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VUE Number 8, Summer 2005

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EXCERPT:
Small Learning Communities: Putting Power in the “C”

By Alethea Frazier Raynor
Alethea Frazier Raynor is a principal associate at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. > Author’s Biography


Much of the effort to create small learning communities in high schools has emphasized the size of the communities. What does "community" mean? How can schools and school systems unleash the power of communities?

The evolution of small high schools and small learning communities within high schools over the last ten years has given us fertile ground for discussion about the nature of "small" and its advantages for school improvement and student achievement. Much of our thinking and practices rest on the belief that large comprehensive high schools are outmoded models that can no longer serve students well. In fact, we are left wondering if they ever served us well at all.

There have been numerous studies that support the belief that "small" is an important condition that can enhance teaching and learning (Cotton 1996). However, among this research there are also studies that have tempered our view; these suggest that small size is a necessary but not sufficient condition for successful teaching and learning (Wasley et al. 2000). And more recently, researchers have called into question whether we have sufficient evidence across diverse and random small learning environments to warrant with certainty that small schools are universally better for young people (Stern & Wing 2004).

But rather than continue to debate the merits of "small," I would like to shift the focus from "small" and "learning" to the third component of the "small learning community" paradigm – which draws less of our attention and imagination – the idea of "community."

Unpacking the Notion of "Community"

We are always creating new buzz words in education, and community joins a long list of popular favorites (Sergiovanni 1994). Over the past five years, both the federal government and major foundations like Carnegie Corporation of New York have used the term small learning community (SLC) in both their grant-making and policy guidelines for high school reform. The U.S. Department of Education has outlined a set of structures and strategies for creating small learning communities. And Carnegie's Schools for a New Society initiative identifies key conditions for the development of effective SLCs.

The conscious (or perhaps unconscious) stringing together of the words small, learning, and community suggests (to me, at least) that these three words in relationship to one another have the potential for some extraordinary meaning that we have not yet fully explored. There is power in the notion of "community" that remains untapped, in part because we have to struggle with how it is that community is important to us in the midst of high school reform. There is something uncomfortable (albeit compelling) about trying to articulate a phenomenon that seems so abstract. But by not doing so, we may miss embracing the very notion that is sufficiently important and complicated to engage students with teachers, with families, and with community members in grappling together to understand what community can really mean in a learning context that is small.
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