How to Handle Bad News for Small Schools in Oregon

Four years ago in Oregon, two foundations invested $25 million in a "small schools" initiative, the largest private investment ever in Oregon's K-12 schools. The initiative sought to improve student performance and retention by transforming large, under-performing high schools into small learning academies. The first results of the Oregon experiment are in, and unfortunately they aren't very positive. Graduation rates remain low, and attendance and test scores haven't improved much since the large high schools split apart.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation—the primary funder, along with the Oregon-based Meyer Memorial Trust—has pumped significant money into the creation of small high schools around the country. But improvements in student achievement and graduation rates have been elusive. Evaluations of the Gates initiative generally show that the redesigned small high schools produce similar results to their predecessor schools, and the Oregon findings are more bad news. The Gates Foundation deserves credit for reacting to these failures in the most productive way possible: continuing its investment in high school reforms, while also modifying that investment in response to research findings.

Oregon's First Small School Class

In 2004, the Gates Foundation teamed up with other education reformers in Oregon to start the $25 billion Oregon Small Schools Initiative. The initiative has produced 38 small schools in 12 districts across Oregon, either by restructuring large high schools into smaller units (32) or starting new small high schools (6). Grants from the initiative—around $1 million for the largest high schools—provide funds for reorganization planning, technical assistance, and professional and curriculum development, among other activities.

Three large high schools—Marshall and Roosevelt High Schools in Portland and Liberty High School in Hillsboro—started restructuring efforts right away in 2004. The first classes of students with four years in the small academies just graduated. But, as The Oregonian reports, the test scores, attendance, and graduation rates of these classes remained, for the most part, stuck at the same levels as those of previous classes.

Other Small School Efforts

Oregon is one of four states, including Maine, North Carolina, and Washington, with statewide small schools initiatives funded by the Gates Foundation. In addition, the Foundation awards restructuring grants to individual high-need school districts and also funds organizations that want to start new small high schools.

Evaluations of these grants, conducted by an independent contractor hired by the Gates Foundation, have found little improvement in student achievement resulting from the small schools. While some measures of student success, such as attendance and progression rates, have gone up for students in new small schools, students in redesigned small schools have also not shown progress in those areas. A recent evaluation of the federal Smaller Learning Communities Grant Program found similar results to the Gates initiatives, with "no significant trends" in achievement on state tests or college-entrance exams, but some improvement in student promotion, participation in extracurricular activities, and school violence.

Regroup, Rethink, and Reinvest

The Gates Foundation took a shot at a research-based, expensive school reform. The initiative has not yet produced solid results in its original form. But the Foundation is targeting some of the lowest-performing, highest-poverty schools in the country, and no one has yet to find a quick fix reform, particularly in high schools.

When a long-term investment doesn't produce meaningful returns, funders should not necessarily abandon it, but they should admit the need for modifications. And that's exactly what the Gates Foundation is doing. Instead of trying to save face, it is acknowledging setbacks, investigating why the initiative hasn't improved student achievement, and looking to fine-tune its investment. Specifically, the initiative is placing more emphasis on selecting grantees that have a track record of raising school achievement; spending more money on teacher recruitment, professional development, and retention; focusing more on effective curriculum and instructional resources; and favoring starting new schools to redesigning existing schools.

Vicki Phillips, the current director of the Gates Foundation's education initiatives, told The Oregonian, "We have learned that small by itself is not enough. Good curriculum and instruction don't just show up...We need to get more dramatic results." That's the right, ultimately most productive approach.

Disclosure: EdMoneyWatch.Org is funded by a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.