“I feel like it’s the holy grail of the current movement in high school reform. We’re trying to prepare students for college and career, this is the first evidence at scale that a system was able to do this.” -Gordon Berlin, President of MDRC, in today’s Q&A on Real Clear Education

The latest in a series of studies on New York City’s small public high schools indicates that students enrolled in these schools are 22% more likely to enroll in college, even as 75% of them entered high school behind grade level. This is the fourth cohort of students studied to come out of NYC’s small high schools, and each cohort shows increased gains.

Why were students at these schools more likely to enroll in college, and what can we learn from them? According to last year’s report on the effectiveness of these small high schools, principals cited strong relationships between adults and students alongside increased academic rigor as the leading cause of their success. As Berlin notes, small high schools are uniquely positioned to support students who enter ninth grade with skill deficits: “I think people need to pay attention to these results and realize the large high schools we created in another era shouldn’t be the sole strategy for our urban high schools. I’m not saying we shouldn’t have any of them, but I think students need to have a variety of choices, that smaller schools enable the changes where they’re small not just in size but in function, they’re academically rigorous, provide the support that students need to make it. There just are not results like this and we ought to do more of what we know.”

The full report, released today, is available here. Check out MDRC’s press release as well.