Recreating Secondary Schools Helps the Atlanta School District Redesign Its High Schools
NWREL's Recreating Secondary Schools (RSS) team has been working with Atlanta Public Schools for more than two years, building the capacity of school and district staff to pursue district-wide high school transformation. All the district's high schools are being redesigned as collections of three to four small learning communities (SLCs) or autonomous small schools. Increasingly, the Atlanta school district itself is being transformed, operating in a manner that mirrors the practices they ask of these schools. Instead of a "comprehensive high school" style of siloed initiatives imposed on schools and monitored with lengthy paperwork, Atlanta is moving toward a flexible "interdisciplinary" mode more suited to small school and SLC practices.