Running head: REVIEW OF SCHOOLS WITHIN SCHOOLS
A Review of Lee and Ready’s Schools Within Schools
Michael McVey, Ed.D.
Book review for Educational Administration Quarterlyby Michael McVey, Ed.D.
Lee, V. E., & Ready, D.D. (2007). Schools within schools: Possibilities and pitfalls of high school reform. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Academic forums have examined the idea of organizing smaller schools within largecomprehensive high schools since the early 1960s beginning with Barker and Gump’s Big School Small School (1964) which formally introduced the idea of semi-autonomous subunits within large schools. The guiding principlewas that smaller units would encourage enhanced academic work while at the same time offeringstudents an array of extracurricular activities more commonly afforded large schools.
Widesupport for this reform model never realized, but now the US Department of Education and The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are supporting the development of small schools and the conversion of large schools into smaller ones. Such widely announced support has brought the concept of the schools within schools (SWS) model to the forefront of educational discourse.
The authors, Lee and Ready, introduce the schools within schools model with a profile of a recently reformed comprehensive high school. In addition to a school within a school model, the described school was able to institute other reforms such as zero-based staffing which allowed the Principal to remove teachers not complying with the new model with sufficient zeal. The school also implemented a block-scheduling model.If any positive gains resulted from the implementation of a school within a school model, the authors clearly note that other reform forces are at work, a tenet central to understanding the complicated nature of reform.
Once their anecdotal approach was established, the authors provided an appropriately brief history of high schools in the United Stateswith a focus on their almost unchecked. The large comprehensive high school is a fact in this country and the authors note that the existence of such schools came about through the consolidation of districts over the years, the general persistence of the concept of high schools, population growth, and mandated attendance. Finally, they note that specialization into vocational and academic sub-specialties has flourished with such growth.
The authors also noted the recent movement toward the creation of smaller high schools and outlined issues that characterize them including the need for staff to play multifaceted roles, and the limitations of academic programs especially in rural areas. One issue not addressed is the advent of many online learning opportunities and distance learning programs that are eliminating rural limitations.
What separates this study of reform, according to the authors, is the “methodologically sound” basis of their study. By referring to strong experimental designs,the authors use language that comes close to the “scientifically based research” wording expected in educational studies today. Used in conjunction with anecdotal and other qualitative research, the authors’ work easily reinforces earlier observations and studies.
Cautious analysis is important since the difficulty in assessing the success of the schools within schools model is that the restructuring often accompanies other reforms such as increased support for at-risk students, block scheduling, and professional development. Researchers must determine if the school wide restructuring alone has brought about any academic successes.
Essential to an understanding of the schools within schools reform model is the degree to which subunits within the school are autonomous. Along a continuum of autonomy, the House Planmodel lies at one end and offers course work with in a subunit. The Minischool model, in contrast, creates themed subunits in a school setting. The Schoolswithin a School model may seek physically to subdivide larger schools with complete autonomy for subunits within the school building. The authors clarify the issues related to autonomy at some length throughout the book.
Through a recounting of five examples of comprehensive high schools embracing the schools within schools model, several revealing anecdotes emerge demonstrating the powerful social forces at work to complicate the scientific study of schoolreform. To their credit, the authors do not shy away from these findings.
In one case, a school organized itself around two distinctly separate curricular and pedagogical approaches. Students and their parents, when asked to select one or the other model, sometimes chose both models. Anecdotal interviews with teachers at the school suggested that parents were interested in having their children belong to a subunit that stood for something. Parents preferred such subunits to randomly assigned administrative groupings. The creation of a socially identifiable group appears to be an understudied element of the success of reform efforts.
Even as the authors searched for schools using this model, unexpected issues presented themselves. For example, almost none of the schools they found served affluent or schools with high achieving students. This suggests that such restructuring models are not necessary a universal design for all large comprehensive schools. Again, the authors did not shy away from confounding facts despite their enthusiasm for the model.
The authors offer descriptions of five schools using the full schools within schools model. Their descriptions include the population of the schools, their history, and the unique structures of their subunits. The authors are careful to present both the benefits and challenges of the SWS model. They state primary assumptions regarding the value of the restructuring for both students and teachers. For the students, the assumed outcome is a demonstration of increased interest in school, increased commitment, and increased engagement with learning. Presumably, because the students themselves have chosen their subunit, what follows would be a greater engagement in their schooling. However, this theory presumes that students have chosen their subunit thoughtfully and beyond the influence of both peers and parents.
For teachers, the assumed outcome of the SWS model should be a demonstration of increased collaboration, increased collective responsibility for student learning, increased knowledge of students, and increased care for them. Such an anticipated outcome presumes teachers have bought into the theme of the subunit. The anticipated outcome also presumes that teachers will embrace a basic collegiality, give up territoriality over the curriculum, and that administration will build time into the day for constructive collaboration. This model, if an increased graduation rate is also one of the goals, presumes an effective curricular plan for the full four years leading to graduation. The authors address these presumptions and assumptions for both teachers and students.
When evaluating the effects of school wide reform, one tendency would be to focus primarily upon issues related to the administration of the schools since such documentation would be more readily available. For example,researchers might observe that a school uses block scheduling as an opportunity to plan initiatives within the subunit.It would be a mistake to find a causal link between academic successes and scheduling decisions. However, a more detailed analysis would include a study of the social benefits to students who move throughout their day as a cadre.Indeed, the authors address both the social and administrative influences on the success of the SWS model at some length.One example, mentioned earlier, is that the authors examine the way students choose subunits and discover their choice is hostage to many social pressures. This confounding limiting factor could easily limit the effectiveness of an experimental study of the effects of the model.
Lee and Ready,although admittedly enthusiastic supporters, are far from oblivious to the weaknesses of the model. One of the most difficult theoretical problems in the design arises in the affective domain regarding the professional loyalty of teachers. In high schools, teachers form collegial bonds through work with other teachers in their subject area. In fact, many high schools are physically designed to encourage shared workspaces for like-subject teachers.
The SWS model forces together teachers whose interests run across disciplines. This arrangement makes subject oriented professional development on a daily and informal basis difficult to achieve. Teachers must effectively alter their loyalty toward the subunit and away from their subject discipline. In a large comprehensive high school where across-disciplines organization naturally occurswould be the large special education department. In that grouping, teachers share the goals of supporting students in their subunit regardless of subject discipline.
Without the common focus of the subunit, the merging of teachers from various disciplines is difficult indeed and requires a special sort of teacher. The authors readily recognize this fact. Put another way, within the socially defined unit of the department, teachers, in many cases,are free to enjoy some autonomy in structuring lessons and infusing some of their own personal interests. In the SWS model, teachers must relinquish some autonomy in favor of the subunit theme.These two concerns, outlined briefly by the authors, may be issues that would affect the professional health of the subunit in this model.
The authors, in their quest to examine the workings of the SWS model, took great care to explain the governance and leadership in the schools with a particular focus on the strengths of the principal. Such a focus would suggest that a single individual shoulders a great deal of the responsibility for the success of the model. As noted earlier however, the model, in order to work effectively, requires a teaching staff with a willingness to focus their strengths in support of the model. It would make sense then to profile the strengths of the principals of the schools as the authors did.
Of great interest to this reviewer, is the way the authors approached the ideas of equity and access. The authors admit that any sort of reform designed to democratize education and use non-stratifying approaches might be an incongruous challenge at best considering the stratified society students will enter upon graduation. Schools offering subunits differing in terms of prestige and academic rigor may end up sorting students based on their academic backgrounds despite conscious efforts to avoid stratifying the subunits. The authors discovered that, over time, high achieving students tended to select high status subunits regardless of their themes.
The authors briefly touched upon a variety of influences on the subunits including race, social class, gender, student behavior, special education status, language status, and academic background. Their conclusion was that despite the efforts to create demographic balance, honoring student choice led to an increase in stratification by race, class, and gender. The challenge to avoid stratification, however,is a challenge for any high school regardless of the organizing model they choose.
The authors concluded their analysis of the SWS model by noting eight specific lessons from their observations. Interestingly, the authors also concluded that state mandated accountability measures such as graduation tests were actually interfering with innovative teaching and reformation practices.
The authors are to be commended for their many years of work analyzing this complicated issue of schools within schools. They have done a remarkable job in choosing these five schools as a representative sampling of SWS model schools. Further, their examination of the model demonstrates not only its strengths but its weaknessesand clearly outlines these to the reader. This book is exceptional reading for any reform-minded group who think they have found a panacea through reorganization through the schools within a school model. This book can also provide a significant long view of the issues inherent in this model sufficient to guide researchers interested in pursuing their own studies of this reformation model.
Michael McVey is an Assistant Professor in the Teacher Education Department at EasternMichiganUniversity. During his two decades as a teacher, he chaired a Special Education subunit in a large comprehensive school in Tucson, Arizona.
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