K-12 Education

Little Rock School District: Evaluation of Smaller Learning Communities

Breaking down its large, comprehensive secondary schools into Smaller Learning Communities (SLCs), the Little Rock School District is keeping pace with the national high school reform movement. These SLCs, designed to keep students engaged in high school by creating more personalized and responsive learning environments, can be organized into career academies or other theme-based programs aligned with students’ educational and vocational goals. In 2001, the Little Rock School District engaged Metis Associates to support the design of SLCs for five of its high schools, which then received U.S. Department of Education funding to implement their plans. Central to the schools’ restructuring efforts is a model called High Schools That Work—an initiative developed by the Atlanta-based Southern Regional Education Board that aims to raise standards and expectations for student achievement.

Metis has evaluated the SLC initiatives at each of the five high schools—Parkview, Hall, McClellan, J.A. Fair, and Central—each of which has its own goals for improvement. Parkview, for example, is a magnet school that offers four career areas—science, music, visual arts/dance, and drama—which constitute separate small schools. Its central goal is to decrease achievement gaps between white and African-American students, and early results of the evaluation have indicated that it seems to be doing so in some areas. The other schools have also instituted various “academies” divided by grade or theme. Through surveys, focus groups, and interviews with teachers and administrators, as well as a comprehensive review of student achievement data, Metis is looking at whether the initiative is having a positive effect at both the school and district levels.