Will Clinton, Bush and Reagan Match These High Scores?

School Administrator, June, 1998

Presidential Guarantees

Want a proven way to all-but-guarantee a high-performing school?

Name it after a U.S. president.

SchoolMatch, a consulting firm in Westerville, Ohio, with a database of 15,625 school systems nationwide, discovered that college-bound students attending many presidential namesake schools achieved college-entrance exam scores in the 90th percentile or higher.

George Washington High School in Charleston, W.Va., ranks in the top 1 percent in its performance on the SAT and ACT. Lincoln High School in Portland, Ore., placed in the top 2 percent. Also scoring in the top 10 percent nationwide were Roosevelt high schools in Kent, Wash., Seattle and San Antonio, Texas; George Washington HS in Denver; Jefferson Senior High in Bloomington, Minn.; John Adams HS in South Bend, Ind.; John F. Kennedy HS in Bellmore, N.Y.; and Madison HS in Vienna, Va.

SchoolMatch found many schools bearing presidents' names. The leaders: Lincoln (723), Washington (628), Jefferson (474), Madison (225) and Monroe (147).

Toward Picturesque Speech

Phillip Schlechty, a sociologist by training, often finds folksy ways to describe sophisticated ideas about schooling when he delivers speeches in his role as president of the Center for Leadership in School Reform.

In an address at AASA's national conference in February, Schlechty delivered these choice descriptions:

* "We have to learn to get the hay down to the ponies instead of keeping it in the hayloft."--A comment about keeping communities better informed when changes are proposed for public schools.

* "Five-finger teachers" hamper school reform.--A reference to educators counting the few years left before they retire.

* "We can talk all we want about higher standards, but it won't satisfy my mother. She thinks schools have lowered standards because kids call teachers by their first names and they race down the school steps with their caps on.

She's Got Him Covered

Mark Scharenbroich, a motivational speaker for high school audiences, once was invited to provide the main address during an in-service day at a high school in a small coastal town in Alaska. At the end of the afternoon, the principal invited Scharenbroich to join him on his salmon-fishing boat nicknamed "School Business."

The next day, Scharenbroich asked the principal's secretary about the boat's name. She responded, "That way when he needs to get away for a bit, I can tell people (who call) he's out on School Business."

Keeping 'Em In Line

On the occasion of his 50th birthday recently, Stinson Stroup, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators, received some gag gifts from his colleagues, including a water gun and a set of four rubber bullets.

Stroup's admirers, recognizing how he vigorously defends the interests of local superintendents in front of sometimes wayward forces in the state capital, figured the ammunition might come in handy someday if things get too out of control.

And the Votes Are In

In a published commentary on the ethics of journalists casting formal ballots for Hall of Fame inductees and Heisman Trophy winners, Charles Overby, chief executive officer of the Freedom Forum, came up with a dandy analogy from public education.

Arguing that the chumminess between sports journalists and the sports establishment would be unacceptable in almost every other area of news coverage, Overby stated: "Education writers never would be allowed to vote on a new superintendent of schools."

Now there's a frightening prospect.

Not a Degree of Deference

Howard Pitler, who is principal of a magnet elementary school in Wichita, Kan., has been working toward a doctorate in educational administration for the past 3 1/2 years, and he openly shares that information with his students so they realize that learning is a lifelong process.

One day, reports Pitler, "as I was preparing to defend my dissertation, a 2nd-grade girl came into my office for a birthday treat. She asked me what I was working on. I told her I was getting ready to defend my dissertation and if I was successful, I would be a doctor that very afternoon.

"Her response was, 'But you're just going to be an education doctor. They can't do anything."