Can schools be too small to provide adequate curriculum and instruction?

Can schools be too small to provide adequate curriculum and instruction?

When Paul Abramson, a consultant who advises school districts on facilities and planning, asked that question, he found that small high schools are likely to offer fewer courses than large ones. In English, for example, students in large high schools might elect courses on 19th-century British novels, Shakespeare, and African-American writers. In small high schools, students are likely to be limited to a grade-level sequence labeled English I, II, III, and IV.

Even so, he found, small schools can provide an enriched curriculum on par, or nearly on par, with large schools. The critical factor is not the number of courses -- it’s how principals and teachers organize and manage instruction. Small high schools, even those with as few as 100 students, can provide rigorous courses and offer students choices, Abramson contends, but “only if they change the relationship between teachers and students and take advantage of their size to do things differently.”