Reading Between the Lines About Small Schools
(Second of a three-part series this week on innovative schools.)
Press releases are known for accentuating the positive and eliminating the negative in order to mold public opinion. So it came as no surprise when I received news marked for immediate release on Oct. 15 from the Alliance for Excellent Education.
Datelined Washington D.C., the Alliance reported on an MDRC study titled "Transforming the High School Experience: How New York City's New Small Schools Are Boosting Student Achievement and Graduation Rates." MDRC is a nonpartisan research group dedicated to improving programs that affect the poor. The study looked at 21,000 students, nearly half of whom attended small schools and the rest attended larger and older schools.
Despite the title of the study, the release focused almost exclusively on data about graduation rates. There was nothing about standardized test scores