A creative approach to school reform - breaking one school down into three distinct schools under one roof. Manual High School in Denver used to rank at the bottom in test scores. Now the school has been restructured, and students identify themselves as belonging to either the Millennium Quest, the Leadership, or the Arts and Cultural Studies high school:
...below the surface, three distinct schools – not the more common schools-within-schools – are operating. The faculty and administration at each have just 350 or so students to get to know, and each school has a focus area: science and math, business and government, language and arts..."Small schools"...have been linked to significant improvements, including reduced school violence, better grades, and increased graduation and college-attendance rates – but they're not just about reducing the number of students. Manual may have taken the biggest leap when it started its separation into three schools last year, but the more substantive changes – how teachers teach, how students' needs are met, how curriculums are designed – are just beginning.
It'll be interesting to see how this turns out.