Are big high schools bad?

In the August 16th work session, Plano ISD Board President Tammy Richards discussed the effectiveness of "smaller class sizes".  I haven't read the complete transcript, but she seems to be conflating this with the concept of a "smaller campus".

The background here is a premise that a future Plano West Senior High campus size will become "too big", and more generally that all Plano ISD campuses are now "too big".  So then it follows that the district should look into options that would reduce our Senior High campuses to something more palatable, perhaps around 2000.

Ms. Richards cited work by the Gates Foundation on reducing campus sizes in large urban districts such as NYC, Chicago, and Oakland and applying the rationale to our district.  This may not be a fair comparison since Plano ISD is not a mature district and certainly not urban.  In addition, the results from years of study by the "Small Schools Movement" are quite mixed.

Recently the Gates Foundation has backtracked on its original premise that "smaller is better".  From the 2009 annual letter from Bill Gates:

Executive Summary: After spending $2 billion on experiments with reducing high school campus size, the Gates Foundation has concluded that small high schools are not the answer to improving public school education. So it is changing its strategy.

5-second summary: The key to a great education is not a small high school, it is a great teacher.

Key quotes from the article:

Many of the small schools that we invested in did not improve students' achievement in any significant way.

We had less success trying to change an existing school than helping to create a new school.

While we were pleased with these improvements, we are trying to raise college-ready graduation rates, and in most cases, we fell short.

If you want your child to get the best education possible, it is actually more important to get him assigned to a great teacher than to a great school.

Sources:

http://www.gatesfoundation.org/annual-letter/Documents/2009-bill-gates-annual-letter.pdf
http://blogs.sj-r.com/morningbell/index.php/2009/02/25/big-uh-oh-for-the-small-schools-movement/