Not So Easy Going: The Policy Environments of Small Urban Schools and Schools-Within-Schools

Much has been written about the virtues of downsized schools, and more and more success stories have received national attention. Often, the small schools and schools-within-schools featured in these stories serve low-income and minority children and youth who achieve at levels hoped for but seldom seen in other school reform initiatives.

"Yet for many of [these schools]," Mary Anne Raywid and Gil Schmerler explain, "the going has not been easy. One prominent reason is that we have yet to create the structures and policies necessary for them to thrive. We continue to bind these new organizational entities within old organizational structures, shackle them with outmoded practices, and restrict their success by imposing regulations designed for another time and place--while denying them the particular supports they need most."

In this book Raywid and Schmerler describe the often harrowing experiences of small school innovators in several urban settings. They urge us to find better ways to support these small institutions that have proven--under a variety of challenging circumstances--their effectiveness in serving children and youth considered to be most at risk of school failure.  more