October 7, 2002

Met schools show small is beautiful

by Dennis Littky

IN AMERICA, we like to live large. From Big Macs to Super Slurpees, from Hollywood mansions to giant shopping malls, from double-wides to SUVs, we gravitate to products and places that say to the world, "Bigger is better." That plus-size philosophy is one thing when applied to a caffe latte. When it is applied to education, it is a recipe for failure.

Most students are in schools too big and impersonal to promote real learning. The average American high school now houses more than 750 pupils. In large cities, enrollments routinely bulge into the thousands, making it impossible for overworked teachers to give students the individual attention they need. While Morgan Stanley's ads tout the firm's pledge to serve "one client at a time," our kids receive a one-size-fits-all education. It isn't right -- and isn't working.

I know. I've spent the last three decades in schools and classrooms. And what I've learned is that small schools with customized learning plans, family engagement, and interaction with mentors in "real world" settings can transform disaffected, middling performers into college-goers and passionate learners.

Labor-intensive? Absolutely. Unconventional? Certainly. But does this approach produce results? A resounding "yes."

I'm not the first educator to realize that small schools have advantages. But I am familiar with one school design that works. At the Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center, a cluster of small public high schools in Providence that I helped found six years ago, we have one-third the dropout rate, one-third the absentee rate, and one-eighteenth the suspension rate of other public high schools in the city.

Every Met graduate has been accepted to college; most are the first in their families to attend. These numbers would be impressive in a wealthy suburban school, but The Met is hardly that. Our students are a melting pot of races and ethnicities; a majority qualify for the federal free-lunch program.

The key to The Met's success can be captured in the phrase made popular 25 years ago by the economist E.F. Schumacher: "Small is beautiful." No building holds more than 100 students. Beginning in 9th grade, kids are assigned to "advisories" -- groups of 14 plus a faculty "adviser" that stay together all four years of high school. Parents help plan and assess their child's learning. Instead of tests, students give public exhibitions of what they have learned. Instead of grades, teachers -- much like their private-school counterparts -- write detailed evaluations of each student's progress. In short, learning is personal.

The heart of the program is the internship, which sends students into the community two days a week -- not to pursue vocational training, but to gain exposure to real-world problem solving in an area that matters to them. One native Spanish speaker developed a pamphlet in Spanish for a local hospital. Another student, a Nigerian who had been adopted by a white family in the Providence suburbs, worked in an adoption agency.

The experience binds kids to adults in the community, and serves as a springboard for further discussion in the classroom. The goal is to try to find the dry kindling in each child and strike a match. That passion, once lit, becomes the after-burner that propels self-directed learning for a lifetime.

And isn't that the ultimate goal of education? A few years ago, I did some calculations and concluded that if each of us reaches 70, we spend just 9 percent of our lives in school. The other 91 percent we spend out in the world, where, to succeed, we have to locate and analyze information on our own. Education should give us the desire, and the tools, to do that. Yet in most schools, there are too many kids, too few teachers, too little time, and a bureaucratic disinclination to pursue creative methods of learning.

Four more Mets have just opened in Providence. Thanks to a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation grant, our education-reform organization, The Big Picture Company, is helping to replicate The Met model in 12 other cities. The first wave of these "Big Picture" schools just opened in Oakland and El Dorado, Calif., and in Federal Way, Wash. At least three more are scheduled to get under way next year, in Detroit, Denver and Sacramento.

Smallness by itself isn't the answer to what ails schools, of course. But educating one child at a time, however we manage to do it, is. As former Secretary of Education Richard Riley is fond of saying, "Big is not always better when it comes to the education of our children." With the advent of computers, the Internet, and digital commerce, a standard-model school experience is no longer sufficient. What young people need today is an education tailored to them that helps them become self-starters, lifelong learners, and creative problem solvers. It's a big order. The way to start is small.

Dennis Littky, co-director of the Big Picture Company and co-founder of the Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center, in Providence, is a recipient of this year's Harold W. McGraw Jr. Prize in Education.