This is the fourth in a series on the growing Charter School movement in American education. Previous articles have outlined the general disrepair of the American public education system , attempted to define specifically what is meant by the term “Charter School” and outlined criticisms of charter schools. This series is being cross-posted at the blog, the Sweat & Technique.

I began my teaching career in the second largest school district in the country, the Los Angeles Unified School District at Crenshaw High School. The summer before I began my first year as a teacher, Crenshaw made big news when it lost its accreditation. At this point, I had only worked at the school as a long-term substitute. As my friends and family asked endless questions about Crenshaw, I could tell them nothing except what we assumed to be true about urban education: that it was in a sorry state.

In the spring of that first year, Crenshaw’s accreditation was restored. While the initial loss proved to have been a snafu on the part of the school’s administration, for many long-time Crenshaw teachers and supporters, the loss came as a blessing in disguise. What I would learn during that first year, is that there was a deep and well thought-out plan for school reform on the table at Crenshaw. A group of parents and teachers had been working for several years to draft a plan to transform Crenshaw from one large school of more than 3000 students in to several Small Learning Communities (SLC), each numbering around 600 students. The problem was that this plan had never been taken seriously by the school’s administration. When the loss of accreditation brought attention to the state of affairs at Crenshaw, suddenly any plan for change sounded like a good one.

So far in this discussion of Charter Schools, we have highlighted the autonomy that a school’s charter provides. As we continue this discussion, I think it pertinent to accept this autonomy as a clear benefit of Charter Schools, but the important question to consider is What is being done with this autonomy? In January of 2008, Crenshaw was inducted into a pilot Innovation Division and was granted a large degree of autonomy from LAUSD. As part of applying for this autonomy, Crenshaw had submitted a proposal for transforming the school into several SLCs. In other words, Crenshaw was seeking autonomy from the larger school district with express purpose of restructuring into smaller schools.

Since leaving LAUSD, I have been working at a small Charter School managed by Green Dot Public Schools. Green Dot is a CMO (Charter Management Organization) in its ninth year of existence that has already established itself as a successful model for education reform. This year, three Green Dot Public Schools were recognized by the California Department of Education as California Distinguised Schools. Some attribute Crenshaw being granted its autonomy to the recent Green Dot takeover of LAUSD’s Locke High School in Watts.

Green Dot is very clear about the success of their schools. From the beginning, Green Dot has operated under The Six Tenets of High-Performing Schools. When asked, “What will you do with your autonomy,” this was Green Dot’s response. Number One on this list is, Small, Safe, Personalized Schools.

I recently went to my mailbox on campus to discover a nice, glossy publication by the School Redesign Network at Stanford University, entitled Redesigning Schools, What Matters and What Works: 10 Features of Good Small Schools, by Linda Darling-Hammond. Of these 10 features, I would separate them into two categories: 1) those that are immediate advantages of a small school and 2) design aspects that can be easily implemented at a small school. Here I will focus on the immediate advantages.

Anyone who has done serious study within a learning cohort can attest to the importance of forming a close-knit community around learning. An obvious advantage of a small school is that it is small. The school I teach at is in its third year of existence and currently has less than 400 enrolled students. Next year, we will be a complete ninth through twelfth grade high school and will have about 550 students. For many Americans, 550 students is the size of their graduating class. At a school this small, it is possible for everyone to know everyone else.

Effective small schools are not only designed to support relationship; they are also structured to allow these relationships to develop over time.

Linda Darling-Hammond, Redesigning Schools

Having a small school allows the school to foster strong relationships amongst students, parents and teachers. Here we emphasize the community aspect. Some schools adopt advisory programs, in which students are literally paired with a teacher through their four years of school, to help foster this sort of relationship. The size of the school and programs such as advisory also help to foster parent outreach. It is feasible for advisory teacher to contact 3o parents and for a parent coordinator to contact 500. This sort of outreach is not possible at a larger school.

Going from a staff of more than 150 and a department of more than thirty to a staff of twenty and a department of four, perhaps the single largest change I noticed was in the Professional Development I received. Where as in in a large district school, Professional Development largely focused on logistics with the occasional safety training thrown in, at a small school it became possible for Professional Development to focus on actual pedagogies. Our school has this year taken on the goal of developing our teaching of vocabulary. It is a modest goal, but even this would prove difficult at a much larger school. In the Math Department, this year we have focused our energy on the problems faced teaching Algebra I. Having a small department makes the implementation of large scale changes such as double-blocking feasible.

This may be the most crucial aspect of small schools. Indeed, at Crenshaw, a desire for democratic decision making was the very impetus for the move toward the change. Dr. Darling-Hammond spells out the benefits afforded to small school in terms of decision making. First amongst these, is the proximity to the classroom of the decision making. In this way, “decisions are made by those who best know students and their needs”. Second, is the fact that the school is governed by the faculty. This is, in fact, one of Green Dot’s Six Tenets: 3. Local Control with Extensive Professional Development and Accountability. According to Green Dot, “local control works in Green Dot’s school model because schools and all stakeholders within them are held accountable for student results.” Finally, Dr. Darling-Hammond emphasize the importance of student and parent involvement in school decision making. In this way, “students develop new skills and learn to be responsible members of a democratic community.” This also helps to foster ownership of the community around the school.