Reflections on Brown: Black school, White school

May 20, 2004

Kimberly Swygert yesterday directed our attention to a very revealing story about two schools, one black, one white. The black school is struggling, and the white school is soaring, and we've all heard it before. This one would seem destined for the files of "separate and unequal" and would make good fodder for the argument that Brown v. Board of Education is a big fat failure.

But if you dig beneath the surface, a far different picture emerges.

The real question for why one school succeeds and one fails is actually a question not of race, but leadership. All you have to do is listen to the two principals speak of their respective schools, and the difference is striking.

These two schools make for an interesting case study in that they're both in the School District of Philadelphia, and thus receive about the same per-pupil funding and have access to similar district resources such as the pool of new hires. Both have about 30 kids in a classroom, and neither can afford a librarian. Both schools can only afford either an art teacher or a music teacher, but not both. All their teachers work under the same union contract.

So what makes these two schools so very different, other than the obvious fact that one is located in a white neighborhood and the other one a black neighborhood? We'll use Mensah Dean's article in the Philadelphia Daily News (free registration required) to highlight the two principals.

Ruth Anderson, principal of Tanner Duckrey School
Our first introduction to Duckrey isn't auspicious, as Dean reports:

Hampering the progress of inner-city schools like Duckrey are problems that were not on the map 50 years ago. In Duckrey's case, that includes a crackhouse 2 ½ blocks from the schoolyard and disintegrating families, leading to a yearly student transfer rate approaching 50 percent.

Having seen our share of successful schools that are in the worst neighborhoods imaginable, we're not impressed by tales of crackhouses and broken families, or even of transients. But some folks will seize upon these factors as being the cause of school failure.

"Because of social changes in families, the families are very transient. This is the reason why you have them moving in and out, in and out," said Duckrey Principal Ruth Anderson, in her 40th year with the school district.

She doesn't seem to consider the possibility that the poor quality of her school (where only 11% of the students are considered proficient in reading, with 11% in math as well) is causing some folks to move their kids out. But either way, we find it doubtful that the 50% figure is a random fraction of students each year. If the school made the effort, they'd probably be able to identify many students who attend for several years.

None of this excuses the school from the hard work of teaching young children knowledge and skills, regardless of how long the student attends. And the most fundamental of these skills is the teaching of reading, possibly the most important task for any elementary school. On this front, the school has allies:

Helping Duckrey is nearby Temple University, which the school district pays $400 per student annually as part of a reform effort begun in 2002 for the lowest-performing schools.

Temple has bought thousands of dollars in reading books and other materials for the school and has contracted with Dr. Darrell Morris of Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C., who created a reading program for struggling first-graders.

$400 per child per year represents quite a cash cow for Temple, so we would certainly hope they'd point schools in the right direction. But we're a little troubled by Dr. Morris's program for "struggling first graders" being that first grade for many is their first year of school, since preschool and kindergarten are not required. It should then fall to the school to teach those children everything they need for success in reading, such as the body of knowledge of phonics.

In our experience, if a first grader is struggling, it is usually because the school is not doing its job.

Having never heard of Morris, we did some checking and found some interesting information. For starters, the good "Dr." is not even a real Ph.D., and secondly, the program he created, The Howard Street Tutoring Program is not designed for schools, but rather for volunteer tutors who can only spare a few hours a week. In other words, it doesn't appear to be scalable for the classroom.

Having done a fair bit of study into what best helps kids to learn to read (which is of course a solid grounding in explicit phonics above all other considerations), we were dismayed to learn his philosophy of reading instruction. Morris calls English spelling "hopelessly irregular" and brushes off the battle between phonics and whole language, saying that "supervised reading time" is what is really needed for struggling readers.

By "supervised" he of course means one-on-one supervision. (Contrast this with schools of a bygone era, which used phonics drills and McGuffey's readers in classrooms of 48 pupils or more, and had a mere 99% success rate.)

Morris writes in The Howard Street Tutoring Manual about the origins of his program in north Chicago: "The program is now in its 20th year of consecutive operation, serving 20+ children each year..."

Color us unimpressed! Here is their flagship tutoring program, located on its namesake Howard Street, and after twenty years they can only serve a few dozen kids a year? Might we suggest this is not the best choice of program for a school with 400 students? Especially one which emphasizes word lists rather than explicit phonics.

We're not the only ones who've noticed the huge inefficiency of the Howard Street program, the folks in Philly are well aware of this shortcoming. Dean writes: "Though effective, teachers can use it to help only seven Duckrey students this year." Effective? Sounds like propaganda to us, for it would seem oxymoronic to call a program effective when it can only help 2% of a population where well over 80% is classified "below basic" in reading.

Unfortunately one of the professors helping Duckrey in the literacy department seems enamored of shopworn excuses for failure to teach children to read:

"If our children are behind in reading, it's not because they are not every bit as intelligent as any other group of children in the suburbs, in gated communities, Volvos in the driveways, what have you," said Tom Gill, a Temple literature professor.

"It simply has to do with opportunity and exposure. Reading takes a particular exercise that our children, for many, many reasons, may not have had those advantages and opportunities."

We are very tired of the ivory-tower vision of the suburbs, what with their gated communities and Volvos and all. Teaching kids to read is not rocket science, and has absolutely nothing to do with socioeconomics!

But here the good professor's claiming that reading is all about "opportunity and exposure." You mean it doesn't have anything to do with the explicit teaching of all the phonemes in the English Language? The hopelessly old-fashioned method known as Phonics was responsible for teaching legions of children for centuries, many of them first-generation Americans, with a nearly flawless success rate.

None of this prattling on about "disadvantaged children" and "at-risk youth," those teachers just rolled up their sleeves and taught roomfuls of kids how to read, using effective methods.

Enough about reading, what are Anderson's ideas for turning her school around?

[P]rincipal Anderson said more money is essential to counteract the issues many of her students bring to school.
. . .
"If you go into a school where everyone is already achieving and you have children coming from homes with strong parenting skills, the homes are filled with books and computers," Anderson said. "Of course, those are much easier children to teach. When you have our children, it's a challenge. It is harder."

More money is essential? And why mention parenting skills and computers? Is she suggesting that because her kids come from less-than-ideal circumstances, they are more expensive to teach? Talk about setting yourself up for failure. Once she's declared that more money is essential, it's a sure bet that if she doesn't get the extra cash, she'll have a ready excuse for why the school isn't performing.

We suggest that Ms. Anderson carefully read No Excuses: Lessons from 21 High-Performing, High-Poverty, Schools and she might find some of her cherished beliefs about children of poverty are little more than excuses people use for failing to teach them. (No Excuses is available as a 125 page pdf file, or visit the No Excuses website.)

Imaginary funding problems aside, what is the top goal of Duckrey's principal?

Dean writes, "More than anything else, though, Anderson wants more Duckrey parents to come on board." Principal Anderson and Home and School Association president Grace Garnett detailed some of the ways they've tried to get parents to become more involved, including giving out prizes, offering food, holding meetings in the morning and the evenings to accommodate work schedules, and of course, begging.

Nothing works, and the school gets turnouts in the single digits.

Might we suggest that the reason why parents don't really care about the school is precisely because of the school's mediocre academic performance? A few months ago we discussed the classic complaint of under-performing schools that "We need more parental involvement!," so let us reiterate our point.

While folks can point to highly involved parent organizations at high-performing schools, this does not mean that a lack of parent involvement causes a school to fail! The best strategy for an underperforming school? Focus on getting student achievement up (which usually involves a healthy dose of higher expectations in both behavior and especially academics) and parent participation will naturally follow.

David Levin, of the KIPP Academy in the Bronx, writes in No Excuses, "Schools that are not performing well will never achieve parental support and do not deserve it either . . . The only thing you can do to earn parents' support is to educate their children."

Parents are a wonderful resource, but don't blame them for your failing school.

Elmer Boehringer, principal of Bridesburg School
While the learned individuals above mentioned the affluent suburbs with their Volvos in despairing the struggle to teach poor kids, they forgot to mention Bridesburg, where almost half the students come from low-income families. Bridesburg isn't exactly a gated community, but it certainly is doing well with its children.

Bridesburg's principal, Elmer Boehringer, said more money would be nice, but he'll make do with what he has. The K-5 school has a library, but cannot afford a librarian. There is no art teacher, and a part-time music teacher works with students in a storage room.

Teaching in a storage room? Where are the "Volvos in the driveway" that we're supposed to see when encountering a successful white school? Surely this principal could do with more money, right?

"It's not the money that makes the difference. Whatever you're handed you have to be grateful for it and you have to know what to do with it," said Boehringer, who over the years has been able to purchase 95 computers for his students and 12 additional laptop computers for his teachers.

"It's not the money that makes the difference." Either this guy is nuts, or he's absolutely right.

The numbers support the latter. 68% of Bridesburg's kids are proficient in reading, and three-quarters are proficient in math, both categories beating the city and state averages.

But surely it's because of all the white people, right?

The 30-year school district veteran said Bridesburg's minority students - 2.0 percent African-American, 3.8 percent Latino and 0.5 percent Asian - are faring as well as their white peers.

This is important, for it shatters several ideas. One is that whites can inherently learn better than blacks (an old racist notion which surprisingly many folks trot out in the eternal quest for more funding for minority schools). The second is that to do well in school blacks need to be surrounded by similar-complexioned students, another racist notion.

Kids are kids. They will learn what you teach them, regardless of race. Period.

So what does Bridesburg's principal credit for this success?

The school works, Boehringer said, because he and his teachers put in the hours and set high expectations for all of their students.

"We consider ourselves a team, that's key."

These are awfully quaint notions: hard work, high expectations, and teamwork. But we consider them "oldies but goodies" in that they are time-proven methods for success in any organization. They are especially important in an urban school, where often there are crushingly low expectations.

We've seen many schools where these three factors have worked together to produce student success, and in turn the school becomes a place where parents want to become involved, a place where folks want to send their kids to school.

Bridesburg parents and teachers agreed. "This school is a family," said Ann Evans, who has a son and daughter enrolled. "These teachers really care about their students...There's been times when Mr. Boehringer has been here until 7, 8 o'clock at night. He's like a father to every single one of these kids."

Said third-year teacher Dara Savage: "I would send my child here in a heartbeat. Excellent staff, every one, from the principal to the aides to the entire staff.

As we mentioned before, Bridesburg draws from the same pool of employees as the rest of the school district, and often the principal has little direct control over hiring and firing. For a school to have built a strong, effective team speaks volumes about the efforts of the principal over time.

One of the most important aspects of urban school success is the attitude of the place. Do the teachers inspire greatness in their charges? Ms. Savage continues:

"The school has a tone that we can achieve anything, and it trickles down to our students. They know that there is no limit to the level of success that they can achieve."

In the spirit of full disclosure, we've worked briefly with Mr. Boehringer, and he's simply an effective, enthusiastic leader. We've often talked about the need for strong principals for urban school success, and folks would do well to study this man and his methods.

Two Schools, Two Visions
While principal Anderson means well, she's an excuse-meister. Blame a lack of funding, blame the crappy neighborhood, blame the crackhouse that's blocks away, and even blame the parents. None of this is likely to change, so performance will likely remain mediocre. Even worse, they've seemingly placed their literacy eggs in precisely the wrong basket. Instead of simply going with a time proven and inexpensive explicit phonics program, they've got their sights on an incredibly inefficient one-on-one tutoring scheme.

We don't have much hope that the situation at that school will improve any time soon.

Contrast this with principal Boehringer, who's a mover and shaker, and "places the blame" for success squarely on the shoulders of his team. He knows success doesn't depend on money, but rather is the product of relentless high expectations. These expectations, plus a pervasive tone of limitless achievement, are added to the blood, sweat and tears of the school staff to form not just a school but a family.

And this family will continue to enjoy success.

This is not a story of a black school versus a white one, but rather an illuminating example of ineffective versus effective leadership. Let's learn from their experience.