[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 133 (Tuesday, October 5, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H9386-H9387]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               OUR SCHOOLS ARE TOO BIG AND TOO IMPERSONAL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Hill) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HILL of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, last April, shortly after the 
terrible tragedy that occurred at Columbine High School in Colorado, I 
spoke with my freshman colleague from the State of Washington (Mr. 
Baird). My colleague from Washington is a trained psychologist, so I 
asked him for his thoughts about the Columbine tragedy. Since Mr. Baird 
is a trained psychologist, I was expecting a long academic explanation 
using lots of psychological terms regular people do not understand. 
Instead, he had a simple solution, an explanation. He looked at me and 
said, ``Baron, our schools are too big, and these kids do not know one 
another.''
  The Columbine tragedy and other recent events of violence in our 
schools have made all of us take a serious look at our children, our 
schools, and ourselves. These recent tragedies have forced us to think 
about how we educate our children and how we can make our schools safer 
and better.
  This is a personal issue for me, for my wife, Betty, is a middle 
school teacher; and my youngest daughter is in the eighth grade at a 
public school in my hometown of Seymour, Indiana. I do not believe that 
there is one easy solution to all of the problems our schools and our 
children face today, nor do I believe that we politicians in Congress 
could pass some law that would solve every school's and every child's 
problem. I strongly believe that the people who work with children 
every day, the parents, the teachers and local school administrators, 
are in the best position to make decisions about their schools.

[[Page H9387]]

  But this week I am introducing a bill that I hope will make some 
small contribution to addressing a problem that I and other people have 
been talking about for many years. It is a problem that the recent 
episodes of school violence in Colorado and Georgia and other places 
around the country have once again brought to the forefront of our 
national debate. It is the problem that my colleague Dr. Baird was 
talking about.
  Our schools are too big and too impersonal. Too many of our children 
wake up every day and go to schools that make them feel disconnected 
and detached from their teachers, their parents and their communities. 
The goal of my bill that I am introducing, the Smaller Schools Stronger 
Communities Act, is to make our schools smaller and to help parents, 
teachers and administrators and students strengthen the sense of 
community that many of our schools today are lacking.
  My strong feelings about this issue come from my own experience 
growing up in southern Indiana. When I was growing up in Jackson 
County, there were more high schools than there are today in towns like 
Tampico and Clear Spring and Cortland. There were high schools that 
local kids attended and local families supported. These communities 
were proud of their schools. Their schools brought people together and 
helped keep their towns strong and vital places to live.
  These schools were the hearts of the communities, and when we 
consolidated, when school consolidation forced their high schools to 
close, it tore the heart out of these communities. These high schools 
along with thousands of other smaller schools around America were 
closed because for many years educators have followed the rule that 
bigger schools are better. For a long time we all assumed that bigger 
schools were better because they could offer students more courses, 
more extracurricular activities, and could save school districts money.
  The statistics on school size show how dramatically this bigger-is-
better approach has changed the way we educate our children. In 1930 
there were 262,000 elementary, middle and high schools in America. 
Today there are only 88,000 schools. In 1930 the average school had 100 
students. Today's average school has 500 students.
  Some education experts are now arguing that school consolidation has 
gone too far. More and more educators today believe that our children 
do better academically and socially in smaller schools that are closer 
to their homes and their parents than in the big schools with thousands 
of students. Because many schools have become too big, they sometimes 
harm the students they are supposed to be helping. Many students in big 
schools never develop any meaningful relationships with their teachers 
and never experienced a sense of belonging in their schools.
  When I start looking at the issue of big schools, I was surprised to 
find that some of the biggest critics of big schools are high school 
principals. The men and women who run our high schools, who work with 
our teenagers every day, say that schools are too big and too 
impersonal. In 1966 the national association of secondary school 
principals released a report criticizing the bigness of today's high 
schools. The principals recommended that the high school of the 21st 
century be much more student centered and personalized.

  Here is what the high school principals said: students take more 
interest in school when they experience a sense of belonging. Some 
students cope in large impersonal high schools because they have the 
advantage of external motivation that allows them to transcend the 
disadvantage of school size. Many others, however, would benefit from a 
more intimate setting in which their presence could be more readily and 
repeatedly acknowledged. Experts have found that achievement levels in 
smaller schools are higher especially among children from disadvantaged 
backgrounds who need extra help to succeed.
  A recent study of academic achievement and school size concluded that 
high schools and smaller schools perform better in course subjects of 
reading, math, history, and science. Students in smaller schools also 
have better attendance records, are less likely to get in fights or 
join gangs. A principal of a successful small high school recently 
wrote that small schools offer what metal detectors and guards cannot, 
the safety and security of being where you are well known by the people 
who care for you the most.
  The bill that I am introducing, the Smaller School Strong Stronger 
Communities Act provides grants to school districts that want to 
develop school size reduction strategy. This bill does not introduce a 
new mandate or try to micromanage local education authority. It simply 
supports education leaders in school districts who decide they want to 
implement a plan to reduce the size of their school units either 
through new building space or through schools within schools.
  I hope this bill will encourage local school districts to take a look 
at this idea and perhaps think about ways they can make their schools 
smaller and to find ways to help students feel connected again to their 
schools and their communities and their parents. This bill and the 
academic research I have been discussing here today make a very simple 
point about our schools, our kids, and ourselves. Our lives are better 
when we feel connected to the people we live and work with.

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