With its 90,000-plus student enrollment, Albuquerque Public Schools is anything but small. It’s one of the largest in the nation, in fact.

But starting this year $9.1 million in federal dollars will help make the district a little more intimate. The money will go toward nestling Small Learning Communities — an educational model that has been slow to arrive in New Mexico — within seven APS high schools, officials said.

The money will allow the seven participating high schools — Albuquerque, Del Norte, Highland, Manzano, Rio Grande, Valley and West Mesa — to create academies based on subject matter or career pathways with the ultimate goal of making education more relevant to higher education or to future jobs, officials say. 

Another benefit is the increased rigor. 

“All sophomores and juniors will … be encouraged to take more advanced placement (AP) classes,” said Rebecca Almeter, who will oversee the small learning communities for the district. “Students will take more rigorous classes in smaller settings where they work more closely with teachers, and be relevant to their career interests. We’re back to asking the question of what they want to be when they grow up.”

APS’s new superintendent, Winston Brooks, enthusiastically embraces the idea:  "This is very good news for APS.”

In addition, the high schools will develop “career academies” of between two and five career fields each, based on input from students. For example, Del Norte students have expressed interest in the healthcare and engineering fields, Almeter said, so they will be able to take classes and discuss themes related to those careers.

The grant is guaranteed for nearly $5.6 million over three years. A subsequent evaluation of the program will determine whether the remaining two years are funded for about $3.5 million. 

The concept of small learning communities has emerged at a time when it’s become conventional wisdom in education circles that smaller classes promote better learning and more effective teaching. In recent years, small learning communities have gained a foothold in big-city school districts such as New York City Public Schools and Los Angeles Unified School District.

It is no coincidence that the idea is becoming more popular after the population of the average high school grow from 1,000 students to 1,500 over the past 50 years.

The concept is not totally foreign to APS. Several Albuquerque high schools use career academies — schools within schools. But it is with this fall’s opening of Atrisco Heritage Academy on Albuquerque’s far Southwest mesa that APS will get a taste of the purest-form of a small learning community model, officials say. It is one school divided divided into five academies–Film, Culinary Arts, International business and modern languages, Health Sciences and Law and Public Policy.

"The academies are in completely seperate buildings. Students will be in a school community that also has a college atmosphere," Atrisco’s principal Karen Sanchez-Griego says. "It is built so that teachers have common areas for collaboration." 

The idea behind small learning communities is pretty simple. SLCs break students and teachers into small groups. The teachers collaborate on tracking the progress of the students on their team from freshman to senior year. Another way to look at it is teachers are tasked with making sure students are engaged so they don’t get lost in the crowd, officials say. 

To familiarize the staff at Atrisco Heritage to the SLC concept, Sanchez-Griego organized a staff development trip several months ago to to Baltimore, New York City and to Philadelphia, all cities where the SLC is in use.  It was eye-opening, Sanchez-Griego says.

"There’s no substitute for seeing it in action," she says.

The New York City public school system is the largest in the United States, with over 1,200 schools and more than 1.1 million students enrolled each year. Only about half of the students who entered New York City’s public high schools in 1998 graduated four years later. (APS’ graduation rate is only slightly better at nearly 61 percent.) Of those students who graduated, only about one-third received Regents diplomas, which is one indicator of readiness for college.

And, perhaps most disturbing was the fact that one out of 10 African-American and Latino students who entered New York City’s public high schools in 1998 graduated four years later with a Regents diploma, according to the New York City Department of Education in 2004.

In 2005, the district announced the planning of small learning communities in eight of its largest high schools and a commitment to expand the number of rigorous alternative schools. The result gave teachers and principals in these schools more professional development opportunities, improved curriculum materials and increased time for collaboration.

As of September 2006,  NYC schools had invested more than $125 million to support comprehensive high school reform, which included funds to implement SLCs.

Early indicators suggest that the reform initiatives, including SLCs, are engaging students and improving education. In 2003-2004, the average attendance rate at these schools was 91 percent compared to 83 percent citywide.

In 2003-2004, students in New York City’s new schools were promoted from ninth to tenth grade at a rate of 93 percent, while the overall promotion rate for New York City was 68 percent.

Meanwhile, the 15 new small schools New York City opened in September 2002 reported a combined first-time graduation rate of 73 percent in 2006, a dramatic improvement over the schools they replaced—graduation rates that ranged from a low of 31 percent to a high of 51 percent.

"My point in taking my staff to see these schools and the SLCs was to show them that if it can work there, in the largest schools with the most diverse student populations, it can work here," Sanchez-Griego says. "It can work in our school, and it can work in APS."

"It’s been amazing to me that districts continue to build large schools when the trend is in having small learning communities," she adds. "But since we do have to have large schools, the SLCs are vital to the future of education here."

Brooks, APS’ new Superintendent, agrees.

"The other high schools will benefit indirectly with professional development and collaboration activities," Brooks said.

The federal grant paying for small learning communities is guaranteed for nearly $5.6 million over three years. A subsequent evaluation of the program will determine whether the remaining two years are funded for about $3.5 million.