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It's nice knowing everybody in your graduating class, unless you have different interests and get thought of as weird. The bigger the school, the better the chance of finding like minds. And finally, I am grateful my younger sons didn't have to go through a huge student population shock when they left for college.
Yes, this too. My son, in particular, was much happier at his large high school because he could find other kids who were interested in the things he was interested in. We now think he would have been dxed with asperger's had they known anything about it back then. In his large school, he was able to find friends and he stays in touch with them as an adult.
Upsides small schools:
are more personal; you may have the same teacher every year (I have several kids this year in more than one class); people tend to watch out for each other; by the time you get to high school everyone is used to each other's "oddities".
Downsides small schools:
lack of class selection, especially for classes such as AP Calc, AP Chem, AP Physics, AP Euro History, etc.; you may have the same teacher every year or for more than one class a day; everyone knows everything about you; you still don't like the kid you couldn't stand in 1st grade.
Upsides large schools:
larger class selection; more people to share your interests and be your friends; you can get lost in the crowd;
Downsides large schools:
more competition for seats in the specialty classes; more people to dislike you; you can get lost in the crowd and no one knows you exist.
Are we talking about large districts vs. small districts or large schools vs. small schools? These are mostly very separate topics of discussion.
Personally I prefer what I see as being "medium" size school districts of about 10,000-15,000 students. These are large enough that there may be some options and choices available in schools and programs, but small enough that you don't feel like you're trapped in a gigantic bureaucracy when you need to get to district leadership with questions and concerns.
I'm talking about graduating class--small is under 200; large would be >500.
Graduating class for what? One school? Or the total of several schools in an entire school system?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pitt Chick
Our district is the one of the largest in the county and we're at ~4000. We have NO districts the size that you call medium.
Oh goodness, I give up. About a month ago I recall making the mistake of referring to 10,000-15,000 students as being large and I was corrected by a few posters with affiliations to districts with over 100,000 students that 10K is tiny! Whatever you want to call it, I think that's an optimal size.
Well...I'm talking about a total graduating class size. In other words, less than 200 would be considered small and greater than 500, large. This is for one school district (just one high school comprising 800 students total)
So you're really talking about the sizes of just one individual high school. In that case, I have personal experience in both. The high school I attended for my first two years was gigantic. The one I attended for my final two years (and graduated from) was comparatively tiny (just about 85 in my graduating class).
Overall I felt like I got more personal attention in the smaller school, but there was also much less variety of educational and extracurricular options.
Our district is the one of the largest in the county and we're at ~4000. We have NO districts the size that you call medium.
Yeah, most places' school districts aren't nearly as split up as they are around Pittsburgh. The county I went to high school in had one small city school district in the county seat, and the rest of the county -- over 100K students! -- was in the same district.
I think that affluence of the school's may make the most difference. Our High School is probably considered small with 1,000 students but it offers 1:1 laptops, a couple of dozen AP's and minimal charges for activities and really good teachers that are paid well.
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Whatever you want to call it, I think that's an optimal size.
