Small Schools Resources

Links and Bibliography

The Small Schools Workshop, a group of organizers, educators, and researchers based in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, offers a wealth of online resources: a calendar of events and training opportunities; books, research reports, and bibliographies; speeches and interviews; listservs and a job board. www.smallschools.com/

The Coalition of Essential Schools' Fall 2002 edition of Horace, "Elements of Smallness," features articles and book reviews on small schools, a resources section, and an "Afterword" about individualized learning written by a student at the Met School in Providence, RI. www.essentialschools.org/pub/ces_docs/resources/horace/19_1/19_1_toc.html

The Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory (NWREL) posts a variety of online research, including Kathleen Cotton's ground-breaking 1996 study on small schools, School Size, School Climate, and Student Performance, as well as her December 2001 literature review, New Small Learning Communities: Findings from Recent Literature. www.nwrel.org/scpd/sirs/

The Small Schools Project, part of the University of Washington's Center on Reinventing Public Education at the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs, supports new small schools in Washington state and nationwide. Its web site posts an array of small schools resources--links to small schools and other organizations; research, academic papers, and digests of recent media articles; plus a variety of tools for interested educators and parents. www.smallschoolsproject.org/

The Smaller Learning Communities Program is a $142 million, competitive federal grant program that helps large high schools create smaller, more personalized learning communities. Its web site features program information, lists of grantees and their accomplishments, FAQs, application packages, and examples of successful proposals. (Applications for the next funding competition are expected to be released mid-February 2003.) The site also posts an extensive collection of small schools resources, research, and links. www.ed.gov/offices/OESE/SLCP/

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has invested more than $250 million in grants nationwide to create new small schools and transform large ones. Its web site provides grant and program descriptions, fast facts on small schools, and other resources including an excellent annotated bibliography of research and articles on school size. www.gatesfoundation.org/education/smallhighschools/default.htm

The Rural School and Community Trust has assembled an excellent online collection of resources on small schools, with links to relevant research, news articles, and organizations. www.ruraledu.org/educ_policy_display.cfm?subject=School_Size

The Small Schools Directory catalogues in an online database a comprehensive listing of non-government organizations; funding opportunities; local, state, and federal programs; and media, periodicals, and publishers. www.ael.org/eric/smed/

Bibliography

Cohen, Mike. "Transforming the American High School: New Directions for State and Local Policy." Aspen: Aspen Institute, 2002. http://www.aspeninstitute.org/ecs/index.html

Cotton, Kathleen. New Small Learning Communities: Findings from Recent Literature. Portland: Northwest Regional Educational Lab, 2001. http://www.nwrel.org/scpd/sirs/nslc.pdf

Darling-Hammond, Linda. The Right to Learn: A Blueprint for Creating Schools that Work. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997.

Fine, Michelle and Janis I. Somerville. Small Schools Big Imaginations: A Creative Look at Urban Public Schools. Chicago: Cross City Campaign for Urban School Reform, 1998. http://www.crosscity.org/

Fullan, Michael. Leading in a Culture of Change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001.

Lawrence, Barbara Kent, et al. Dollars and Sense: The Cost Effectiveness of Small Schools. Cincinnati: KnowledgeWorks Foundation: 2002. http://www.kwfdn.org/Resources/dollars_sense.pdf

Murphy, John et al. The Productive High School: Creating Personalized Academic Communities. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press, 2001.

Steinberg, Adria and Lili Allen. "From Large to Small: Strategies for Personalizing the High School." Boston: Jobs for the Future, 2002.