $375 million toward this end.2 Why are so many large high schools downsizing? progression of studies beginning in the late 1980s and continuing to date strongly suggests that small schools are more productive and effective than large ones. Reviews of research summarize the findings of such studies and the advantages of small schools for students.3 As one researcher summed it up, A large body of research in the affective and social realms overwhelmingly affirms the superiority of small schools. …

This paper discusses the daily attendance rates in six small high schools over a ten-year period and evaluates how stable those rates are. “Stability” is approached from two vantage points: pulse models are fitted to estimate the impact of sudden perturbations and their reverberation through the series, and Autoregressive Fractionally Integrated Moving Average (ARFIMA) techniques are used to detect dependencies over the long range of the series. The analyses are meant to (1) exemplify the utility of time series approaches in educational research, which lacks a time series tradition, (2) discuss some time series features that seem to be particular to daily attendance rate trajectories such as the distinct downward pull coming from extreme observations, and (3) present an analytical approach to handle the important yet distinct patterns of variability that can be found in these data. The analysis also illustrates why the assumption of stability that underlies the habitual reporting of weekly, monthly and yearly averages in the educational literature is questionable, as it reveals dynamical processes (perturbation, meta-stability) that remain hidden in such summaries.

This study examined the relationship between high school computer experience and university achievement in introductory computer science. Achievement was analyzed in terms of both the amount of high school computer science instruction and the degree of emphasis on structured programming in high school. A sample of 117 students in an introductory computer science course was pretested and all subsequent course examination scores were monitored. Neither amount of computer science nor emphasis on structured programming in high school had any measurable effect on university examination achievement. Students with less high school experience were more likely to withdraw from the university course.

School enrollment is said to have direct correlation with learning competency. This was supported in the 2004 study of Fund for Assistance to Private Education (FAPE) which reported that big public high schools consistently showed better performance than small public high schools in tests measuring the learning competencies of students in areas of Mathematics, English and Science. School location was also noted to have effect in students’ performance. Using the scores and ranking of public schools in the National Achievement Test (NAT) aided by statistical tools, this paper disproves the above assumptions and reports of FAPE. The present study reveals that in some cases small public schools performs better than big schools. Discussions further present possible reasons to consider with regard to differences in test scores between big and small schools as well as schools in metropolitan cities and in towns and provinces.

In our increasingly technological and advanced times, demand for K-12 education in computer science and information technology (CS/IT) is growing. Current data offer insight into student access to computer science education and course-taking. In addition to the expansion of individual course offerings, there is also a growing number of specialized CS/IT programs in high schools. However, there has been no systematic attempt to document the landscape of those programs. This study is part of a larger landscape study of secondary CS/IT programs in Virginia and uses a consensus-based approach to identify the common elements that expert and practitioner panelists believe should be included in such a program. The results reveal strong consensus on a wide range of program goals, activities, and curricular elements, suggesting that there are many opportunities to create purposeful and coherent CS/IT programs in high schools.

THE Turtle Lake High School, enrolling 140 pupils, is located in a typical North Dakota small town. Most of the business activity is confined to a single main street. During eleven years of service as an educational administrator in this locality, the writer has seen many boys and girls come and go from the educational institutions of this area, and it cannot be said that the educational methods have resulted in a satisfactory product. Youth of the past few years have seemed helpless, floundering in a maze of potential opportunities, with no tangible occupations in view. So poorly have they been trained that most graduates have confined their activities to helping at home or doing odd jobs. Many have been unaware of abilities upon which they could capitalize. Have not the schools been handicapping these boys and girls by failing to provide them with some type of educational program whereby their interests and abilities could be developed? The purpose of this article is to describe the attempt of one community and school to meet this problem of guidance and training. The need for such a program in this small school was indicated by a survey of the 231 pupils who had graduated from the Turtle Lake High School in the years 1930-40. Some very interesting information came to light. These data demonstrated that little provision was made by the high school to give individual pupils adequate preparation for definite types of work. It is probable that there is a close similarity between the activities of this high school and those of other high schools in the area. The conditions indicated clearly the need of a guidance and counseling program in the small secondary schools. Ninety-seven of the 231 graduates did not continue their education beyond the high school-a high proportion of pupils 761

We evaluate the impacts of small high schools on youth risky behaviors and mental health in New York City, using a two-sample-instrumental-variable approach to address endogenous school enrollment. We find heterogeneous effects. School size, overall, has little effect. Among students most likely to attend small schools opened after an educational-achievement-oriented reform, however, diagnoses of violence-associated injuries and mental health disorders increased. Among students most likely to attend traditional small schools opened prior to the reform, pregnancy rates and diagnoses of mental health disorders declined. School focus is more important than school size as a determinant of student well-being outcomes.

The Chester High School, Chester, Connecticut, is a small-town high school with the usual small-school problems. The population of Chester is about i,6oo. The school enrolment is 75. The student body is drawn from the children of factory employees, 40 per cent of whom are foreign born. During the last eight years, I have been actively interested in the boy-scout movement, having been scout leader of troops in the schools with which I have been connected. In the scout movement

The investigation reported in this paper represents an attempt to secure data relative to the scientific interests of pupils enrolled in the ninth grade in small high schools and of adults living in small towns and in the country. Two similar studies of.scientific interests have already appeared: Pollock's study,1 in which he analyzed 3,500 questions secured from pupils studying general science in the eighth grade in 13 high schools of Columbus, Ohio; and the author's study,2 in which he analyzed 3,330 questions obtained from 687 pupils studying general science in the ninth grade in 10 high schools in New York City, Okmulgee (Oklahoma), Portland and Salem (Oregon), and 3,232 questions secured from 705 of the parents of these pupils. Two criticisms, especially, have been made of these two studies by those interested in evaluating them for curricular purposes: (1) The subjects under consideration, even though considerable in number, represent a selective sampling, because they were all city dwellers; and (2) suggestion, operating in the model questions, had a large part in conditioning the responses made. The purpose of the investigation here reported, therefore, is primarily to ascertain whether the scientific interests of country dwellers differ from those of city dwellers, and, further, to secure evidence relative to the extent to which the suggestive factor, operating through the model questions, influences the responses. METHOD

134 high school students from a small high school in north central Kansas completed the MacAndrew Alcoholism Scale, Fenigstein, et al.'s Self-consciousness Scale, and Zaks' Aggression Scale. Analyses of variance showed significant differences between boys and girls but not among grades. On the aggression and alcohol measures boys scored higher than girls, but lower on public self-consciousness. Youth of divorced parents scored significantly higher than those of nondivorced parents on aggression, private self-consciousness, and general self-consciousness. Aggression scores were significantly and positively correlated with those on the alcohol and private self-consciousness scales. When students' alcoholism scores indicate problems with alcohol, their scores on aggression indicate greater aggression and their private self-consciousness scores indicate sensitivity toward events in their environment, then having concerns about inner self can inhibit the action required for change. MacAndrew scores correlated significantly and negatively with scores on social anxiety about self-consciousness. When MacAndrew scores indicated problems with alcohol, the students' scores on social anxiety about self-consciousness suggested confidence in social settings, being at ease interacting with people. The present study involved students from a single rural district so increased understanding will require more extensive research if strategies for prevention and intervention are to be developed and utilized.