Stability in Student and Teacher Characteristics in the First Ten Years : A Study of Small High Schools in New York City

Growing concern about the quality of public education in the United States has driven numerous educational reform efforts across the last three decades, including the redesign of American public high schools and an increased focus on creating smaller schools and small learning communities. While research has shown that small high schools may facilitate the creation of positive learning environments, there are also a host of challenges¿such as the transience of teacher and student populations that may influence the implementation of this reform. Our analysis shows that these new, small high schools not only attract less experienced teachers, but also are less likely to less likely to retain teachers for long periods of time. This pattern supports the idea that many of the experienced teachers that help to establish a new high school tend to leave over the subsequent years, and are replaced by less experienced teachers. These findings also suggest that this fluctuation may disrupt, or at the least, threaten the implementation of schools' instructional programs. Understanding the patterns of instability provides an opportunity to develop supports that can help small schools succeed