Thompson: Revisiting The Promise of Small Schools, Part I

New York City’s Quest to Learn is a small school designed around the ways that video games are built, and Heather Chaplin's recent report on NPR made it clear that the school is empowering kids for the 21^st century. But there's more to it than that.  The story also adds support to Richard Colvin's and Tom Toch's conclusions that small schools deserve another look. 

Comments

[Maryanne]

Depending on the structure and format of small schools, there can be promise. The entire United States educational system needs an overhaul. It may not need a complete change in curriculum, standards, evaluations, and ethic, but these areas do need to be reviewed and addressed. If everyone were to do their part to be accountable and really make an impact, students would achieve. Perhaps the way to do this is to make sure there is one on one attention and that can be offered in smaller schools, with smaller class sizes and more educators in each room.

[Tahmina Sultan]

What works are small classrooms where teachers can spend time make sure all the students are learning at their own pace. What doesn’t work is sending kids to bigger schools where teachers have more students than they need. Many times these students get lost in the wave of larger schools.