Smaller Learning Communities:

Success Stories

Across the country, large high schools are restructuring to create smaller learning communities (SLC) that personalize the school environment. Still others are considering following suit, but there are as many ways to design SLCs as there are schools creating them.

To help schools implement successful SLCs, the Laboratory’s School Improvement Program developed the Web-based Schools Making Progress Series. The series profiles eight schools’ approaches to creating smaller learning communities and includes supporting documents, such as planning papers, mission statements, goals and objectives, and programs and models used to support the effort. The series can be accessed online from the Serving Smaller Learning Communities Web site, www.nwrel.org/scpd/sslc/index/shtml.

By studying the examples of the schools, others can gain valuable ideas that can help shape their own plans for developing SLCs. The featured schools are:

Arlington High School, St. Paul, Minnesota
Brockton High School, Brockton, Massachusetts
Christopher Columbus High School, New York, New York
Montclaire High School, Montclaire, New Jersey
Sevier County High School, Sevierville, Tennessee
Sierra Vista High School, East Los Angeles, California
Southridge High School, Beaverton, Oregon
Granby High School, Norfolk, VA

Since 2000, the NWREL School Improvement Program has been helping high schools that received grants from the U.S. Department of Education’s Smaller Learning Communities Implementation program to restructure into SLCs. Currently, there are about 150 schools that have received the three-year grants.

Studies show that in small-school environments students achieve better, feel safer and have a greater sense of belonging, are less likely to drop out of school, and are more likely to take part in school activities and go on to college, according to New Small Learning Communities: Findings From Recent Literature, a research synthesis available from the above Web site. Whether in schools-within-a-school, career academies, "neighborhoods," or any other number of ways to personalize schools, students feel less alienated and teachers more empowered.

In October, the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory was awarded a two-year contract of $5,672,000 from the U.S. Department of Education to continue to provide, with the help of regional partners, technical assistance to the schools and districts around the country that received SLC implementation grants. Regional partners include: WestEd in California; Southwest Educational Development Laboratory in Texas; Comprehensive Center Region VI at Wisconsin Center for Education Research; SouthEastern Regional Vision for Education in North Carolina; AEL, Inc. in West Virginia; Laboratory for Student Success in Pennsylvania; and Northeast and Islands Regional Laboratory at Brown University in Rhode Island.

High schools of 1,000 or more students may apply for funding from the Smaller Learning Communities Implementation Program. Watch the U.S. Department of Education Web site, www.ed.gov/programs/slcp/, for an announcement of the next request for proposals, expected in January 2003. About $142 million has been earmarked for next year’s awards.