th other schools, monolithic high schools across the country may be replaced with smaller schools within a shared structure. As Meier notes, we can redesign what are, after all, merely brick and mortar buildings into campuses composed not only of many different schools, but of schools for children of different ages and, if we are imaginative enough, other kinds of institutions that would live nicely side-by-side with the young. We could surround our children with true living communities in which old and young pass each other daily and are not violated into age/grade ghettos. (p. 116)The Power of Their Ideas refers to the ideas of those who were at the center of this small- schools movement: the teachers, parents, and students who created what Alternative Schools Director Sy Fliegel would later call, in the title of his book, Miracle in East Harlem. These ideas led to the success of four small schools of choice, working under all the constraints of the public school system. Meier, a radical critic of the system and at the same time a staunch defender of public education, wanted no part of vouchers or privatization. Her philosophy emerges from the telling of her story. Good teaching, she insists, is fostered by "small schools, schools of choice, school autonomy over the critical dimensions of teaching and learning, lots of time for building relationships." In journal notes, she finds meaning for small schools in the death of Carmela, one of her students. The school's steady attention to Carmela and her family as she lay dying for nearly a year can't happen in a school five times our size. Yet death surrounds our kids. If death doesn't count, does life? While the population of Central Park East still reflects a cross section of New York City, with the majority coming from low-income, African-American and Latino families, nearly all of its students graduate, go on to college, and do well there. Is this really a "miracle"? If all children ca...
