Nova Alternative School
Two schools, a block apart, but a world of difference.
On one block sits Garfield High, which with 1,732 students is Seattle's second-largest public school.
A baseball field away, in a quaint, one-time elementary-school building, are the 235 students of Nova Alternative High School.
Nova, founded in 1970 by a group of parents and teachers committed to a "democratically governed" school, has a '60s feel. In class, students sit on couches and address teachers by their first names.
Aside from the distinctly "alternative" part of its personality, Nova's other defining characteristic - its small size - may prove to be surprisingly mainstream in the new millennium.
After decades of promoting large, comprehensive high schools with a wide range of course offerings and strong athletic programs, many educational leaders are touting new research that suggests students are more successful in the personalized atmosphere of smaller high schools, junior highs and middle schools.
School districts are acting on that research. In Seattle, Superintendent Joseph Olchefske has been working on a proposal to open a new high school for 250 to 500 students, possibly at Seattle Center.
An existing school, Hale High, five years ago adopted a student proposal for a "mentorship program" in which students meet twice weekly in small groups with teachers or administrators.
Hale went even further two years ago, dividing the freshman class into two separate groups with their own teachers and small classes. Freshman mentoring groups meet daily. The 10th grade similarly has been divided into three "integrated-studies" teams.
"Usually when a student is going to drop out of school it's in the ninth grade. The No. 1 reason students give for dropping out of school is, `There was no one who cared about me anyway.' The goal is to create an environment where everybody is cared for," Principal Eric Benson explains.
Since dividing the freshman class, Hale has recorded a lower number of students dropping out or transferring out, missing class or getting into trouble, and an improvement in student grades.
The Seattle-based Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation this year launched a nationwide, $350 million initiative to fund education reform, with an emphasis on creating smaller schools.
Small-schools movement
The University of Washington in June signaled its interest in smaller schools by signing Patricia Wasley, a leader of the small-schools movement, as dean of the College of Education.
At Nova, where classes are ungraded, students say one of the big motivators to work hard is the personal interest teachers take in them and their work. When students don't do well, teachers notice and talk to them about it.
"It would be a lot easier to slip through the cracks at another school," says Nova student Matt Foley.
Nova is small enough that students and teachers probably would get to know everyone anyway, but the school does some extra things to build relationships.
Each student meets weekly with a "core group" of students and their faculty adviser, or coordinator. Coordinators meet individually with core group members at least once a month.
When prospective students visit Nova, they get an intimate introduction to the school by meeting one-on-one with four students and three teachers.
"I like it because it's small and I feel so comfortable here," says sophomore Emma Freeman, who goes across the street to Garfield for orchestra every day. "I feel at home. If I don't like something I can change it."
Visitors sometimes talk about their unhappiness at a large school where no one knows their name. "I've never heard that here," says language-arts teacher Barbara Osborne.
Students, who sign a contract for every credit they earn, frequently earn credit for off-campus activities such as internships and Running Start classes at community colleges. Classes can be as small as Principal Elaine Packard's three-student bureaucracy class or as big as Mark Perry's 34-student writing class.
"I don't have the heart to turn them away," Perry sighs. It isn't like teaching a large class of strangers, though. Perry already knew most of the students from teaching them in previous years or from working with them on faculty-student committees. Many of the students will take classes from him again.
Benefits of personalization
The benefits of that kind of personalization have become increasingly apparent to educational researchers as well. A study released this year by the Bank Street College of Education in New York City found that students in 150 small schools in Chicago attended class more frequently, showed more perseverance, earned higher grades and were less likely to drop out than their peers in larger schools.
Other studies have suggested that more personal interaction with teachers in smaller schools gives a strong boost to the academic achievement of African-American and other minority students.
Those benefits may be found in freestanding schools such as Nova, in schools-within-a-school, and in "multiplexes," where larger schools are broken down into smaller schools sharing a single campus.
The UW's Wasley, who was lead investigator in the Bank Street College study, has been studying the effectiveness of various education-reform efforts for a decade and a half.
"Over 15 years of doing that work," Wasley says, "it's become more apparent to me that personalization, the adult-kid ratio, the number of adults who are interacting with young people, has a profound effect on kids and how kids learn."
Not only do students benefit directly from knowing teachers better, Wasley explains, but teachers are also more likely to develop a shared vision for their school if the faculty size is small.
"Teachers can't build a collective will about holding kids to standards in great big places because they can't all agree," she says. "But in small places where people can talk to each other regularly, they can build a collective will that has an enormous impact on kids' performance."
The drive to create smaller schools comes after many districts have moved to close small schools because they were considered too expensive to operate or because they offered fewer choices of teachers and courses.
Seattle requires elementary and alternative schools to enroll at least 250 students. Nova High has responded to that rule by recruiting about 40 additional students since two years ago, when the school had 192 students.
As Nova continues working to increase enrollment, some students and staff members say the school's intimacy has suffered. "I think it's too big," says Packard, the principal. "We're small by most standards but I think we should be smaller. As you get large it's run by rules instead of relationships."
Keith Ervin's phone message number is 206-464-2105. His e-mail address is kervin@seattletimes.com