The Organization of American Schools

What Is a School?
Schools can be viewed from multiple perspectives and defined in many different ways.
Schools can be defined as social institutions whose goals are to promote both students’ growth and development, and the well-being of a country and its citizens.
Every school is part of larger institutions, including school districts and state offices of education.

The Organization of Schools
The personnel within a school influence its effectiveness more than any other factor.
Administrators and support staff help create an environment in which teachers can teach and students can learn.
Teachers are the most powerful factor influencing learning within a school.
The physical plant can influence not only student learning but also teachers’ morale and job satisfaction.

Organization of the Curriculum
The curriculum—what teachers teach and what students learn—is a critical component of the organization of schools.
The curriculum is strongly influenced by the developmental needs and characteristics of students.
Decisions about the organization of schools and the curriculum are also influenced by monetary and political considerations.

Early Childhood Programs
Are heavily influenced by developmental psychology and the developmental needs of young children
Developmental early childhood programs accommodate differences in children’s development by allowing them to acquire skills and abilities at their own pace through direct experience.
Research shows that effective early childhood programs can have a powerful effect on later success in school and life.

Elementary Schools
Elementary schools provide teachers with considerable autonomy in terms of curriculum and scheduling.
Self-contained classrooms are designed to provide students with nurturing environments for social, emotional, and cognitive growth.
Critics of self-contained classrooms contend they place unrealistic demands on teachers to be experts in every content area.

Junior High and Middle Schools
Expose students to subject matter experts in the form of content-specialized teachers
Middle schools attempt to meet the developmental needs of early adolescents through:
Interdisciplinary teams
Home rooms that allow teachers and students to develop more meaningful interpersonal relationships
Interactive teaching strategies that stress active student involvement
The elimination of competitive activities that emphasize developmental differences

Junior High and Middle Schools (continued)
Advocates of middle schools contend they are effective in meeting students’ developmental needs.
Critics believe developmental emphasis weakens emphasis on subject matter and academic rigor.

High Schools
A comprehensive high school houses all students and attempts to meet all students’ academic needs through a variety of tracks or different programs.
Criticisms of the comprehensive high school:
Tracking segregates different-ability students and shortchanges those in non–college-prep tracks
Excessive size depersonalizes students
Departmentalization fragments the curriculum
Academic rigor is lacking

High Schools (continued)
Alternatives to comprehensive high schools:
Schools within a school that create smaller learning communities
Career technical schools designed to provide job skills that are immediately marketable after high school

What are benefits of different organizational structures?

Grade Retention
Increasingly popular in this age of testing and accountability
Proponents argue against “social promotion” and advocate retaining students until they have mastered necessary knowledge and skills.
Critics contend it does not improve subsequent academic performance, leads to higher risk of dropping out later, and that minorities and low- SES students are unduly targeted.

Characteristics of Effective Schools
http://www.mes.org/esr.html