Former New York City kindergarten teacher Deborah Meier is well-known as the founder of the modern “small schools” movement. Photo credit: deborahmeier.com
Many excellent classroom teachers go on to initiate important reforms in the field of education. One of these is Deborah Meier, a former kindergarten teacher who is well-known as the founder of the modern “small schools” movement.
Deborah began her work as a public school teacher, principal, writer, and advocate in the early 1960s, after graduation from the University of Chicago. Her first teaching position was as an early childhood teacher in Chicago. Later, when her family moved to New York City, she taught kindergarten in Central Harlem.
For the next 20 years, Deborah helped revitalize public schools in New York City’s East Harlem District 4. In 1974, she founded Central Park East Elementary School, a highly successful public school that served primarily African American and Hispanic families. During the next dozen years, Deborah opened two other Central Park East elementary schools in District 4, as well as an acclaimed secondary school.
In 1995 she moved to Boston to establish Mission Hill, a K-8 school in Roxbury, Massachusetts. This schools was part of a network Deborah created that helped initiate new small schools, both elementary and secondary, in New York and Boston. At the schools she established, Deborah fostered democratic communities, giving teachers greater autonomy in the running of a school, giving parents a voice in what happens to their children in schools, and promoting intergenerational connections. She has always been an advocate of active, project-based learning, and of graduation through a series of exhibitions of high quality work.
In addition to her work in the classroom and as an administrator, Deborah is the author of numerous books and articles, including The Power of Their Ideas, Lessons to America from a Small School in Harlem, and In Schools we Trust. She is an outspoken critic of state-mandated curriculum and high stakes standardized testing and has written extensively on their unreliability and class/race biases.
For her work in the field of education, Deborah has earned many accolades. In 1987, she garnered a MacArthur “genius” Award. During the 1990s, she served as an Urban Fellow at the Annenberg Institute. In addition, she is a member of the Boards of FairTest, Save Our Schools, the Center for Collaborative Education, and the Association for Union Democracy. She is also a member of the editorial board of The Nation, The Harvard Education Letter, and Dissent magazines.
