The old curse declares “may you live in interesting times.” Right now, Fayetteville Public Schools are interesting, and not everyone is thrilled about it.
Our 1,900-student high school will soon serve roughly 2,600 students. To add ninth-graders to the high school, the school district is realigning grades wholesale. Elementary schools are transitioning from K-5 to pre-K-4, as middle schools move from grades 6-7 to 5-6 and junior highs transition from grades 8-9 to 7-8.
In theory and in press releases everything is awesome; meanwhile in the real world, teachers, parents, and students are creatures of habit. Most disdain change. This year and next an unwholesome percentage of our people will be in their first or last year in a given school, or teaching a given grade. Administration is doing its best to ease the transition, but the bottom line is teachers will have to establish new professional relationships, and students will have to reestablish old pecking orders. (Our daughter’s cohort will attend three schools in three years.)
Research, and common sense says this much change can’t be good for test scores, or anything else.
No one can say we weren’t warned. Democracy did this. Back in 2007 the school board decided. While people like me whined about it, none of us ran for school board. We as a community voted for the $100 million millage to remake the high school, which set all the various other changes in motion. Look, if I found a spare $100 million in millage money lying around I’d have raised teacher salaries and phased out a transition. (For obvious reasons, few districts have both middle schools and junior highs). Those trains left the station when this millage passed back in 2010. Now it’s time to look on the bright side and make this work.
The school board had reasons to expand the high school: Showcase buildings signal that we care about the public school system. Adding ninth grade to a high school makes sense since ninth-grade courses count for graduation. Anyway, while research shows the middle and junior high transitions tend to harm kids, the transition to high school usually goes well, even for ninth-graders. (See “The Middle School Plunge” in Education Next at http://educationnext.org/themiddle-school-plunge/)
Naturally, a larger high school improves our odds of continuing to contend for state football and basketball titles, a big deal to Fayetteville. As my colleague Jay Greene shows statistically in “Does Athletic Success Come at the Expense of Academic Success” (http://educationnext.org/does-athletic-success-come-at-theexpense-of-academic-success/) schools with winning sports teams also tend to have higher test scores and graduation rates. Jay speculates “Friday night football is an event, like church, that gathers parents, allows them to share information about their kids and school, and more effectively work together to improve their school.”
Anyway, Fayetteville is not changing a small high school into a large one; rather we are making a large high school larger. There is considerable evidence small high schools where the principal knows everyone work better, but to my knowledge there is no evidence a school of 1,900 has any advantage over a school of 2,600. If you want a small Fayetteville high school, go back to 1970 or start a charter school.
I’m optimistic Principal Steve Jacoby and his team will make the larger Fayetteville High more personal; indeed Jacoby had some success as Bentonville principal working to “small down a big school.” In particular, assigning students the same teacher/adviser for four years has great potential to keep kids from getting lost.
To my mind, a larger Fayetteville High can be better athletically, better aesthetically, and if we are smart about it, better academically.
Much of the discussion concerning high school expansion centers on sports and activities. Yet larger size also offers economies of scale for a wider range of academically challenging classes, like Little Rock Central and some of our other rivals. It also facilitates partnering with the flagship state university.
Last year Little Rock Central had twice as many National Merit Scholarship Semi Finalists as Fayetteville High; Cabot had a third more. I’m told Central also has more kids winning scholarships to top colleges.
Little Rock Central and Cabot (Cabot?) beating us academically is just as unacceptable as Bentonville beating us in football.
Let’s go big all the way, including academically. Let’s make bigger better.
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Robert Maranto is the 21st century chair in leadership in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, and has two children in Fayetteville Public Schools. Email him at [email protected].