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Policy Framework
The New York City public school system is the largest in the United States, with over 1,200 schools and more than 1.1 million students enrolled each year. In recent years, it has also been the site of an unprecedented investment in high school reform. Beginning in 2002 and with the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other philanthropies, the New York City Department of Education (DOE) closed many large, comprehensive high schools with a history of low performance and created hundreds of new small secondary schools. At the same time, the DOE instituted a centralized high school admissions process for matching incoming ninth-grade students to the over 400 high school options available to them.
The small school movement has been a national one. And while nearly every major American urban district has undertaken efforts to create new small schools or to transform large schools into campuses of small learning communities, there has been little rigorous evidence about the effectiveness of small schools.
MDRC and its partners have conducted a suite of studies commissioned by the Gates Foundation that will evaluate the transformation of high schools in New York City. An impact evaluation led by MDRC built on the lottery used by DOE to assign students to schools to determine the effect of enrollment in new small high schools on student outcomes. A descriptive study of New York City high schools led by MDRC examined schools’ changing characteristics over time. Policy Studies Associates (PSA) examind the role of intermediary organizations, such as New Visions for Public Schools and the Urban Assembly, in the creation of new small schools. The Academy for Educational Development (AED) conducted case studies of six new small schools that received support from the Gates Foundation through an intermediary organization.
Agenda, Scope, and Goals
While the new small schools in New York City have a wide variety of themes and educational philosophies, they are intended to share three common design characteristics:
- Academic rigor: Schools are expected to be college-preparatory in that they move all students toward acquisition of a New York Regents Diploma.
- Personalization: Schools were to be small not only in size but also in function to ensure strong student-teacher relationships and to hold adults accountable for individual student outcomes.
- Community Partnerships: Through partnerships with business and community partners, schools were intended to offer learning opportunities outside of the classroom and to infuse relevant real-world examples into classroom instruction. Partners were expected to bolster school capacity in areas ranging from curriculum and instruction to youth development and community outreach.
The evaluation of New York City high school reform addresses the following questions:
The impact study:
- What effects do the new small schools have on students’ engagement, academic performance, and preparation for college beyond what they would have achieved if they did not have the opportunity to enroll in these schools?
The three implementation studies:
- How are the small high schools similar to and different from other high schools in the system?
- What role have intermediary organizations played in effecting change in New York City high schools?
- What issues and challenges do the schools confront as they undertake new reform initiatives, and how do they respond? What are the instructional practices at a sample of the schools?
Design, Sites, and Data Sources
The impact analysis focuses on the "small schools of choice," new, small, unscreened high schools. The path-breaking analytic approach used in the impact study capitalizes on random elements of the DOE’s centralized high school admissions process. Each lottery for a small school of choice is a naturally-occurring experiment, which, after some adjustments, makes it possible to produce valid estimates of the effects of enrollment in small schools of choice on student academic outcomes. The impact study will be the most rigorous evaluation to date on the effectiveness of small schools.
The impact study follows four cohorts of students — those entering high school in the fall of 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008. The primary sources of data for the analyses are High School Application Processing System (HSAPS) data and school records, which were obtained from the New York City DOE.
The MDRC school characteristics study uses extant data from the U.S. Department of Education, New York State Report Card, and New York City DOE along with aggregate HSAPS and student records data in a school-level database to analyze changes in the high school options and student enrollment over time. The analyses identify patterns and trends for schools on a number of instruction-related, demographic, and performance-based characteristics by school type as defined by size and selectivity.
The qualitative study by PSA is based on interviews with senior staff at the 18 intermediary organizations that supported the creation of new small schools. It is examining the roles that intermediaries played in designing and implementing new small schools.
The case studies of six new small schools by AED use data from surveys, interviews, and focus groups with principals, teachers, support staff, and students to assess the degree to which schools implemented best school and classroom practices, including personalization, effective instruction, and college preparation, as well as the facilitating and impeding factors for the implementation of these best practices.
What's Next
The three implementation studies were released in February 2010. The impact study was released in June 2010.
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