Goals and history

The Initiative set out to build high schools that were both academically ambitious and genuinely equitable, places where a student's background would stop predicting how far they could go.

Goals

From the outset the Initiative held to three goals, and it kept them unchanged for the whole of its life. Every partner school, whether converting an existing campus or opening something new, was asked to organise its work around them.

1. Narrow the gap in results for students from low income families, students of colour, and students learning English as an additional language.
2. Lift graduation rates for the system as a whole.
3. Send more graduates on to college level study with the preparation to succeed there.

Five year trend analyses of student and school data showed real movement against all three. Dropout rates fell, graduation rates rose, and achievement in mathematics, reading and writing improved. The gains were especially encouraging for students from low income households. The full picture is set out under Schools and Results.

History

Oregon had made genuine headway in its elementary and middle grades, yet progress stalled at the high school level. Nearly a third of Oregon students left school before earning a diploma, and for African American and Latino students the figure approached one in two. Those numbers, more than any single report, gave the Initiative its purpose.

In 2003 the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Meyer Memorial Trust chose E3 to lead a new statewide effort, the Oregon Small Schools Initiative. The work focused deliberately on communities serving students who had historically been underserved.

Schools joined in thirteen districts across the state, with openings staggered across the autumns of 2004, 2006 and 2007. Participation brought more than funding. District and school leaders received planning support to redesign comprehensive high schools or to launch new small schools from scratch. The Initiative convened annual conferences shaped around the actual concerns of local leaders, including superintendents, board members, principals, school change coordinators and instructional facilitators.

In return, schools committed to structural change, to rigorous instructional design, and to reporting openly on a wide range of quantitative and qualitative measures. Each school kept the freedom to shape its own curriculum, hire its own staff and assess learning in its own way.

The Initiative understood that a school is shaped by many forces beyond any single programme, from district budgeting to staffing rules. Its contribution was to build the conditions in which good teaching could take hold, first by rethinking school structure, then by developing teachers and leaders. Plans were also made to help schools sustain the work after the Initiative closed in June 2010, as described in Planning After 2010.