Across the nation, there is a growing consensus that schools must change in fundamental ways if they are to accomplish the goals we now have for them: teaching our very diverse student population for higher order thinking and deep understanding. The system we work in today was invented nearly 100 years ago for another time and another mission - the processing of large numbers of students for rote skills and the education of only a few for knowledge work. It was never designed to teach all children to high levels. Caring and dedicated teachers, administrators, and parents work hard every day within this system to educate our children for more ambitious thinking and performance skills - and yet their efforts are often stymied by outmoded institutional structures, most notably the large, impersonal, factory-model school.

A growing number of educators and policymakers believe that existing assembly-line schools that inhibit our students' and teachers' potential need to be replaced by smaller schools which are better designed to support teaching and learning. And we have evidence that small schools are indeed better for our children: All else equal, they produce higher achievement, lower dropout rates, greater attachment, and more participation in the curricular and extracurricular activities that prepare students for productive lives. There is real potential for the current small schools movement to transform the educational landscape in America for the better.

Yet we must proceed with caution. "Small" is not synonymous with successful. There are ineffective small schools, some of which replicate the very problems they were seeking to solve. Small size is a necessary condition for effective schooling, but it is not enough.

School designers are likely to be more successful if they can access the lessons learned from the reform efforts of the past several decades. A number of schools that have been extraordinarily effective and have helped other schools to replicate their success have important lessons to offer, based on the elements they hold in common. This publication lays out ten of those lessons - ten design features of effective small schools that help create the kind of education many of us want for all of our children. Each section is accompanied by one or more profiles of small schools that are putting these features into practice and creating powerful learning opportunities for their students, as well as a list of "key references" that provide research evidence and more in-depth information.

The design features described in the following pages range from school structures that promote meaningful, sustained relationships among teachers and students, to curriculum and instructional practices that help all students achieve at high levels, to approaches that ensure teachers are experts at their craft, to strategies for involving families in schools and making decisions democratically. The features are not arranged in priority order, and, while successful schools tend to include most or all of these elements, not all of them enact each feature in the precise manner it is described here. Schools need to create means for enacting their goals that respond to their local contexts and work for the student, parent, and faculty members of their communities.

The process of creating better schools is hard work. There is no progress without struggle. As we undertake this struggle together, we should remember the words that Langston Hughes used to describe our collective quest to build a better world: "Keep your hand on the plow. Hold on."

Linda Darling-Hammond