Adequate Resources
The first, and perhaps most important, is adequate resources. Inequalities in access to resources and opportunities still plague U.S. schools. There are schools across the nation where teachers are untrained, key curriculum offerings are lacking, students must use decades-old textbooks or none at all, where teachers do not have enough paper to make photocopies, where vermin and roaches are commonplace, where libraries are closed, where there are no computers in the classrooms, where art and music classes have been cut from the budget, where the bathrooms are locked during the school day because they don't work or lack supplies, and where paint is peeling off the walls and tiles are falling from the ceilings. In California, where a group of parents and students recently filed a lawsuit against the state based on the degeneration of their schools, there has been steady decline in funding and a growing gap between the haves and the have-nots for the past two decades. Similar lawsuits have been filed in New York, New Jersey, South Carolina, Louisiana, and other states.

The problems these lawsuits seek to address will not be solved by small schools, no matter how well-designed. When funding levels are extremely low, important structural features such as small classes and reduced pupil loads are not feasible even once budgets are reallocated. States - and it is primarily state governments that are responsible for education funding - must decide to fund all of their schools at a level that allows for decent facilities and makes a high-quality public education a realistic possibility. Some states - like Connecticut, Kentucky, and North Carolina - have undertaken reforms that support greater funding equality, improvement of teacher knowledge and skills, more equal access to highly qualified teachers, and reforms of curriculum, assessment, and school design. These states have improved educational outcomes for all of their students and have begun to reduce the achievement gap (Darling-Hammond, 1999).

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Redesigned School Districts
Second, if small redesigned schools are to flourish, school districts need to redesign themselves. Many districts have evolved in ways that now make them bureaucratic and inefficient, with top-down management systems that discourage innovation and burden teachers and administrators with rigid rules of operation and unnecessary paperwork. If redesigned schools are to succeed, they cannot spend all of their time struggling against district red tape. Just as many U.S. businesses have moved away from top-down, hierarchical governance, so too school districts need to set broad achievement goals based on performance assessment measures and then give schools considerable flexibility to decide how to reach those goals. This means, within certain parameters, giving schools autonomy over key aspects of their programs - including budget, staffing, curriculum and assessment, leadership and governance, school policies, and school calendar and schedule - and then holding schools accountable for results.

While this kind of "autonomy in exchange for accountability" arrangement is often associated with charter schools, small redesigned schools do not necessarily have to be charters. There are many districts, including New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, and Oakland, that have allowed for the creation of innovative small schools within the district, sometimes by issuing a request for proposals asking for design teams of teachers, parents, and others to start new schools. This within-district approach is more systemic and ensures that new schools have a facility and operational support - two key factors that often create difficulties for new charter schools. In some cases, however, a charter school may be the only possible approach to creating an effective small school, and as such charters can represent a valuable reform opportunity.

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Planning Time
Whether a new school is a charter school or an in-district school, another essential condition that is necessary for success is sufficient planning time. A new school cannot be thrown together on the fly, even by experienced educators, and in most cases, at least a year of planning is necessary in order to ensure a smooth opening. One reason this time is important is so that the school can do outreach work to ensure that it represents a broad community base, not just a small group of educators who have a good idea.

While most of the small redesigned schools profiled here have started as new institutions (in most cases starting with one or two grades and growing year by year), there are also many large schools that will want to convert to smaller learning communities. In many respects, this kind of conversion is even more difficult than the challenging enterprise of starting a new school. Existing institutions have strong traditions, and, unless a school is unusually dysfunctional, many staff members are understandably uncomfortable with radical change. This kind of change often proceeds slowly and requires the participation of all stakeholders, and at first it may involve only certain structural elements that seem more feasible - say, looping or advisories. If a large school decides it is ready for wholesale conversion to smaller schools, the process may sometimes need to be phased in, starting a new group of entering students in smaller, redesigned schools or learning communities within the larger school. At the same time, a shared commitment to real transformation is essential for change to be fully implemented. Without a clear goal and time frame in mind, the change process can wander and lose momentum.

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Conclusion
A sense of urgency is needed to fuel the difficult but necessary work of creating schools that can provide both love and learning - schools that can convey to children the sense of individual worth that Pablo Casals described when he said:

We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the world there is no other child exactly like you. In the millions of years that have passed, there has never been a child like you . . . and when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel? You must cherish one another. You must work - we must all work - to make this world worthy of its children.

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