Smaller Learning Communities Program Facts The 15 schools involved in the Smaller Learning Communities Programs are: |
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"High Score" Schools Cody
High School |
"One Great School" Schools Central
High School |
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The U. S. Department of Education’s Smaller Learning Communities Grant Program provides funds to assist large high schools (1,000 students or more) to plan, implement or expand Smaller Learning Communities (SLC). This program is currently managed by the Office of Vocational and Adult Education (OVAE). Key strategies include: creating schools within schools, career academies, restructuring/extending the school day, instituting personal adult advocates, developing teacher advisory systems, and other innovations designed to create a more personalized high school experience for students. These structural changes were designed to support delivery of a rigorous academic curriculum to improve student achievement and performance. 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, another program initiative was formulated that would restructure fifteen (15) of Detroit’s high schools into smaller learning units. The new initiative was designed to strengthen the 1995 project, locally known as the Ninth Grade Restructuring Project and employed the strategy of ninth grade academies by expanding the program to include all grades. The new programs are called the High School Smaller Communities Organized to Reform Education ("High S.C.O.R.E.") and the Smaller Learning Communities Equal One Great School (“One Great School”) Program. The fifteen
(15) high schools are divided into 9th grade communities and multi-age
program career 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 strategy.
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 other benefits that smaller
learning communities provide.
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