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Home > CES Small Schools Project > SSP Project Overview
Overview of the CES Small Schools Project
The CES Small Schools Project, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is dedicated to creating and supporting small schools throughout the country that are instructionally powerful and sustainable and that offer challenging curricula to students who have been denied a meaningful education. The Small Schools Project is committed to effecting broader change within the public education system and meeting the needs of young people and communities who have traditionally been underserved – students of color and students from low-income backgrounds. Most of the schools are located in urban areas; however, as a whole, the body of schools is diverse, representing various geographic regions and demographics across the United States.
Through this five year initiative, CES is building a robust network of schools that includes 12 new small start-up high schools; 13 new small high schools converted from three large, comprehensive schools; and 20 CES mentor schools, all of which use the CES Common Principles to set priorities and design practices to meet the needs of their students, families, and communities. The project has also launched ChangeLab, a website with behind-the-scenes access to the effective tools and strategies used by CES mentor schools.
The Small Schools Project network is a powerful mechanism for educators who honor CES’s ideal of small, personalized, and equitable education to come together and share ideas and practices with one another. It provides an opportunity for professional development, allowing participants to learn from each other while also serving as a forum to influence public policy and create a political climate that sustains their work. Facilitated and convened by the Small Schools Project team, members of the network come together at quarterly meetings, at Fall Forum, and for periodic school visits. In addition, the network is convened for the annual Summer Institute, a week-long professional development opportunity that allows practitioners to exchange information and broaden their tool kit of resources; gain new ideas to improve leadership, teaching and learning, and school practices; strategize about how to influence educational policy decisions locally as well as nationally; and listen to the voices of youth who are affected by those decisions. In addition, CES mentor schools provide school-to-school support and coaching to the new school teams, pioneering a unique approach to new school development.
If we as a nation truly seek to “leave no child behind,” then we must insist on institutions that recognize and support the learning of every child. This recognition can be possible only when schools are small enough so that deep relationships can take root. By creating and supporting high quality, personalized, equitable small schools across the country, CES is playing an exponentially greater role in shaping the national conversation around what effective school reform can accomplish while at the same time reenergizing the small schools movement.
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Page last updated: December 16, 2004
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