August 5-11, 2004

fall education guide

Smaller is Better?

CLASS ACTION: While students would like to see a smaller West Philly High, district officials seem to have other plans. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

Yes, say West Philadelphia High students who want to turn around their traditionally poor-performing school.

by Brett Schaeffer

Even through the long, lazy days of summer, 16-year-old Phillip Pearce can't stop thinking about school. He's been puzzling over a problem that's stymied educators for decades: What will it take to make West Philadelphia High School, traditionally one of the city's poorest performing high schools, an academic success? Pearce says he has the answer.

He and fellow members of West's chapter of the Philadelphia Student Union are urging school district officials to restructure West into a collection of four small schools as part of the district's plan to build a new $50 million West Philadelphia High School.

"When we heard [school district CEO] Paul Vallas included West in the district's capital plan, we thought it was an opportunity not only to get a new building but change the way education happens at West," says Pearce, who is about to begin his senior year.

Vallas has said the new West Philly High will likely hold a maximum of 800 students — half the current student body. But fewer students wouldn't automatically make West the kind of small school Pearce envisions. What Pearce and his peers are looking for can be found in dozens of school districts throughout the country, including Chicago, Vallas' former employer.

The basic small-schools philosophy — one that's been in practice for at least two decades and has gained popularity in recent years — is simple: Reducing the number of students in a public ninth- through 12th-grade high school can improve everything from test scores and attendance to teacher morale and graduation rates. There's debate over what the magic enrollment number should be, but most small-school advocates say it shouldn't exceed 400. (Of Philadelphia's 36 public high schools, 17 enroll 1,500 or more students.)

Often, as in New York and Chicago, several small schools are located in one large building, sharing common space such as gyms and cafeterias, but keep staffing, budgets and curriculum completely separate. That separation is important, says Eric Braxton, the Philadelphia Student Union's executive director. The challenge at West, says Braxton, is establishing a collection of small schools that have complete autonomy. Each small school needs to have its own leadership and absolute control over staffing, curriculum and budget to maximize its effectiveness, says Braxton, citing common small-schools research.

The plan Pearce and his classmates have drafted is more than a pie-in-the-sky wish list hashed out in homeroom. He describes going to a small high school in New York, Urban Academy, where "the teachers didn't have to force students out of the halls into class." He adds, "The kids were interested, engaged." They also talked to more than 300 West students about ideas for the school.

The result is a proposal that would divide the new West into four schools: Business and Commerce; Automotive; Health and Fitness; and Creative and Performing Arts. Each school would be led by its own principal but would have its own teachers and budget.

National organizations — such as the Cross City Campaign for Urban School Reform and the Association of Community Organization for Reform Now (ACORN) — back the students' plan. Locally, the William Penn Foundation, which awarded a two-year, $165,000 school-reform grant to the Philadelphia Student Union earlier this year, is also interested in the students' proposal, but it has yet to give any money to the cause, according to spokesman Brent Thompson.

Cross City's Fran Sugarman is coordinating small-schools efforts for various local groups, including Youth United for Change, a member of the Eastern Philadelphia Organizing Project. Youth United for Change members are, like their student-activist brethren at West, lobbying for small schools at Kensington and Olney high schools.

"Our job," says Sugarman, "is to galvanize people and show support for the student groups' work.

"I worked in a small [middle] school in New York. The feeling of personalization the students get, knowing they're cared for these big schools just don't give kids that kind of feeling," she says. "For a school that's had significant failure, this really is a proven research option.

It's not as if West hasn't tried reforms. To hear English teacher Carol Merrill tell it, the high school can only be faulted for trying too many reforms. Merrill says West has had "small learning communities" — a sort of small-schools lite — for years. Those programs, however, typically have been at the mercy of the school's principal, and in the past six years West has had eight principals. (West's current principal, Clifton James, was unavailable for this story.)

There was a small learning community at West focused on law, Merrill says. "We had a mock trial team. We had a viable program," she says. Then one of West's principals came in and scrapped the program. Other small learning communities suffered the same fate, she says. Merrill supports the students' plans for small schools at West, but is worried it might be falling on deaf ears at the district level.

Speaking after a July 21 School Reform Commission meeting, Vallas said, "The students and the community will have input. But at the end of the day, we'll make the decisions." Vallas envisions a West Philly High with perhaps three or four "academies," with separate educational leaders and themes, such as performing arts. But the school will likely have one principal and adhere to broader district curriculum mandates.

That's the Vallas version of small schools. Since taking over two years ago, Vallas has aggressively sought to reduce the size of the city's high schools. He's continuing with that plan, absorbing some of the potential student overflow by converting middle schools to high schools, as is being done at William Sayre, 5800 Walnut St. Vallas also intends to open new high schools, such as the planned Microsoft High School, near the Philadelphia Zoo, which is also expected to enroll students who would otherwise have gone to West.

Vallas says he wants to limit the size of the district's high schools, but isn't about to scale back accountability. "Reducing the student population doesn't exempt them from standards," he says.

How the new West will operate may become a secondary controversy to where the new high school will be built. Currently, the two most-discussed sites are at 48th and Locust and 46th and Market.

The 48th Street location is home to the school's football field. The general plan, according to the school district, would be to construct the new building on the football field site, demolish the nearly 100-year-old West building at 47th and Walnut, and place a new athletic field on that site. The 12-acre Market Street location is more than twice the size of the high school's current home, says Vallas, and could support both a new school and a new athletic complex. However, the school district has no claim to the land, which houses a number of businesses in the former Provident Mutual Life Insurance building, including the district office of state Sen. Vincent Hughes.

"The students at West need and deserve a full complex," says Hughes, who is working with Vallas and City Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell to broker a deal for the site. "We've had some discussions about gutting the building and redoing it completely, and there's also been talk about demolishing the current building. We're in the very early stages of discussions. There aren't too many large tracts of land in this region that avail themselves to this kind of development."

Further complicating matters are the city's plans to move the Youth Study Center, a juvenile detention center at 20th Street and the Ben Franklin Parkway, to a five-acre portion of the huge 46th and Market site. An agreement is in place to build a new Youth Study Center, under the proposed name of the Thurgood Marshall Center, at the corner of 48th Street and Haverford Avenue, Hughes says. He dismisses concerns about locating a juvenile detention center so close to a high school. "The fear, if there is any fear, is misplaced," he says. First, he says, the youth center will be at the opposite end of large parcel of land from the high school. Second, the center's teens stay for only two or three weeks. "And these are not hard-edged kids," he adds.

Hughes sees the relocation of West as part of the larger redevelopment of West Philadelphia.

"Let's say we can build a state-of-the-art new high school, and take the old building and do housing and retail development, and create a program where people who want to live in this area — maybe they take a job at the [Thurgood Marshall] Center--can move into the area and get some special housing benefits," he says. "You can see great things happening."