I'm fairly familiar with the research on community schools and I'm not aware that there is anything out there that demonstrates that the community school experience increases performance on MBST, Profiles of Learning, NALT, or other routinely administered measures.
There are a number of reasons why parents support community schools and the reasons are primarily social or political. And there is nothing wrong with defending the community school on the basis of such opinions. My only point here is to suggest that the research just isn't available to support community schools as a more effective educational tool.
Although the letter I wrote was in support of community schools, the research I was referring to is about small schools. The small community schools in our neighborhood happen to be both. Are you familiar with the "Matthew Project"? This is a collection of research studies finding that 1) small schools had a positive impact on student achievement, which the project termed the "Excellence Effect"; and 2) small schools even more significantly reduced the negative impact of poverty on student achievement, something the studies call the "Equity Effect". A third finding in some of this research was that small schools, and NOT small class size, had a positive impact on student achievement for students in poverty.
The Matthew Project actually refers to four studies (Georgia, Montana, Ohio and Texas) collectively, which replicated a study by Friedkin and Necochea on California schools. This research has also been replicated in West Virginia and Arkansas, all with very similar findings. Replication, which is uncommon in educational studies, is a time-honored method of validating research. These research reports can be found in the ERIC database (where published education research articles are archived). The Arkansas study can also be found at http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~howleyc/ARfin.htm, and a summary of the four-state study of Georgia, Montana, Texas and Ohio can be found at www.ruraledu.org/Nat_sum.doc.
I don't believe that these studies used the tests you mentioned, Ken, because the MBST and Profiles are Minnesota specific standards and I am not aware that any study like this has been done in Minnesota. The other standard you mentioned, the NALT, is a nationally recognized test, but not all states use it. The Matthew Project studies used each state's own required standardized tests, including the Iowa Basic Skills Test, a nationally recognized standardized test.
There are many other studies and articles about the benefits of small schools and community schools. I chose this one because I think it is particularly pertinent to Minneapolis, a district with a high level of poverty. If we truly care about the children in this district, then I think we should be making decisions based on factors that improve student achievement, especially for students in poverty, and these decisions, as much as possible, should be based on available research.
I also appreciate your distinction between the "community" benefits of the small community schools and the "educational" benefits. While advocating for our neighborhood schools, at one point I had to stop and ask myself that very question. Because, as much as we like the community aspect of our neighborhood schools, it wouldn't make sense to fight to keep schools open if they were educationally inferior for the kids. I have concluded from the research and from my own experience that small schools are good for children, both educationally and socially. So I continue to advocate for small community schools as being good for children, with the peripheral benefit of also being good for communities.
Rita Miller
Hiawatha neighborhood
