The days of the massive urban comprehensive high school may be numbered. In the past decade or so, several major cities have begun to close such schools in favor of new smaller schools. With considerable financial backing from the Gates Foundation and others, “small school reform” has taken hold in Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, and elsewhere—but most notably in New York.

Since 2002, New York has opened hundreds of new small high schools. This initiative has been extensively evaluated by education researchers, and the results are refreshingly clear: Students who attend new small high schools achieve at higher rates and drop out at lower rates than they would if they had attended traditional larger schools. However, we know much less about what happens to those left behind. Does the “small school reform” benefit some students at the expense of others? Does the school district as a whole benefit, or are the gains of students in smalls schools offset by setbacks among other students who attend large traditional schools?

In a new article, Leanna Stiefel, Amy Ellen Schwartz, and Matthew Wiswall use data from New York City to estimate the effects of small school reform on the entire distribution of students and schools in the district. They find that the reform improved graduation rates and tests cores across the board: In small and large high schools and in new and previously existing schools. They conclude that “small school reform lifted all boats.”

Read the full article here:

Leanna Stiefel, Amy Ellen Schwartz, and Matthew Wiswall. 2015. “Does Small High School Reform Lift Urban Districts? Evidence From New York City.” Educational Researcher 44: 161-172.