The public schools' last hurrah? - a plan to save the school system: includes a related article on Nativity Preparatory School in Roxbury, Massachusetts - Cover Story

Washington Monthly, March, 1996 by Joshua Wolf Shenk

Fran Cook isn't alone. An American Educator survey found that 36 percent of teachers in inner-city junior high schools, and 11 percent in the suburbs, have been threatened by a student. "Thugs ... run the schools," one Connecticut teacher told Public Agenda. Other teachers echo this opinion; more than 80 percent think removing chronic misbehavers would substantially improve kids' education. Discipline problems also send good teachers fleeing to private or parochial schools, which mete out real discipline and thus have more orderly classrooms.

School officials slack off on discipline partly out of good intentions: They want to keep students in school rather than cast them out to a crueler world. There's also financial self-interest: Schools don't want to lose funds they receive on a per-pupil basis. And then there's the fear of lawsuits from aggrieved parents. Disruptive students often get off for the same reason as bad teachers - schools don't want to spend years in court defending their decision. Principals need to be able to exercise discretion, and that means changing the law to shield them from endless lawsuits. If a principal shows a pattern of poor judgment, he should be fired. Otherwise, he should be able to act in the school's best interest.

IV. INVOLVING PARENTS

When Madeline Cartwright became principal of Blaine Elementary in North Philadelphia, she could count on two hands the number of parents who regularly attended meetings. After coaxing parents to get involved, her 300-person auditorium would overflow at meetings. Almost immediately, more students began to attend school regularly. Three years later, Blaine was named the district's most academically improved school.

Today, Madeline Cartwright earns $4,000 a speech to talk to educators about her work at Blaine. But when she offered her services for free to her grandson's school in Haverford Township, a well-to-do suburb, she was ignored - except for being asked to make cookies for a bake sale.

Parental involvement is perhaps the most important determinant of a student's success in school. Unfortunately for American public schools, Cartwright's grandson's school is the norm and Blaine is the exception. In many schools, parents are made to feel unwelcome. Teachers and principals are too busy, or they fear parents will challenge their authority or call them on their shortcomings.

Althea Woods's "accelerated" school is a model of what parental involvement can do. "Our parents will just do anything," she says. They prepare bulletin boards in the hall, tutor children, and monitor playgrounds. "Once we were short a custodian and the parents said, `Oh no, this school is not going to turn into one of those filthy places.' So they came with their Lysol and their mops, and that lasted for three weeks until we got a custodian."

Woods's parents are also more engaged with their own children at home. They attend workshops on how to help their kids with homework. The kids benefit not just from having their parents' attention but also from the wide range of adults who volunteer in the schools. When a civil servant or an office manager or an engineer comes to school, students are exposed to worlds they might never have seen.