How to Handle Bad News for Small Schools in Oregon

Lindsey Luebchow — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 17:00:00 -0400

Four years ago in Oregon, two foundations invested $25 million in a "small schools" initiative, the largest private investment ever in Oregon's K-12 schools. The initiative sought to improve student performance and retention by transforming large, under-performing high schools into small learning academies. The first results of the Oregon experiment are in, and unfortunately they aren't very positive. Graduation rates remain low, and attendance and test scores haven't improved much since the large high schools split apart.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation—the primary funder, along with the Oregon-based Meyer Memorial Trust—has pumped significant money into the creation of small high schools around the country. But improvements in student achievement and graduation rates have been elusive. Evaluations of the Gates initiative generally show that the redesigned small high schools produce similar results to their predecessor schools, and the Oregon findings are more bad news. The Gates Foundation deserves credit for reacting to these failures in the most productive way possible: continuing its investment in high school reforms, while also modifying that investment in response to research findings.

Oregon's First Small School Class

In 2004, the Gates Foundation teamed up with other education reformers in Oregon to start the $25 billion Oregon Small Schools Initiative. The initiative has produced 38 small schools in 12 districts across Oregon, either by restructuring large high schools into smaller units (32) or starting new small high schools (6). Grants from the initiative—around $1 million for the largest high schools—provide funds for reorganization planning, technical assistance, and professional and curriculum development, among other activities.

Three large high schools—Marshall and Roosevelt High Schools in Portland and Liberty High School in Hillsboro—started restructuring efforts right away in 2004. The first classes of students with four years in the small academies just graduated. But, as The Oregonian reports, the test scores, attendance, and graduation rates of these classes remained, for the most part, stuck at the same levels as those of previous classes.

Other Small School Efforts

Oregon is one of four states, including Maine, North Carolina, and Washington, with statewide small schools initiatives funded by the Gates Foundation. In addition, the Foundation awards restructuring grants to individual high-need school districts and also funds organizations that want to start new small high schools.

Evaluations of these grants, conducted by an independent contractor hired by the Gates Foundation, have found little improvement in student achievement resulting from the small schools. While some measures of student success, such as attendance and progression rates, have gone up for students in new small schools, students in redesigned small schools have also not shown progress in those areas. A recent evaluation of the federal Smaller Learning Communities Grant Program found similar results to the Gates initiatives, with "no significant trends" in achievement on state tests or college-entrance exams, but some improvement in student promotion, participation in extracurricular activities, and school violence.

Regroup, Rethink, and Reinvest

The Gates Foundation took a shot at a research-based, expensive school reform. The initiative has not yet produced solid results in its original form. But the Foundation is targeting some of the lowest-performing, highest-poverty schools in the country, and no one has yet to find a quick fix reform, particularly in high schools.

When a long-term investment doesn't produce meaningful returns, funders should not necessarily abandon it, but they should admit the need for modifications. And that's exactly what the Gates Foundation is doing. Instead of trying to save face, it is acknowledging setbacks, investigating why the initiative hasn't improved student achievement, and looking to fine-tune its investment. Specifically, the initiative is placing more emphasis on selecting grantees that have a track record of raising school achievement; spending more money on teacher recruitment, professional development, and retention; focusing more on effective curriculum and instructional resources; and favoring starting new schools to redesigning existing schools.

Vicki Phillips, the current director of the Gates Foundation's education initiatives, told The Oregonian, "We have learned that small by itself is not enough. Good curriculum and instruction don't just show up...We need to get more dramatic results." That's the right, ultimately most productive approach.

Disclosure: EdMoneyWatch.Org is funded by a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Outcome-Based, Collaborative, Non-Sexy Philanthropy

Lindsey Luebchow — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 19:00:00 -0400

What would you do if you had $2 billion to invest in education? The New York Times Magazine asked a group of experts involved in education philanthropy. Their responses indicate how education philanthropy is changing—for the better. But the panel brushed over some important questions that any philanthropist should consider when making education investments. We drew three key take-aways from the panel's discussion.

Outcome-Based Accountability

All five participants agreed on the importance of making philanthropic investments more outcome-focused. In the past, philanthropists spent money less strategically, without requiring recipients to demonstrate that they used money effectively. Now, it's all about results. Most funders require concrete progress from their investments.

We agree that all education funding—from both public and philanthropic sources—must become more outcome-focused. But how funders measure outcomes is equally important—and the NYT roundtable barely touched on that issue. Philanthropic funders should measure progress using multiple measures, because there are multiple outcomes that indicate education success. Plus philanthropists need to bear in mind that many assessment tools are still blunt and in the process of refinement. In addition, they must give investments enough time to have an effect. Short-term accountability requiring quick results isn't going to lead to meaningful, systemic changes.

Collaboration Between Insiders and Outsiders

The roundtable also discussed the perceived dichotomy between "inside-the-system, top-down" vs. "outside-the-system, bottom-up" investments. Inside-the-system investments support reform-minded school systems and superintendents working within public school districts, while outside-the-system investments identify "disruptive forces" operating outside the traditional public school system, such as charter schools, that can experiment more freely and leverage grassroots energy.

The article shouldn't have presented these two types of investments as a dichtomy, though. The roundtable eventually arrived at this position, but in the real world there often isn't enough interaction and collaboration between the two sectors. It's counterproductive for "insiders" and "outsiders" to work at unrelated, sometimes even contradictory, purposes. Each side brings its own knowledge base, skills, and constituencies. Successful investments meld the strengths of both and encourage the exchange of lessons learned.

"Non-Sexy" Human Capital

The hardest, but potentially most productive and valuable, investment is in human infrastructure. Schools need talented, committed personnel in the classroom, in the principal's office, and in district administration. Philanthropists should get down in the trenches and commit to searching for, recruiting, and training teachers and administrators. But this kind of work is what the panelists termed a "non-sexy" investment.

We agree that human capital is a critical education need, and that philanthropists must focus on it in order to have an impact. But it's extremely difficult for philanthropy alone to sustain expensive, time-consuming, long-term investments in infrastructure initiatives. As Joel Klein, the chancellor of NYC public schools, mentioned, philanthropy can be incredibly valuable in getting human infrastructure initiatives "off the ground." But these initiatives will succeed in the long-term only if philanthropists figure out how to leverage taxpayer money to expand successful pilot programs. Government buy-in is key.

Education philanthropy may be a sexy topic now, but it's important to understand that, as Rick Hess notes in the NYT piece, philanthropy is only a drop in the bucket of total education expenditures, which total more than $500 billion per year. That's why our Federal Education Budget Project focuses on reforming the distribution of taxpayer money—not just because we're penny-pinchers, but because that's where we can have the most impact. To get the most bang for their buck, philanthropists will have to not only fund good investments with their own dollars, but also invest in strategies that change how taxpayer dollars for public education are spent.