Every day, an average of 77 students drop out of school in New Mexico, totaling nearly 14,000 per year. Only 54.1 percent of New Mexico’s children graduate from high school, compared with a national average of 70.6 percent. Clearly, the education status quo is failing New Mexico’s children.
In 2008, Think New Mexico undertook a comprehensive study of the state’s dropout crisis and how best to address it. One of the most promising strategies was smaller schools.
Over the past several decades, the evidence has mounted that smaller schools are an effective tool for increasing the graduation rate. For example, in 1996 education scholar Kathleen Cotton analyzed all of the available research on school size and dropout rates, and discovered that nine out of 10 studies found that the dropout rate was lower at smaller schools.
Similarly, this past summer the Gates Foundation released an evaluation of several dozen small created over the last 10 years in New York City. Not only did these small schools demonstrate significantly higher graduation rates than the larger schools they replaced, they also eliminated about a third of the 20-point graduation-rate gap between white students and students of color.
Here in New Mexico, a recent analysis by Rob Nikolewski for Capitol Report New Mexico notes that the 10 schools with the highest graduation rates in the state are overwhelmingly small – while those with the lowest graduation rates are predominantly large. Think New Mexico’s own independent research has found that high schools with 500-1,000 students average the lowest dropout rate in New Mexico (31.7 percent).
Many NM students can’t attend a small school
Unfortunately, today too many of New Mexico’s students do not have the opportunity to attend a small school: Two-thirds of New Mexico’s ninth graders enter high schools larger than 1,000 students, and one-third enter schools larger than 2,000.
Think New Mexico has proposed legislation that would create more choices for students by providing incentives for school districts to build smaller schools and renovate existing large schools into smaller schools within schools (something that would be particularly helpful to districts, like Albuquerque Public Schools, that have already built many large schools). Based on our extensive review of the research, we define smaller schools as those with no more than 900 students for high school and no more than 400 students for a middle or elementary school.
Along with their higher graduation rates, these smaller schools also offer students increased opportunities for participation in leadership-building extracurricular activities like sports and the performing arts. This is because there are only a certain number of starting positions on a team or lead roles in a school play, regardless of how large the school is.
A school with fewer students gives a higher percentage of those students a chance to participate – which is why Think New Mexico’s legislation is supported by Dan Salzwedel, who served as executive director of the New Mexico Activities Association for nearly a quarter century.
Small schools are affordable
Thus, there is broad agreement about the benefits of smaller schools. However, some argue that smaller schools are not affordable.
The truth is that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, smaller schools can actually cost less than larger schools to build and operate.
Earlier this year, the libertarian Rio Grande Foundation publicized a study analyzing the costs of all new schools constructed in New Mexico over the past decade. It found that smaller schools cost no more to construct, on a per-student basis, than larger schools. In fact, some smaller schools were far less expensive to construct than some larger schools.
In terms of operational costs, the research shows that schools larger than 900 students experience “diseconomies of scale:” inefficiencies and increased costs that result from increased bureaucracy (more levels of administration are required to run larger schools), transportation (students must be bused in from a larger geographic area), and security (because large schools have far more violent incidents per capita than smaller schools). For example, APS is forced to spend about $5.1 million each year on security to police its large high schools. Smaller schools, by contrast, are self-policing because the students and teachers all know one another, and therefore these schools do not need to expend resources on security officers.
Think New Mexico’s smaller schools legislation is designed to cost nothing to state taxpayers. It would simply amend the state’s Public School Capital Outlay Act so that if a school district chose to build a smaller school, it would receive a larger state match than it would if the district were building a larger school. Thus the bill does not require any new dollars, but simply redirects the dollars that are already appropriated for public school construction toward smaller, more effective public schools.
In 2009, Think New Mexico’s legislation was introduced by Senators Cynthia Nava (D), chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee (and superintendent of the Gadsden Independent School District), and Sue Wilson Beffort (R), the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee. It passed the state Senate 28-11 before running out of time in the House. We will be bringing the bill back again in the 2011 legislative session.
At this time, when both our economy and our students are struggling, smaller schools represent an effective reform that costs nothing and that will improve our state’s shamefully low graduation rate.
Nathan is executive director of Think New Mexico, an independent, results-oriented think tank serving New Mexicans. Fisher is Think New Mexico’s associate director. To learn more about the advantages of smaller schools and how you can get involved, please go to thinknewmexico.org.