Smaller school size called a launch pad for high school reform
efforts High schools are unworkable when students feel
invisible, says Michael Klonsky by Clarisse Mesa "Small schools
are the launch pad, not the rocket ship," cautioned Michael
Klonsky, director of the Small Schools Workshop in Chicago,
during a talk sponsored by the Philadelphia Education Fund on
February 1. The Education Fund brought Klonsky to Philadelphia
to support local efforts to create more small high schools in
the School District. Klonsky founded the Small Schools Workshop
in 1991 as a support network for Chicago's "rebels against the
tyranny of principals" - those teachers who had decided to start
their own schools. Fifteen years later, he is a key player in
the nation's "small schools movement." Holding area and sorting
device Klonsky outlined the problems with large high schools,
highlighting a February 1 New York Times editorial entitled
"Reinventing High Schools," which described traditional high
schools as "a combination holding