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Our urban students deserve more... |
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Model Secondary Schools Project |
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Photo by Cleveland Palmer |
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History |
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The Model Secondary Schools Project began in September 2000 as an effort by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Rudy Crew at the Institute for K-12 Leadership to assist urban school districts in opening small high schools. Supporting the concept of distributed leadership, and the idea that schools must offer students a more personalized education, the project opened eight urban small high schools of no more than 400 students. Each school was locally designed by a planning team of teachers, parents, students, community members and school administrators. Each school is a public high school created in partnership with the local school district and operated by the school district with initial supplementary funding and technical assistance from MSSP. The project’s goal was to establish new small high schools that would serve as models for partner districts and others who are considering small schools.
Under the leadership of Linda Keller and Rudy Crew the project initiated partnerships with eight urban school districts to open new small high schools that would serve as models for urban education. The dream of an Institute for K12 Leadership foundered under competing agendas and MSSP was orphaned. But the project continued without let up, continuing to work with the partner districts. The project found a new sponsor in the KnowledgeWorks Foundation in Cincinnati and eight new small high schools were planned and opened in 2001 and 2002. Ron MacDonald was Information Architect for the Leadership Institute and joined MSSP as Co-Director in May 2001.
Of the eight schools started, five continue to serve their students, families and districts. One was converted to other use by the district at the conclusion of the grant, and two schools, which never received the autonomy to develop called for in the grant agreement, were rolled back into the large high schools from which they started.
In 2004, Model Secondary Schools Project, LLC was established to continue the efforts initiated under the grant. Today MSSP continues as a support network for the project schools in Boston, Detroit, Rochester, NY, Cleveland and Cincinnati. We have also undertaken new projects. We are currently assisting the Rochester City School District in upstate New York in the break up of two large high schools into seven small autonomous high schools. Future plans include working with other districts to establish and develop small student centered high schools using the models and the school development strategies established under the grant and continuing to build a support network for the existing schools.
Our final report to the Gates Foundation on the MSSP project:
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