Category: Studies

Council of Educational Facility Planners International and the US Environmental Protection Agency

“Schools for Successful Communities: An Element of Smart Growth” 

https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2014-02/documents/smartgrowth_schools_pub.pdf

This 52 page report outlines a “smart growth” approach to school configuration and design (smaller walk-able schools). In particular, pages 11-12 highlight the educational benefits including (but not limited to):

“Community-centered schools can reduce student isolation and alienation that often breed discipline problems…. This sense of belonging manifests itself in increased participation in extracurricular activities…”

“Community-centered schools foster increased involvement in the school by all members of the community, including parents. This has been proven to play a role in students’ success.”

“The convenience of getting to and from a community-centered school often increases student participation in school-related activities.”

“Recent research has shown that when parents are involved in school activities, their children do better and stay in school longer. In fact, a critical mass of parental involvement improves the performance of all students, not just those with more involved parents.”

Lisa Wolf-Wendel and Chuck Epp (Kansas Univeristy)

“Small School Benefits”

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2010/jan/25/small-schools-benefit-students/

“Well over 100 studies show that small neighborhood schools foster key educational benefits:

• Students in small neighborhood schools learn faster, achieve more, and graduate at higher rates than comparable students in larger, non-neighborhood schools. Studies find that smaller schools are especially beneficial to low-income and minority students and are especially crucial to the success of efforts at narrowing the achievement gap.
• Small neighborhood schools cultivate better student attitudes. Their students have a stronger sense of belonging and more active engagement in learning.
• Small neighborhood schools reduce discipline problems. Students in these schools are better known by teachers across multiple grade levels and, as a result, there are fewer discipline problems, truancy issues, and better attendance.
• Small neighborhood schools better engage students in extracurricular activities, and this involvement is correlated with better attendance and improved learning outcomes.
• Small neighborhood schools encourage walking to school and this improves children’s health and active engagement in learning.
• Small neighborhood schools foster better teacher attitudes. As one researcher put it, “large schools appear to promote negative teacher perceptions of school administration and low staff morale. In small schools, teachers are more likely to participate in planning and analyze practice, and are likely to expend extra efforts to ensure that the students achieve and the school succeeds.”
• Small neighborhood schools better facilitate parental involvement in their children’s learning and foster closer parent-teacher relationships.”

Seth Gershenson and Laura Landbein (American University)

“The Effect of Primary School Size on Academic Achievement”

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.3102/0162373715576075

“Two subgroups of interest are significantly harmed by school size: socioeconomically disadvantaged students and students with learning disabilities. The largest effects are observed among students with learning disabilities: A 10-student increase in grade size is found to decrease their math and reading achievement by about 0.015 test-score standard deviations.”

“The most striking result in Table 6 is that students in larger schools who have administratively classified learning disabilities perform significantly worse on math and reading standardized tests. The interaction effects are similar in magnitude for both math and reading, indicating that a 10-student increase in total grade enrollment reduces the achievement of learning-disabled students by about 0.015 test-score SD. This is an arguably practically significant difference, as the sample SD of grade enrollments is about 40 students and the average annual change in grade enrollments was 11 students.”

Kenneth Leithwood and Doris Jantz

“A Review of Empirical Evidence About School Size Effects: A Policy Perspective”

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0034654308326158

“This review examined 57 post-1990 empirical studies of school size effects on a variety of student and organizational outcomes. The weight of evidence provided by this research clearly favors smaller schools. Students who traditionally struggle at school and students from disadvantaged social and economic backgrounds are the major benefactors of smaller schools. Elementary schools with large proportions of such students should be limited in size to not more than about 300 students; those serving economically and socially heterogeneous or relatively advantaged students should be limited in size to about 500 students. Secondary schools serving exclusively or largely diverse and/or disadvantaged students should be limited in size to about 600 students or fewer, while those secondary schools serving economically and socially heterogeneous or relatively advantaged students should be limited in size to about 1,000 students.”

Debra Heath

The Significance of Elementary School Size Literature Review

http://www.aps.edu/re/documents/2005-2006-publications/ES_School_Size.pdf

All of the research findings cited in this Brief refer to elementary schools.Some of the key finding include:

·       On average, research indicates that an effective size for an elementary school is in the range of 300-400 students.

·       Student achievement in small schools is at least equal, and often superior, to student achievement in large schools.

·       Small schools have lower incidences of negative social behavior than do large schools

Compared to large schools, smaller schools cultivate better teacher and administrator attitudes toward their work and increase staff collaboration.

Daniel L Duke, Thomas DeRoberto, and Sarah Trautvetter (Univ. of Virginia)

“Reducing the Negative Effects of Large Schools”

http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED507894.pdf

“Why create small schools? Above all, in to address four specific problems: the need for small, intimate learning communities where students are well known and can be pushed and encouraged by adults who care for and about them; to reduce the isolation that too often seeds alienation and violence; to reduce devastating discrepancies in the achievement gap that plague poorer children and, too often, children of color; and to encourage teachers to use their intelligence and experience to help students succeed.”

ERIC (Education Resources Information Center)

“Research about School Size and School Performance in Impoverished Communities”

http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED448968.pdf

“Many panels and experts have endorsed small schools as educationally effective, often adding the parenthetical remark that smaller size is especially beneficial for impoverished students. A recent series of studies, the “Matthew Project,” substantially strengthens the research base on school size and school performance in impoverished communities, adding evidence to bolster these claims. This Digest reviews recent thinking about small school size, describes the aim of the Matthew Project studies, and summarizes findings. Discussion concludes with a brief section on implications.”

Ambrose Leunge and J. Stepehn Ferris

“School size and youth violence”

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016726810600148X

“Conclusion: In this paper, we have argued that the organizational characteristics of large schools create additional frustration and alienation for students that interfere with the social role of the school to foster human and social capital accumulation. In some cases, this frustration will spill over into youth violence. When students are faced with large challenges beyond the school yard, the smaller sized schools can help to provide a safer and more supportive learning environment to reduce the level of frustration permeating the difficult teenage years. Our analysis then suggests that smaller sized schools in these areas would be especially beneficial.”

Constance E. Beaumont with Elizabeth G. Pianca

“Historic Neighborhood Schools in the Age of Sprawl: Why Johnny Can’t Walk to School.”

http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED450557.pdf

This report examines public policy effects on historic neighborhood school expansion, renovation, and replacement needs. It addresses four basic questions: (1) Are public policies inadvertently sabotaging the very type of community-centered school that many parents and educators are calling for today? (2) Do some policies and practices promote mega-school sprawl at the expense of older neighborhoods? (3) Why can’t kids walk to school anymore? and (4) How have some school districts overcome policy and other barriers to the retention and modernization of old historic schools? Included are examples of how some communities are addressing these troublesome policies, including several school renovation successes. Concluding sections provide recommendations for policy reforms to buttress neighborhood conservation and smart growth efforts that can help to retain and improve good schools that have served established neighborhoods for generations.

Chris Bjornstad, et. al. (Univ. of Iowa) 

“Schools, Neighborhoods, and Student Outcomes”

https://www.urban.uiowa.edu/system/files/Schools%20Neighborhoods%20and%20Student%20Outcomes%20short%20version.pdf

“Neighborhood schools can promote healthy biking and walking habits, encourage parental involvement, and increase accessibility to extracurricular activities. The community can benefit from a neighborhood school when it serves as a neighborhood anchor, functions as a community center, and is a source of social cohesion.”

“[H]ome buyers are willing to pay more to own a home within one mile of a school than to own the same house located between one and two miles away” this impacts the tax base which is a source of school funding.