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Rivera-McClutchen, author of today's "Useable Knowledge"

It’s a maxim touted often by city officials, even in the face of mounting criticism: Small schools that serve entirely low-performing, high-need populations can work.

In the Community section today, Lehman College education professor Rosa Rivera-McCutchen says her research supports that claim. But she says the success of small schools is often hampered by inexperienced teachers and ineffectual policies.

Rivera-McCutchen’s Community section contribution is part of “Useable Knowledge,” a GothamSchools feature that aims to promote policy based off of educational research. In the series, researchers present their research and findings, as well as policy implications that could inform education policy locally and elsewhere. And readers are invited to join the conversation.

Rivera-McCutchen studied “Bridges Institute,” a small, pseudonymous Bronx high school that opened in the mid-1990s in the model of progressive educator Deborah Meier’s Central Park East Secondary School. She found that the progressive pedagogy yielded impressive results, but that city policies that fostered new small schools ironically hurt Bridges, by causing overcrowding and increasing staff turnover.

Rivera-McCutchen writes,

With the rapid-fire creation of (and subsequent demise) of small schools in NYC, particularly in the Bronx, understanding how to successfully implement small school reform is critical. … Small size is not a sufficient reform strategy to improve urban schools in low-income black and Latino communities. It has to be coupled with strong school leaders and teachers who understand their students have been historically underserved, and who are committed to educating students as matter of social justice.

Read Rivera-McCutchen’s complete research report in the Community section, then leave a comment to ask her about her work. She’ll respond to questions in a future Useable Knowledge post.

Jennifer Stillman, author of today's installment of "Useable Knowledge"

New York City neighborhoods that undergo gentrification don’t always wind up with diverse schools.

In the Community section today, Jennifer Stillman explains her research into why — and her suggestions for how the city could tip the scales toward school integration in changing neighborhoods.

Stillman’s Community section contribution is part of “Useable Knowledge,” a GothamSchools feature that aims to promote policy based off of educational research. In the series, researchers present their research and findings, as well as policy implications that could inform education policy locally and elsewhere. And readers are invited to join the conversation.

Stillman studied the relationship between neighborhood gentrification and school integration as a doctoral student in politics and education at Columbia University’s Teachers College. She found that public schools in gentrifying neighborhoods offer the perfect opportunity for social mixing between people of different backgrounds — but that getting “gentry parents,” her term for upper-middle-class, white newcomers, to send their children to those schools is difficult. (more…)

Education research is supposed to inform education policy, but it’s not always the case.

Sometimes the policy agenda isn’t supported by research. But sometimes researchers haven’t asserted themselves. Education research can be difficult to find — hidden away in academic journals or unpublished dissertations. Even when it’s available, it is often presented in technical language that is perfect for academia but ill-equipped to inform public dialogue.

A new feature on GothamSchools, which we’re calling “Useable Knowledge,” aims to change that situation. In the series, researchers will present not only their research and findings but also policy implications that could inform education policy locally and elsewhere. They’ll also seed future research by outlining the questions that their studies raised. And they will solicit and answer questions from readers about just what is known and what isn’t about each research topic.

The first contributors to Useable Knowledge are Janice Bloom and Lori Chajet, two former city high school teachers who as CUNY Graduate Center students set out to investigate the impact of social class (Bloom) and small school environments (Chajet) on students’ college decisions and experiences. (more…)