In recent years, there’s been a trend toward smaller high schools, including taking an existing high school and subdividing it into several smaller schools. In practice, this hasn’t always worked out so well. As the Raleigh News & Observer reports:
Over the past decade, East Wake High School has gone from being at the national forefront of education-reform efforts championed by Bill Gates to a cautionary reminder that not all new educational ideas work as planned.
Political, business and education leaders had touted the concept that transforming high schools such as East Wake into separate small schools would show that traditional high schools were obsolete. Now Wake County school leaders say the model didn’t achieve all they had hoped when the program began in 2005 and are consolidating the Wendell campus back into one school.
“East Wake has had 10 years,” said Wake school board Vice Chairman Tom Benton, whose district represents most of eastern Wake. “They’ve recognized, based on all the measures, that at best it’s flat-lined and it’s time to look for something different.”
The tone was more upbeat in 2003 when the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation first announced that it would provide what would eventually become more than $20 million to help create innovative small high schools in North Carolina. It was part of an effort by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates that would result in his foundation’s providing $650 million nationally to support small high schools.
