 National Association of Counties * Washington, D.C. Vol. 32, No. 20 * November 6, 2000 Previous story | Table of Contents | Next story
‘No Excuses’ — Could All Schools Succeed? By Neal R. Peirce
(Neal Peirce is a syndicated columnist who writes about local government issues. His columns do not reflect the opinion of County News or NACo.) The Crown School in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood serves very poor minority children (91 percent black, 8 percent Hispanic). Sometimes it has to pack 35 children into a single classroom. But Irwin Kurz, the remarkable principal of this school for the past 13 years, asserts that “it’s a lot of garbage that poor kids can’t succeed.” Crown’s hallways groan under the weight of student projects, presentations, book reports and certificates of excellence. On basic tests, it ranks 40th out of 674 elementary schools in New York City. Detroit’s Newberry Elementary School, set in a sea of vacant lots and abandoned buildings in a poverty-ravaged neighborhood, is producing similar scoring miracles. The secret, says principal Ronald Williams, is “to give my teachers whatever they need to get the job done and then hold them accountable for the results.” Indeed, Williams has so inspired those teachers that for two hours, four days a week, they run a voluntary after-school program in reading and math. Close to 90 percent of Newberry’s 4th- and 5th-graders are passing Michigan’s tough writing and math exams. In Houston, the Mabel B. Wesley Elementary School, located in the impoverished Acres Homes neighborhood, has been excelling for more than 20 years under two successive strong leaders. Among the keys to Wesley students’ high grades on Texas assessment tests: a strong emphasis on language acquisition and reading, and, in the words of principal Wilma Rimes, “accepting no excuses for student failure.” The question everyone asks: Are these schools and their achievements just isolated, atypical, non-replicable examples of some charismatic principal who succeeds in defying the odds? “Nothing these men and women do is beyond the reach of any school in the country,” says Carter. It’s true, he acknowledges, that the hero principals are often mavericks bucking the system. But it is possible, he says, to create a system “that rewards and inspires replication” of the against-all-odds schools. There’s even the money to do it he argues. Cumulatively, the county is spending $340 billion a year on K-12 education. Just “flatten” the education establishments so that less of the money is thrown into central bureaucracies, Carter asserts, and we’d then have “more than enough money in the system to reward the principals and teachers who get the best results.” How do the star schools get those results? Carter has a list, gleaned from the 21 he studied: First, principals need to be free to decide how they spend their money, who they hire, and what to teach. Second, great schools set hard and fast goals — whether it’s literacy at the earliest age, or calculus by 12th grade, or 100 percent attendance — “that the whole school must strive to obtain. Once the principal sets a clear vision for the school, every teacher has to be held personally responsible for enforcing it.” Third, encourage development of master teachers — “Quality, not seniority, is the key.” Fourth, use regular and rigorous testing to spur continuous achievement. “High expectations without a means of measurement are hollow.” Fifth, Carter adds a point about discipline, self-control, self-reliance: “A command-and-control approach to discipline is limited by the number of guards you can hire. When self-discipline and order come from within, every extra person is part of the solution.” Sixth, principals have to establish direct, frequent contact with parents to make the home a place of learning through reading to younger children, plus constant checking to see homework’s done. Is all this heresy in the eyes of teacher unions? Often, yes — right now in strike-threatened Boston, Philadelphia and Los Angeles, for example, unions are asking for seniority protections, trying to limit principal power, and objecting to pay-for-performance approaches. Carter thinks the unions have it all wrong. Between now and 2006, he notes, as many as two-thirds of today’s teachers will retire or leave the profession. That creates, he suggests, a golden opportunity “for teacher unions to reinvent themselves as professional organizations that realign themselves to reward good performance.” Add in the assertiveness of mayors increasingly and successfully demanding a strong voice in their cities’ schools, plus growing pressure for smaller schools, for charter schools and vouchers, and a revolution of the magnitude he’s suggesting seems a lot less distant than just five or 10 years ago. The rewards could be stunning, especially in America’s poor neighborhoods. As Carter observes, “an outstanding school is a source of pride, a wellspring of joy, and a force for stability in an impoverished community.” Neal Peirce’s e-mail address is npeirce@citistates.com. ( c ) 2000, Washington Post Writers Group |
