“One Great” School Program Facts

The 5 schools involved in the “One Great School” Program are:

Download The "One Great School" Fact Sheet

Building on the experiences the District gained from a project started in 1995, which was designed to intervene in the overwhelming dropout rate of ninth grade students and the SLC Detroit High S.C.O.R.E. Project another program initiative was formulated to restructure an additional five (5) Detroit high schools into smaller learning units. This initiative would strengthen the 1995 project, locally known as the Ninth Grade Restructuring Project by utilizing ninth grade academies and support the SLC High S.C.O.R.E. Project by having the majority of Detroit's comprehensive high schools operating in smaller learning units. The new program is called the Smaller Learning Communities Equal One Great School (“One Great School") Program.

The five (5) high schools are sub-grouped into 9th grade communities and/or multi-age career focus communities for grades 10 - 12. Each of the communities has its own administrator, academy leaders, and academy academic teams. These communities combine several smaller learning strategies into a comprehensive multi-faceted approach to restructuring strategies. These strategies are tailored to the specifics of the communities own environment. These smaller learning communities were designed to address the overwhelming majority of high schools that are defined by national standards and extensive research as being large. In the Detroit Public Schools, large means high schools with more that 1,000 students enrolled. The achievement levels, test scores, grade point averages, dropout rate and behavior code violations in Detroit are all consistent with what research shows for large high schools. The development of these programs is intended to reorganize and intervene in the identified gaps and weaknesses existing in these schools and to attain the other benefits that smaller learning communities provide.