Planning for life after the Initiative

When a programme ends, the question that matters is what remains. For the schools involved, 2010 was less a finish line than a change of gear.

What was built

Across the span of the Initiative, Oregon added 42 small high schools, through conversion and through new starts, and more than 25,000 students passed through them. National research has found that the cost of running a small school, measured for each student who graduates, sits in the same range as a large comprehensive high school, which suggests the model can hold its ground financially well beyond the life of any grant.

Documentation from the Initiative, including its tools and resources, was released online as open material. Independent analysis of student achievement, graduation and college readiness carried on through 2013, widening the national evidence base on small school results.

Sustainability work

In 2009 and 2010, 22 schools received extension grants. Leaders used that time to design deliberately for the future of their schools. A leadership institute held on 25 September 2009 took sustainability as its theme, asking how small schools could hold their ground in an environment of shrinking public funding.

At the closing Report of Progress gathering on 26 April 2010, district superintendents, principals and teacher leaders reviewed what the small school experience had taught them, marked what the schools had accomplished, and named the work still ahead.

A final line of inquiry

In its last year the Initiative opened a separate track of work on proficiency based education, with two small schools taking part. The exploration set out to define what it would take to embed proficiency based practice authentically in instruction and assessment, and it remained unfinished when the Initiative closed. Its early findings were shared to support the many districts across Oregon exploring the same ground.