Subdivided high school failing test

LEBANON, Ore. — Hopes were high in this blue-collar town when Lebanon High was broken up into four smaller schools-within-a-school to try to reduce the dropout rate.

At the time, in 2004, the small-schools movement was growing across the country, and it had a powerful backer in Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

But just two years later, complaints from parents and educators have put the future of small schools in jeopardy in Lebanon and across the country.

“We made a mistake trying to push autonomy really hard, and the community blew back at us,” said Mark Whitson, a journalism teacher at Lebanon High School. “Parents want us to slow our pace of change until they know what we are doing.”

The small-schools concept calls for dividing large high schools into groups of about 300 students with similar academic interests. (Lebanon was divided into “academies” devoted to communications; farming, natural resources and health; arts, business, community and family affairs; and engineering and other technical fields.)

The groups then take classes together for four years, with the same teachers. Proponents say students learn more because they and their teachers get to know each other better.

In Lebanon, though, scheduling problems abounded and test scores did not budge. Many feared the student body was becoming too fragmented.

Some students were upset at being separated from friends who had been assigned to other “learning academies.” Others complained that their choice of courses had been narrowed.

The complaints were so strong that a Gates-backed nonprofit group withdrew a grant worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, citing the lack of community support.

Clara Hemphill, director of insideschools.org, a project of Advocates for Children of New York, said trouble can begin with what she called “small schools in drag” — schools that are small in concept only.

“The school becomes these four ’groovy academies for esoteric studies,’ but the kids still call it ’Roosevelt’ or whatever. The teachers aren’t really interested, and the building stays the same, and they just rename the floors,” she said.