Choosing Small: The Essential Guide to Successful High School Conversion

As a staff member of a Professional Development Center engaged in fostering education renewal and reform including working with large comprehensive high schools in converting to smaller schools this book has served us (and the schools we work with) over the last several years.

Although this book was available, I wasn't aware of it when I was a founder and principal of a small school in the Bronx. It would have been invaluable with its practical advice. I use it now as I coach principals and teachers who are starting new and small schools.

During the two years of our successful high school conversion process, we referred to "Choosing Small" over and over again as we engaged students, the community, and the staff. Every piece of advice, if we followed it carefully, worked almost magically. This is a thorough and straightforward guide, and I highly recommend it to districts and schools considering converting from a comprehensive model to small schools.

We are now in our second year as one of four autonomous small schools created from a 1550 student comprehensive high school. All conversion leaders on our campus (both teachers and administrators) have this book on our shelves -- most have read it closely, some use(d) it as a reference for any topic related to conversion. Lots of issues arise with a conversion, and every issue finds you at some point in the process. It has become clear to us that the issues that were handled by following the suggestions in this book were successes; the opposite is true of challenges where we chose to ignore the Choosing Small advice. Choosing Small is your roadmap -- the first book you should read if your school or district is considering a conversion.