Over the past eight years, dozens of New York City’s lowest performing high schools have been reinvented as small schools that are on track towards excellence, achieving graduation and attendance rates significantly above the city’s average.

The 83 small schools launched by the New Century High School Initiative, a partnership between New Visions for Public Schools and the New York City Department of Education and funded by Carnegie Corporation and others, range from the Bronx Academy of Health Careers and Brooklyn School for Music and Theater to the New York Harbor School and the Bronx Aerospace Academy.

Each school caters to students’ special interests and potential career paths. Some schools address critical needs, where, for example, enrolling students speak only Spanish, or, where students who’ve dropped out of school are engaged in intense academic recovery and given a chance to earn a diploma. Partnerships with more than 225 community, cultural, and higher education institutions enrich learning.

“The Initiative was really about reinventing urban public high school education,“ says Michele Cahill, a Carnegie Corporation Vice President who, in 2001, shaped the initiative along with the Gates Foundation and the Open Society Institute. “Like many urban districts, New York City had some excellent high schools, but far too many students attended large, persistently low-performing schools that were anonymous, stratified organizations lacking accountability for student achievement. Their conditions were the exact opposite of what was needed,” she says.

Small schools make it possible to support under-prepared students from high-risk environments and create the conditions where other strategies can be put in place to boost teaching and learning.  

The small schools movement has catalyzed significant change in the city’s secondary education system and is proving to be an effective pathway to academic success for many students.  “Now we are raising the bar,” says Carnegie Corporation’s President Vartan Gregorian.  “These schools must not only work to maintain high graduation rates, but push for even higher achievement.  Every graduate should be prepared for upwardly mobile 21st century employment and to participate effectively in our diverse democracy.”