Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/15938
Small schools increase segregation in San Diego LEFT: Ramon Orozco, a math teacher at LEADS High School in San Diego. INSET: Michele Wirth, a resource teacher at both the Science and Technology School and the International Studies School. school scored 818 on the Academic Per- formance Index in 2009, and has fewer English learners and students with learn- ing disabilities. LEADS (Learn, Explore, Achieve, Discover and Serve) and the Sci- ence and Technology schools attracted a mix of students. The schools with the highest percentage In 2004, San Diego High School was transformed from a large, compre- hensive high school into six small high schools on one campus, each with 400 to 500 students. The break- up was accomplished with money from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It wasn’t cheap. Instead of one principal, there were six. The small school principals doubled the number of counselors to help them with their duties. Each principal also had a secretary, and the campus went from having two attendance clerks to six. It was no surprise that when the money ran out, it was too costly to sustain. Talks are under way for “restructuring,” and the discussion includes closing some of the small schools. Breaking a large school into smaller 16 California Educator | SEPTEMBER 2010 schools was supposed to be a novel approach, but some San Diego Education Association members believe the end result was an old practice known as “tracking,” which segregates students by ability, separating those bound for college from those who are not. Tom Waller, a history teacher in the School of Business, says administrators jumped at the money offered by Gates be- cause the comprehensive high school was in year 4 of Program Improvement (PI), and restructuring into smaller schools pushed the “reset” button on PI. It may have staved off sanctions, but it increased segregation. The International Studies School at- tracted the cream of the crop with its In- ternational Baccalaureate program. The of English learners and students with dis- abilities — the Media, Visual and Perform- ing Arts School, the Business School, and the Communications Investigations in a Multicultural Atmosphere (CIMA) School — also have the lowest scores and are in years 3 and 4 of Program Improvement. “Foundations are trying to coerce be- havior because they want to see change,” says Waller. “And schools are desperate and see it as a life preserver thrown at them. But it might be a life preserver with smallpox all over it.” “For some schools it worked; for some it didn’t,” says Michele Wirth, a resource teacher at both the Science and Technol- ogy School and the International Studies School. “Yes, we got to know the kids better and some kids became more motivated, but the downside was losing so many electives we used to offer, because there was no money. We lost auto shop and lots of voca- tional things.” Teachers at the better-performing schools are more enthusiastic about the small-schools experiment and worry about their schools closing. “Overall, it’s a better school environ- ment at a small school than at a big school,” says Rudy Shaffer, a science teach-