NWREL’s Role Expands in

Helping Smaller Learning Communities

By Rhonda Barton

Members of the recreating secondary schools team at NWREL had at least one thing to be especially thankful for this Thanksgiving holiday: time to catch their breath. The group conducted seven institutes in seven different cities in three different time zones during a 10-week period between mid-September and the end of November. The hectic travel schedule is just one indicator of the growth of NWREL’s work in helping large high schools restructure into smaller learning communities (SLC).

In October, the U.S. Department of Education awarded NWREL $3.7 million for additional services to large high schools that are reconfiguring to create more personalized and more rigorous learning environments. The award modifies and builds on the $5.67 million contract that NWREL received one year ago.

There are about 300 schools that have received three-year federal SLC grants to date. Research shows that students in smaller settings have better attendance, are less likely to drop out, have fewer discipline problems, and that many perform better academically. Whether the SLCs are configured as academies, "neighborhoods," or schools-within-a-school, students feel less alienated and teachers more empowered.

NWREL is working with seven regional partners to help federal grantee schools implement their plans for smaller learning communities. In addition to a resource-rich Web site, the project provides assistance to schools through regional institutes on topics like data management and adolescent literacy; site visits to identify follow-up assistance needed; and intensive support to grantees that the Office of Vocational and Adult Education has identified as high-need sites.

"The new work is really quite different from what we have been doing," explains Project Coordinator Joan Shaughnessy. "In addition to doing more site visits and increasing the amount of technical assistance, we will also be designing and delivering district level initiatives to support the scaling up of high school transformation."

She notes that a number of the 143 recent SLC grantees represent multiple large high schools within a school district, rather than individual sites. Urban districts may have as many as nine high schools involved in the restructuring effort. "That has been problematic for some districts, because they may have one or two schools that are primed and poised to make a change, but the others aren’t as ready to move in that direction," she says. Part of the task now facing Shaughnessy and her staff is to develop processes that will help districts support all of their secondary schools.

Another focus is organizing "design studios"—intensive two-and-a-half day visits to exemplary schools—for teams that are beginning the SLC process. "Grantees who participate in a design studio will have the opportunity to be in the classrooms, meet with students and teachers, get out into the community, and really dig into what makes that school work and how they can take those concepts back to their own school," says Shaughnessy.

NWREL will select grantees that demonstrated strong progress during previous site visits and then train their school staff to facilitate studio sessions in a number of regions. In a ripple effect, the first teams that learn to conduct design studios will in turn train other schools, creating an expanding network of schools-helping-schools.

NWREL is equipped to take a leadership role in the SLC movement because of its long history in school improvement. "We have the foundational research in Kathleen Cotton’s work on key elements for success in small learning communities," notes Shaughnessy. "And, we’ve called upon the past work that’s been done here in Onward to Excellence and in our national leadership project on school and district restructuring."

Check the Web at www.nwrel.org/scpd/sslc/ for more on NWREL’s work with smaller learning communities.