Today, most high school students in the United States attend schools that serve over 1,000 students. Many of our children in urban areas attend schools with enrollments of 5,000 or more. These comprehensive public high schools were developed early last century as a way of coping with an overwhelming influx of students, many of whom were new immigrants from low-income families and children that reformers were anxious to keep off the streets. In the name of efficiency and scientific progress, reformers sought to scientifically measure the ability of each student and provide each with an education that would prepare him for his place in the rapidly industrializing society. Large high schools were proposed as an efficient means of both unifying, or Americanizing, students under one roof while placing different groups in different tracks to sort and train them for their very different future positions in the modern social and economic order.

A lot of things have changed since then. We take greater care to respect the ethnic and cultural backgrounds of our students. We're more aware that our scientific evaluations of student ability often measure factors related to social class, not merely intelligence or achievement. And we're more publicly committed to high expectations for all students, regardless of their socioeconomic status, ethnic background, or future occupation.

We've also learned a lot since then about effective organizational practices. We've compiled concrete evidence that the organizational structure of a school has a powerful effect on students, teachers, and parents. We now know that some education environments are better than others at producing particular educational outcomes.

Consider, for example, the research about small schools. According to Mary Ann Raywid, a leading authority on small schools research, the value of small schools has been "confirmed with a clarity and level of confidence rare in the annals of education research." As Raywid and others have found, small schools have higher attendance rates and lower dropout rates. Their students have higher grade point averages and course completion and graduation rates. Their students have fewer discipline problems and they are more engaged in the life of their schools.

And we know that the positive effects of small schools are most pronounced for our most at-risk students: the research shows that disadvantaged students in small schools significantly outperform those in large schools on standardized basic skills tests. Small schools reduce the impact of poverty on student achievement and help close the achievement gap between the well-to-do and the children of the poor.

Parents and teachers are better served by small schools, too. Parents of children in small schools report greater satisfaction with their children's school; teachers in small schools are more satisfied with their working environments and the relationships that they are able to develop with students and parents.

Yet despite the evidence that has accumulated over the years about the characteristics of effective school organization, today many of our students continue to attend schools that are relics of a bygone era. In fact, between 1968 and 1996, the number of middle schools with over 800 students increased significantly, and, while the U.S. population increased by 70 percent between 1940 and 1990, the number of public elementary and secondary schools decreased from 200,000 to 62,037.

Why, given the preponderance of evidence about small schools, do we continue to implement practices that do not serve our students well? Perhaps, as some have suggested, it is because our memories of what our own schools were like limit our imagination of what schools can be. However, given the evidence, we must not let our remembrance of what was limit our vision of what can be.

ASCD's recent Infobrief, "Student Engagement: Motivating Students to Learn," addresses how small schools can promote student engagement and learning. Visit /readingroom/infobrief/frame28.html.

The February issue of Educational Leadership features articles on small schools by Deborah Meier, Joe Nathan, Mary Ann Raywid, and others. To access full-text articles on small schools, visit ASCD's Reading Room: /readingroom.html.

The complete text of Small Schools: Great Strides is available at http://www.bnkst.edu/html/news/releases/smschool.html.