A new report concludes that focusing on teacher quality while increasing students’ academic time and providing them with individual attention are among the strategies a set of high-performing small urban high schools use to achieve their outcomes.
The study, by Education Resource Strategies, a nonprofit consulting group based in Watertown, Mass., explores how nine of what it calls “leading edge” schools organize their resources—people, time, and money—including how they take advantage of being small schools.
The schools prioritize core academics and professional community over program diversity, notes the study. And they require flexibility from traditional staffing practices and union contracts to implement their designs.
