Great minds can be fostered in small schools

By Joan Ryan

Tuesday, November 25, 2003 9:55 AM CST

On the table in the main office of the International Community School in Oakland, there was a book of ABCs, created by the children there. I flipped through the pages as I waited for Principal Janie Naranjo-Hall.

I was there to be "Principal for a Day," one of more than 50 people who fanned out into Oakland schools recently to be part of the struggling district's effort to tap into community resources. Naranjo-Hall had walked straight from her car to her office where -- with her purse still on her shoulder -- she scrambled to find a substitute teacher to cover a fifth-grade class that was about to begin.

Nearly 80 percent of the students are Hispanic. Half have limited English skills. Ninety percent qualify for free or reduced lunches. When teachers make annual home visits, they're no longer surprised to find three adults and four children sharing a one-bedroom apartment.

But here is what I also learned during my day with Naranjo-Hall: In a district of so many challenges and failures, this school works. Test scores are rising. The school's API (Academic Performance Index) rating climbed from 545 in its first year of operation in 2001 to 646 last year. The jump of 101 points is 88 points higher than the school's target for improvement. Students are happy. Parents show up.

The school is a microcosm of what does work in public schools -- a formula so straightforward and proven that it ought to be carved into the desktop of every superintendent and governor in the nation: Begin with a small school -- International Community has just 238 students in kindergarten through fifth grade. Add a strong administrator and smart, motivated teachers, then support them in doing their best work. This is it, folks. The basis for real reform.

I understand and even support the rationale for spending money on standardized testing: We have to measure students' knowledge so we can know which schools are working and which aren't. But with limited resources, the priority ought to be creating small schools and training teachers. If so many of our children are starving academically, doesn't it make more sense to put our money first into feeding them, then into weighing them? "Sorry," Naranjo-Hall said waving me into her office. She has piles of papers everywhere: forms to fill out, supplies to request, memos to answer, budgets to squeeze. She couldn't find a substitute; the financial crisis has narrowed the pool of available subs. So instead of diving into her paperwork, Naranjo-Hall spent the first hour of her day with the fifth-graders, overseeing reading time with their second-grade "buddies." Then, she divided them into groups of twos and threes and dispatched them to other classrooms for the day, their backpacks filled with work.

I wandered the room reading some of the writing taped to the walls. The pieces were organized, fluid and full of lively (and correctly spelled) language.

This is what happens in small schools, where kids receive individual guidance from a teacher who understands each student's strengths and weaknesses, and who understands that children need more than instruction from them. They need connection. Studies show that this is as important as academics in helping at-risk kids to succeed.

And small schools are the way to foster connection. The Journal of School Health, for example, published a study last year that found as school size increases, so does student alienation, especially among average and insecure students. Kids who feel no connection to their teachers or their school are less likely to achieve and more likely eventually to drop out.

Most of ICS's students and teachers came from Hawthorne, a sprawling elementary school of about 900 students. Its API rating last year was 479 -- 167 points below ICS's rating, even though ICS's students face the same challenges of language and poverty. ICS's attendance is higher than Hawthorne's, too, and behavior problems are minimal.

ICS will be moving out of portable buildings in January and into a new building it will share with another small elementary school. The Oakland school district is swimming in debt, yet it has decided to spend some of its limited resources on creating small schools. Unfortunately, so much of the district's money comes with strings attached from the state, and so many of its regulations come from Washington. And both sets of officials are convinced the answer to California's educational problems is testing and more testing.

They ought to spend a day with Naranjo-Hall. They might finally understand that huge, sweeping reforms begin small. One little neighborhood school at a time.

Joan Ryan is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Send comments to her in care of this newspaper or send her e-mail at: joanryan@sfchronicle.com

Copyright 2003, Newspaper Enterprise Assn.

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