Size isn’t everything, but it does matter, and the past decade has seen a noticeable countertrend toward smaller schools. This has been due ,in part ,to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has invested $1.8 billion in American high schools, helping to open about 1,000 small schools-most of them with about 400 kids each with an average enrollment of only 150 per grade, About 500 more are on the drawing board. Districts all over the country are taking notice, along with mayors in cities like New York, Chicago and San Diego. The movement includes independent public charter schools, such as No.1 BASIS in Tucson, with only 120 high-schoolers and 18 graduates this year. It embraces district-sanctioned magnet schools, such as the Talented and Gifted School, with 198 students, and the Science and Engineering Magnet,with383,which share a building in Dallas, as well as the City Honors School in Buffalo, N.Y., which grew out of volunteer evening seminars for students. And it includes alternative schools with students selected by lottery(抽签)，such as H-B Woodlawn in Arlington, Va. And most noticeable of all, there is the phenomenon of large urban and suburban high schools that have split up into smaller units of a few hundred, generally housed in the same grounds that once boasted thousands of students all marching to the same band.
　　Hillsdale High School in San Mateo, Calif, is one of those, ranking No.423—among the top 2% in the country—on Newsweek’s annual ranking of America’s top high schools. The success of small schools is apparent in the listings. Ten years ago, when the first Newsweek list based on college-level test participation was published, only three of the top 100 schools had graduating Classes smaller than 100 students. This year there are 22. Nearly 250 schools on the full ,Newsweek list of the top 5% of schools nationally had fewer than 200 graduates in 2007.
　　Although many of Hillsdale’s students came from wealthy households, by the late 1990 average test scores were sliding and it had earned the unaffectionate nickname (绰号) “Hillsjail. ” Jeff Gilbert. A Hillsdale teacher who became principal last year, remembers sitting with other teachers watching students file out of a graduation ceremony and asking one another in astonishment, “How did that student graduate?”
　　So in 2003 Hillsdale remade itself into three “houses,” romantically named Florence, Marrakech and Kyoto. Each of the 300 arriving ninth graders are randomly(随机地) assigned to one of the houses. Where they will keep the same four core subject teachers for two years, before moving on to another for 11th and 12th grades. The closeness this system cultivates is reinforced by the institution of “advisory” classes Teachers meet with students in groups of 25, five mornings a week, for open-ended discussions of everything from homework problems to bad Saturday-night dates. The advisers also meet with students privately and stay in touch with parents, so they are deeply invested in the students’ success.“We’re constantly talking about one another’s advisers,” says English teacher Chris Crockett. “If you hear that yours isn’t doing well in math, or see them sitting outside the dean’s office, it’s like a personal failure.” Along with the new structure came a more demanding academic program, the percentage of freshmen taking biology jumped from 17 to 95.“It was rough for some. But by senior year, two-thirds have moved up to physics,” says Gilbert “Our kids are coming to school in part because they know there are adults here who know them and care for them.”But not all schools show advances after downsizing, and it remains to be seen whether smaller schools will be a cure-all solution.