A dissertation completed at
The Center for Education, Widener University,
One University Place, Chester, PA 19013 		 
SMALL LEARNING COMMUNITIES AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO SCHOOL PERFORMANCE OUTCOMES
Joel T. DiBartolomeo, Ed. D.
March 1998

RETURN
edited 12/21/00

 


ABSTRACT

Once thought to be the ideal form for American high school education, the large comprehensive high school model is currently under attack as the most efficacious setting in which to educate all students. Having completely forsaken its utility for inner city learners, many urban school districts have already decided to invest in smaller high school settings. Communally organized schools have been associated with higher student achievement especially for racial and ethnic minority students who have asserted that positive student-teacher relationships are at the heart of good teaching and learning and student motivation. Smaller schools, by virtue of their smallness, are presumed to facilitate a greater sense of community and, subsequently, enhanced relationships.

While the small school movement has many proponents because of its association with improved student outcomes, school size may not directly affect student achievement. Because evidence exists to suggest that school size affects the social environment of students which in turn may have a more direct link to positive student outcomes, the uniqueness of smaller educational settings is a subject of interest among educators. In addition, the degree of administrative autonomy enjoyed by smaller school settings and its impact on the sense of community inherent in them, is another variable which contributes to this controversy.

A large urban high school, which had recreated itself into "small learning communities (SLC's)," was selected as the site of this inquiry. The population utilized was the school's eleventh grade class of 534 students who were enrolled in one of nine SLC's. Four of these SLC's were assembled as schools-within-a-schools, while the remaining five were housed in separate buildings. Key to the collection of data was the development of a survey known as the "Small Learning Community Survey (SLCS)." The survey, based on the work of Toennies, Parsons, and Sergiovanni, was intended to measure relationship patterns in seven domains thought to describe the concept of community.

While a host of studies exists to document the sense of professional community experienced by teachers, there exists limited research on the subject of community from the students' point of view. This study explored empirically the relationship between students' perceptions of a small school's social environment and the nature of its connection to student attendance, suspension rates, English grades, and mathematics grades.

The results of this study will serve to inform decisions regarding the continued monetary as well as philosophical investment in small schools and/or define more clearly the nature of what these small schools should be. More specifically, this study will help to elucidate the difference between SLC's which come in the form of schoolswithin-a-school and those which are housed in their own buildings and are by their nature somewhat more administratively separate and autonomous.

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