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Smaller Learning Communities Program: Getting Ready to Apply - Thursday, June 8, 2000

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Standards-based reform has been restructuring and reinvigorating how we educate children in elementary and middle-schools, but at the high school level, in too many communities, we have remained frozen in a factory model handed down by our parents – and their parents – and their parents. The majority of today’s high schools have not changed much over the past fifty years – except that they have grown even larger and more impersonal. Currently over 70% of students attend high schools with enrollments over 1,000 or more, and 50% of students attend high schools with enrollments of 1,500 or more.

The recent events across the country seemed to tragically reinforce what many educational practitioners and researchers were already highlighting as a problem – the impersonal nature of large high schools leave too many people feeling apathetic, isolated from their peers, schools and communities. Research seems to confirm what parents intuitively believe - smaller schools are safer and more productive because students feel less alienated, more nurtured and more connected to caring adults, and teachers feel that they have the opportunity to get to know and support their students. Students in smaller learning environments seem to have better attendance records, lower dropout rates and fewer discipline problems.

To address this problem in our nation’s schools, Congress included $45 million in the 1999 Appropriations Act for the Smaller Learning Communities Program. Authorized under section 10105 of Part A of Title X of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the Smaller Learning Communities Program will provide competitive grants to local educational agencies to plan, develop, implement or expand smaller, more personal learning communities in large high schools.

This electronic bidders conference will provide superintendents, teachers, principals and other district educators the opportunity to hear from and interact with senior federal staff charged with managing this grant p

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