New York City’s Small Schools of Choice (SSC) program was one of a panoply of education reforms enacted in the early 2000s under then-mayor Michael Bloomberg and schools chief Joel Klein. The idea was to redesign students’ high school experiences and to increase graduation rates for students from low-income backgrounds by leveraging smaller school models emphasizing personalized academic instruction. A recent report from MDRC gives us a longer-term look at how SSC students have fared over time.
The SSC effort initially closed dozens of large, low-performing high schools in the city; created over 100 new small schools to serve students in the lowest-income areas of the city; and used a ranked-choice application system to assign all rising ninth-graders to specific high schools, with priority given to low-income students. Ultimately, about 90 percent of students attending SSCs were Black or Hispanic and 83 percent qualified for free or reduced-price lunch.
SSCs typically served around 100 students per grade and emphasized academic rigor and personalized relationships between teachers and their students. Building staff chose a school theme and a community partner to provide additional support, which ranged from helping to fund programs, to hiring staff, to providing students with work-based experiences.
Since 2010, MDRC researchers have used the lottery process embedded within New York City’s district-wide high school assignment process to study SSCs’ effects. In short, when a given school had more applicants than seats, the district’s admissions algorithm randomized which applicants received an offer. So far, they’ve found large, positive impacts on high school graduation. However, they haven’t been able to look at longer-term outcomes until now, as enough time has passed.
MDRC drew an evaluation sample comprising over 100 SSCs and more than 16,000 students, including those who won the lottery and enrolled in an SSC, and those who lost and enrolled instead in a non-SSC New York public school. Researchers followed students for six years who attended an SSC in the 2005–06 through 2008–09 school years and measured effects on enrollment in postsecondary education, degree attainment, future employment, and earnings.
Descriptive data show that, on average, 76 percent of SSC enrollees graduated from high school within four years, versus 68 percent of non-SSC enrollees. Their causal results show large, positive effects (nearly 10 percentage points) on students’ enrollment in postsecondary education immediately after graduating from high school. But there was no difference between the two groups in the selectivity of institutions in which they enrolled. And that big percentage-point difference in college enrollment translated into a more modest positive effect of 2.5 percentage points on four-year postsecondary degree attainment rates, suggesting that SSCs boosted college entrance more than degree completion (perhaps a by-product of the college-for-all ethos). Finally, SSCs do not have an impact on individuals’ employment rates or earnings six years after their expected high school graduation. Still, the researchers believe that may not be the last word because many sampled kids are still in college.
While most of the initial Small Schools of Choice schools are still around, that terminology is no longer used today. However, New York City Schools is still opening and operating small and themed schools. But it’s doing so with a more organized and curated push for career-connected learning in them, which befits the current focus on building varied and effective pathways from high school to postsecondary success, in all its forms. That’s all well and good.
Just as commendable is MDRC’s and the Gates Foundation’s 16-year commitment to following these schools. In education, patience and funding usually run out long before the evidence does. It’s worth applauding efforts to stay the course long enough to see where results do—and do not—materialize.
SOURCE: Rebecca Unterman and Miki Shih, “Effects of New York City’s small schools of choice on postsecondary degree attainment and employment,” MDRC (January 2026).
