Skip to content

Large high school divided into multiple small charter schools as a turnaround design

Design · All designs
Evidence · 2 claims (2 for) · 1 study (1 causal), q2 · 1 of 1 report an effect size · 2 claims rest on one study

Description

This whole-school design pattern converts one existing, underperforming public high school into a set of smaller autonomous charter schools sharing the same neighborhood catchment. The reviewed study "examined a group of Green Dot Public Schools formed by dividing an existing public high school into a set of smaller schools": the original school was divided into two off-site small schools in the first year and into eight schools by the second year, serving the full prior student community. The pattern pairs small-school community with the charter operator's six-principle model.

Design Implications

Context

Requirements

  • Chartering and district authorization to convert an existing district-run school
  • Funding for transformation operations, which in the reported case came largely from private foundations

Constraints

  • Evidence for the pattern comes from one quasi-experimental study meeting WWC standards with reservations in a single urban district

Target Learners

  • Ninth-through-twelfth-grade students in an underperforming urban high school catchment

Learning Goals

  • Improved achievement, attendance, and graduation in a turnaround setting

Claims

Examples

-

Key Sources

  • Green Dot Public Schools. (2018). WWC Intervention Report: Green Dot Public Schools, Charter Schools. What Works Clearinghouse, U.S. Department of Education. https://www.greendot.org
Page metadata
Field Value
type design
id large-school-conversion-into-small-charter-schools
title Large high school divided into multiple small charter schools as a turnaround design
description This whole-school design pattern converts one existing, underperforming public high school into a set of smaller autonomous charter schools sharing the same neighborhood catchment.
status review
generated by process:settle-candidates on 2026-10-07
trust unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content
sources 1 — green-dot-public-schools-2018

Frontmatter is the page's machine-readable record — see the Schema & Guide.