Even NPR has noticed – the huge, factory-model school is earning serious detractors.

I did not know, however, that the idea really was too dumb for anyone but an Ivy Leaguer to hatch:

Forty years ago, former Harvard President James Bryant Conant argued that it made no sense to have thousands of small secondary schools. He pushed for the consolidation of those schools into big ones –- like Northwestern High School in Baltimore, where NPR has reported a series of stories this year.

Bryant thought that big, comprehensive high schools were the best way to educate the hordes of baby boomers headed for high school and college. But four decades after Northwestern opened, the school is a dinosaur: It’s one of only three remaining comprehensive schools in Baltimore.

 The story goes on to note that people – institutions, even – are having second thoughts:

 

One argument for the comprehensive high school was economic: Those big educational shopping malls were supposed to cut back on administrative costs. That would allow them to offer Advanced Placement courses, a football team and arts programs, all under one roof.

But big schools created new problems: the violence and intimidation that come when thousands of teenagers are bunched together. Nettie Legters of Johns Hopkins University says smaller schools actually reduce overhead.

“In a large high school, you’re going to have more security guards, more coaches,” she notes. She says smaller schools tend to be safer, so they need fewer staffers devoted to keeping order.

The whole thing is worth a read.

(Via commenter Johnathan, in a previous thread)