Research On The Small-Scale School From The Perspective Of American Public School Reform

Since1980s， with the fierce competition of globalization andeconomic integration, teaching level and quality of American publicschool has appeared multilevel decline. It reflected higher dropout rate,school violence and the decreasing trend of academic assessment. Thisresults in a series of systematic reform in the United States. In thiscircumstances, it reduced the scale of school and began to implement thesmall scale developmental way under the school-based management. Thepurpose of this study is to illustrate historical background anddevelopment process of small scale school, elaborate the present situationof implementation of small scale and thus clarify the features,effectiveness and challenges of the small-scale school.The paper consists of two parts. The first part is the introductionwhich mainly clarifies why the author selected this theme as a field ofstudy. First of all, the research on the small scale school of the UnitedStates has not been comprehensively conducted in China, which providesus large potential room for study on academic purpose. Second, quality and quantity of schools’ in China is also challenged, which needs to betackled desperately. Therefore, the study on the small scale school of theUnited States has realistic significance whether from the perspective oftheory and practice.The second part is the body of the paper which mainly is divided intofive chapters. The first chapter aims to explain the background ofsmall-scale schools reform in1980s. It has its own internal and externalreasons. One reason is that the demands of public school reform itself,pursuing of educational idea and international competition. The other oneis the imperfection of internal measures of public schools reform, whichalso contributed to the school of small-scale trend of recovery. Thesecond chapter analyzes evolution of development and policy of thesmall-scale schools before the1980s. This chapter analyzes the reasons ofattenuation for small schools from historical development process andpolicy changes. The third chapter focus on present situation ofimplementation of measures in the small-scale schools. It examined theobjectives, the curriculum and the model of the small-scale schools. Thefourth chapter is the controversy of the small-scale school. On the onehand, it is debated on school size and the benefits of the scale from the external form. On the others hand, it analyzes school self-developmentconditions and rules from the internal nature. The fifth chapter is aboutthought and enlightenment of the small scale school. It involvesharmonious and symbiotic school development from analysis of theschool’s own size, importance of the principle of democracy, equality andfreedom to meet the different needs of parents and students, and so on.