With most American high school students attending schools enrolling more than 1,000 students, the debate surrounding how to meet individual student needs had generally centered on class size—the number of students a teacher can effectively teach during a class period. In the last few years, however, the debate has shifted to school size and the consequences for students and teachers if large metropolitan schools are divided into what has come to be known as smaller learning communities, house plans and families, or schools within a school (Evans, 2003).