Why Small High Schools Movement Alone Will Not Improve Student Achievement

David H. Hoff writes in Ed Week that high schools funded for "smaller learning communities" cannot definitively say that ,to paraphrase, student achievement is improving in the funded small high school setting
The report, released by the US Department of Education, finds "no significant trends
in achievement on state tests or college entrance exams"
In my mind, growth in student achievement and assessment is driven by instructional competence and quality. Engaged students learn best. Heightened assessment performance is driven by leveraging the quality of instruction and maximum student focus on the learning task at hand.
In closing, one on one instruction fails if the quality of instructional competence and student engagement is low. So no, a smaller high school is not guarantee of greater student achievement.