by Sylvia Maria Gross
NARRATION: Designing a new school is a utopian exercise. When Iris Zucker received a grant last year to open a small public high school in the Bronx, she began with her passion for travel.
TAPE: ZUCKER: I wanted the kids in the Bronx to be exposed to the world, to be aware of the different countries, the different cultures. I also thought -- our kids are isolated even in the city of New York, despite the fact that we are very diverse. They just don't go out of the Bronx so I thought of bringing the world to them.
NARRATION: At the Marble Hill School for International Studies, only half of the students are native English speakers. All currently live in the Bronx. Princess, a tenth-grader, appreciates the diverse environment.
TAPE: PRINCESS: I have friends that are from Bangladesh and Ghana, Yugoslavia, Korea, Mexico.
NARRATION: She helps some of her international classmates with their English, and they sometimes tutor her in math.
Most of the staff at Marble Hill is trained to teach English to speakers of other languages. At Zucker's school, the language is also taught within the context of the other subject areas. In biology class, students are learning vocabulary and pronunciation through their lesson on the excretory system.
TAPE: AMBIENT: CLASS: And urea is the main component of urine, which you excrete through urination. What do you notice about the similarity here? URINE! URINATION! UREA!
NARRATION: There's not much giggling - maybe the kids feel serious sitting there with their buttoned shirts tucked neatly into their slacks.
TAPE: AMBIENT: Say it five times: UREA UREA UREA UREA UREA
NARRATION: Zucker believes that this immersion method allows ESL students access to the same rigorous curriculum that their English-speaking classmates receive.
TAPE: AMBIENT: [post] MISS! MISS! MISS!
NARRATION: Innovative teaching and intense collaboration among both students and staff are advantages of small schools, which typically have less than 500 students. Teachers keep track of how their students are doing in other classes.
TAPE: AMBIENT: I heard that you were giving the new math teacher a hard time.
NARRATION: Though Zucker's strategy for international studies is unique in New York City, small schools have been around since the 1980s.
Clara Hemphill writes a parents' guide to public schools in New York. She and her team of writers have visited every high school in the city over the last few years. Some of the 300 or so small schools are among the most competitive in the city. Others are not much better than the big schools they replaced.
TAPE: HEMPHILL: Sometimes when a big school is divided into small schools nothing else changes; they just give it a new name but the staff stays the same, the style of teaching remains the same, and the sort of bureacratic relationships stay the same.
NARRATION: She's concerned that the Department of Education is opening too many schools too fast and is urging the chancellor to look at the strengths and weaknesses of small schools.
TAPE: HEMPHILL: In general, I prefer small to big but the leadership and vision is more important than size.
NARRATION: In addition to dynamic leadership, Hemphill has found that successful small schools have a defined space--like a building or a wing with a separate entrance--and flexibility in choosing teachers and curriculum.
But critics say that Chancellor Klein is undermining this latest initiative by creating an environment in the school system that is inhospitable to the kind of flexibility that small schools need to thrive. He's instituted a uniform curriculum from kindergarten to ninth grade.
Steve Phillips was the first superintendent of the Alternative High School district, a citywide assortment of small schools that didn't fit the typical mold. He says Chancellor Anthony Alvarado opened the district in 1983 in order to give innovative schools the freedom to develop.
TAPE: PHILLIPS: He said if you subject experimental schools and progressive schools to the same kind of supervision that you subject all schools to, what you'll generally do is stamp out all of the alternativeness -- they'll all be forced to become the same kind of cookie-cutter schools.
NARRATION: Phillips thinks that last year's reorganization of the Board of Education did just that. It disbanded the Alternative High School District and the small schools were each assigned to their geographic regions.
Without an administrator specifically looking out for these schools, some are becoming over-crowded and losing their intimacy. There's often a temptation to increase the population of successful schools.
Phillips says the new system also eliminates the networking between small school principals.
TAPE: PHILLIPS: I think there was also some camaraderie, a lot of mutual information sharing, kind of mentoring that went on between principals those days.
NARRATION: But there is networking outside of the Department of Education--some of the teachers and principals at the new schools have experience in the established schools.
New Visions for Public Schools is a non-profit organization that helped develop 30 small schools in 90s. It's responsible for most of the new schools. Coordinator Ron Chaluisan, who founded his own small school ten years ago, says the new schools are incorporating many ideas from the past.
TAPE: CHALUISAN: The notion of personalization--the fact that every kid has to be known, that every student has to have a caring and nurturing relationship with an adult in the building - that came directly out of work from New Visions schools.
NARRATION: But some teachers who left the established schools to help start the new ones are worried. They find it hard to create engaging curriculum with the specter of the state-wide Regents exams hanging over their shoulders. The Department of Education is pressuring the new schools to prioritize these exams--federal funds may depend on them.
Studies suggest that students at small schools may have a better chance of going to college--but they don't necessarily get higher test scores. Small schools advocates don't want to hang the success of the movement on the basis of those scores. For Columbia Radio News, I'm Sylvia Maria Gross.
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