Schools’ alternative approaches earn some A’s, some F’s

Published 10:23 pm Friday, May 1, 2009

MARYSVILLE — Kids with similar academic interests swap thoughts and theories. Teachers tailor lessons to students they’ve spent years getting to know. Principals and counselors develop relationships with students and step up quickly when problems arise. It’s Hogwarts, without the wands.

That’s how small learning communities — schools within schools — are supposed to work.

The reality isn’t always so.

Several large Snohomish County high schools have experimented with smaller academies to varying degrees of success.

Mariner High School in south Everett is cutting back from five academies to three next year, while doing away with the academic themes that had defined the small schools. Mountlake Terrace High School disbanded the practice all together last fall after trying small schools for five years.

Even so, the Marysville School District is pushing ahead, building its newest high school around the concept and continuing it in each of its other high schools.

The practice has drawn both ire and admiration from parents, teachers, students and scholars.

“Things were not perfect here before,” said Josh Rosenbach, principal of the International School of Communication at Marysville-Pilchuck High School. “A change was needed. We just needed to be different and do better. The question is, ‘Are we?’ And that question is a hard question to answer.”

Marysville-Pilchuck, once one of the biggest high schools in the state, switched to smaller academies two years ago after students’ low assessment scores earned it a spot on a national list of failing schools. Administrators decided the school needed a dramatic change, and opted to fracture it into small pieces, assistant superintendent Gail Miller said.

At Marysville, students choose an academy — they’re supposed to pick based on their academic interests — and then spend their high school career taking classes in that school. Administrators occasionally make waivers and allow students to take classes, such as college-level courses or art, in other academies, but for the most part, students must study subjects offered in their academy.

Mariner broke into small schools in 2001 with funding from the Bill &Melinda Gates Foundation, including money for student scholarships and teacher training.

Mariner decided to make the switch to three small schools to save money and focus on teaching core classes instead of the themes. Principal Brent Kline hopes to take advantage of some of the positive elements that came with going small, such as close relationships between students and teachers.

“We are trying to sustain the best qualities of the small schools,” he said.

Rob Storrs, an English teacher at Mariner, said the smaller schools enabled him to know his students’ strengths and weaknesses better. He wishes the program had been more successful.

“We were never willing to let go of our identity as a large, comprehensive high school, and because of that we did not develop a real understanding of the benefits and shortcomings of a small school,” he said.

Small schools became trendy in the late ’90s and maintained their popularity in the beginning of this decade, said Andrew Rotherham, co-founder and publisher of Education Sector, a national education policy think tank in Washington, D.C.

Crowded high schools throughout the country switched to small academies, looking for a way to boost test scores, engage more students and stem drop-out rates.

Results have been mixed.

“Where they haven’t fared so well was when a large school that wasn’t working very well was simply broken into six small schools that didn’t work very well,” he said. “Small alone is not sufficient to address the problems most struggling schools have. They have to be small, plus a bundle of other interventions.”

In Marysville, teachers have mixed feelings about the switch. Teachers who love small schools say they enjoy working with fewer colleagues and students and developing lessons that span multiple subjects. Teachers who hate the new setup feel that students can’t take as many electives and have fewer options, said Arden Watson, president of the Marysville teachers union.

Students are divided over the arrangement.

“I don’t like it,” said Kimberlee Kipperberg, a sophomore in Pathways of Choice. “I have lost a lot of friends I had in elementary and middle school because they didn’t pick Pathways and so we’ve grown apart. It’s just kind of weird that we’re all in the same school, but everyone has separate agendas.”

Junior Mikayla LaRosa said there’s a genuine camaraderie between her teachers and classmates she didn’t experience as a freshman, when Marysville-Pilchuck was a traditional large school.

“I didn’t like it as much because I felt I was in the masses of people,” said LaRosa, a student in the International School of Communication. “ISC is different. I like being with the same students. There’s more of a connection.”

Debate over the smaller schools continues, as Marysville administrators move forward with a new campus designed around the concept.

“The work is really hard at the beginning,” Miller said. “All of us have a memory of a large, traditional high school. For some of us, that’s a very fond memory. So it’s hard to drop something that’s been around for 100 years. Change is hard.”

Kaitlin Manry: 425-339-3292, kmanry@heraldnet.com.