Leading small schools proponent and founder of the Small Schools Coalition and the Grauer School Dr. Stuart Grauer notes, "Research shows overwhelmingly that small schools lead to greater student academic gains and personal adjustment. In fact, data justifying this has been available for decades; it's just that policymakers have largely ignored it, no doubt due to the costs of such programs (and, of course, the politics). Right now, armed guards, metal detectors, and expulsions fail to get to the heart of the problem. (To a serious extent, they can actually create repressive conditions that make the problem worse.) Consequently, many people are looking for another way, and small schools can't be ignored much longer." Why do we keep building gigantic schools when we have such promising data? Dr. Grauer attributes this not only to economics, but to prevailing myths about American education: "Our collective memory of high school includes nostalgia such as proms, football games, exciting social lives, romance, and first cars. No matter that such memories do not apply to most students. The average high school student does not attend sporting events; indeed the larger the school, the smaller the percentage of student participation in these activities. For most students, the social scene in large high schools is tough and unforgiving, with sharp distinctions made between the small group of social haves and the far larger masses of have-nots. And high school memories seldom include a significant academic component, let alone an intellectual one (2001). In other words, many high schools have activities that everyone speaks of with pride—sacred cows like the marching band, the lacrosse team, the boosters. These untouchable activities represent the school's image, and they can't be changed, even though they serve a very small percentage of students and rarely have any connection to the most basic thing of all: the focus on student learning."