Ten small high schools in San Diego are not producing the academic results that district officials anticipated. Now the school board wants to know why.
San Diego City Schools got an $11 million grant seven years ago to break-up large urban high schools into smaller schools housed on the same campus.
But state test scores show students' academic performance at about half of those small schools is well below average.
This is the first time San Diego Unified is evaluating its small high school movement. District officials said that's part of the problem.
Bill Lane is a principal at one of the small high schools. He said it's not a failed experiment, but things must change.
"We definitely have to raise our test scores. There lies our challenge. We have to get outside the box we have to do all kinds of interventions," he said.
On Thursday the school board will vote on plans that each school must adopt to improve academics. District officials said another plan would be to consolidate the small schools to save money.
