You come from a long line of public educators, yet you have been a founding partner of the Edison Project and are now director of education for the Baltimore New Compact Schools, a new kind of alternative for public schools. Why is it important to have alternatives outside and within public schools?
Competition stimulates public entities to do better. It's like Federal Express stimulating the Post Office to do customer service better. For example, a Catholic school in our neighborhood used to drain our schools of some of our brightest students. It's a very small school, charges low tuition, and does a lot of fund-raising. We're fighting back now. No, we're not fighting back. What we're really doing is talking to them about what they're doing so well.
How do the Baltimore New Compact Schools differ from typical public schools?
The New Compact Schools model offers an excellent opportunity for urban systems in these days of limited resources. The model permits schools to cluster their resources, personnel, and funds. For example, in Sandtown-Winchester, all three elementary schools use the E. D. Hirsch Core Knowledge Curriculum. That greatly reduces the amount of learning time lost to students from the high mobility of their families. The nonprofit Enterprise Foundation offers leadership, management, and technical support to the schools, including fund-raising and evaluation. Because of all the attention we pay to accountability for school achievement, professional development, and management of facilities, philanthropic organizations and businesses have been willing to grant the schools additional funding.
Tell me more about the compact you have with the City of Baltimore.
For a few years now, the three schools in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood, the Enterprise Foundation, and federal and city service agencies have formed a partnership to improve education here. The partners have agreed to share accountability for ensuring that no less than 95 percent of the children who enter middle school in 2000, 2001, and 2002 will score 70 percent or better on the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program.
Just this year we were awarded a $1 million Annenberg Challenge grant, which calls for sharing the lessons we have learned with eight more schools—five elementary schools, two middle schools, and one high school, all in Baltimore's federally designated Empowerment Zone neighborhoods—some of the poorest neighborhoods in the nation. Eventually, we hope to expand to all the Empowerment Zone schools. The grant is a two-to-one matching grant. So we have to raise additional dollars from the City of Baltimore and from other foundations. For example, the Abell Foundation, which is located right here in the city, has been very supportive of the Compact schools.
Figure 1. Sandtown at a Glance
Population
Total: 10,350
Number of households: 3,452
Race: 99% African American
Age breakdown
0–4....11%
5–14....17%
15–19....7%
20–44....38%
45–64....16%
65+....10%
Housing
Number of housing units: 4,534
Number of vacant housing units: 800
Units in substandard condition: 79%
Owner-occupied units: 20%
Poverty/Unemployment
Household incomes under $11,000: 50%
Household incomes under $5,000: 25%
Unemployed or underemployed adults: 44%
Children/Youth
68% of all children live in poverty
29% of all births are to women 19 years old and younger
Education
Elementary school students scoring below Maryland School Performance Standards: 90%
Persons aged 25+ without a high school diploma/equivalency: 44%
How far away are you from achieving your academic goal for 95 percent of your students?
We're very far away. The first year that I was here, fewer than 15 percent of our children out of all three elementary schools were scoring at acceptable levels. And that year they dropped even lower. Last year, the highest percentage of satisfactory scores in math was at a school where 30 percent of 5th graders—only one of every three students—had satisfactory scores. We are going to have to readjust our curriculum and our teaching so that we are doing more project-based teaching, more cooperative learning, and more exploratory experiences. It's going to take at least another three years to make a serious race for this standard of 95 percent.
Over time we might not have to emphasize scores and tests so much. But the goal is a way of getting the community to focus on the more rigorous aspects of going to school and having high expectations for children.
You've recently finished up your summer program, which offered an alternative to traditional remedial summer work. What kind of instructional model did you use?
Our summer program was an example of a model that attracted quite a few students from parochial and other public schools. The parents found the situation extremely beneficial. Every day our attendance rate was 100 percent. We served 200 children—more than we were supposed to. They were rushing home and telling their parents how well they liked it.
The model we used this summer was very small class size, teachers from diverse backgrounds, and many things to draw in the parents. We put on a Shakespeare festival—Julius Caesar and A Midsummer Night's Dream. The parents built the sets, and the children in grades 2-5 were the actors. And we performed the games of the Olympics.
We had an academy for parents, an academy for teachers, and an academy for children. And the major goal was to sustain the learning that children had acquired over the year. We also wanted to create the opportunity for lifelong learning for the adults and to connect children to parents in powerful ways.
The brokerage firm T. Row Price Associates gave us money to establish baseline data and do testing. Now we will measure those children against our baseline to see whether the program had any effect on their achievement.
You were a founding partner of the Edison Project. What would you say are the key differences between that project and the New Compact project?
The key difference is that instead of someone telling us how to teach and what to learn, we are discovering for ourselves what our children and parents need. It's a very grassroots effort. And that grassroots effort extends to relationships with universities, the federal department of education, and the Empowerment Zone.
What role do parents play in your schools, and what have you learned about involving parents from your program?
From my 37 years of experience as a public school educator, I've learned the more you involve parents, the stronger your program will be. That's simply a fact. Good schools are schools where parents have some say. Just because communities have poor resources does not mean that parents don't want their children to have good instruction.
Parents know when their children are being taught well. So our parents participate in several ways. We have school improvement teams with parent representation. We have parent academies, where parents learn to work as instructional volunteers in the schools. And last year when we wrote our Core Knowledge Curriculum, eight or nine parents worked with us throughout that process. It was interesting when someone from the state office of education visited us. She said to me, "You have parents doing this work?" And I replied, "Can you tell me which ones in this room are the parents?" Of course, she couldn't.
The New Compact Schools use the Core Knowledge Curriculum partly because that's what the parents requested?
Yes. Educators must understand that most parents are relatively conservative. They want their children to be learning things that they can understand. The core curriculum is very specific. It teaches world civilization, American civilization, language development, literature, the mechanics of grammar. It appeals to parents' experiences in school. And our parents like it very much.
What is the role of the professional educator working with the parents? You said that you don't necessarily think that the Core Knowledge Curriculum is the best curriculum.
No, it's not. There is no best curriculum. Curriculums should continually evolve. Parents and teachers and community people must work together to smooth out imperfections. That's in fact what we did this summer. Teachers reviewed the scope and sequence to bring our instructional activities more into alignment with what we want.
Do you feel that alternative schools need to pay more attention than do public ols to funding and publicity in order to sell their vision? Is that a good or bad thing for the children?
We need to do more partnering with public institutions, businesses, and foundations. For someone to help us establish baseline information and to measure the success of our program—that's a very appropriate thing to receive funding for. If we can raise money to strengthen the learning diet, then that's extremely important. All schools have to be very careful of becoming Christmas tree schools though.
What's that?
A little bit of everything and a great deal of nothing. Our public schools are offered thousands of noninstructional distractions that use precious learning time. We somehow have to keep talking about a challenging curriculum and focus on improving the learning environment. Sometimes we permit ourselves to get away with using our time for things other than real learning experiences.
How do you feel about letting companies that have overt commercial motives—or, at the very least, subtle self-interests—provide materials for the classroom? Do you think those are dangerous partnerships for schools, or can they be beneficial?
If the instructional leaders—the team of people who are assessing what's going on—can say that the financial assistance supports what children need, business involvement can be fine. I worry about a lot of things just being hauled into schools—hardware, software, commercials. Some companies take advantage of the meager dollars available and will use up foundation money for things that have —al benefit. There is no substitute for developing a very sound strategic learning plan and sticking to it. Schools often are seduced into accepting things to accommodate ideas of businesses.
I thought it was very interesting that at a recent education summit for governors and heads of corporations, the chairman of IBM, who was leading the conference, did not understand the need for schools to think about character development along with a rigorous curriculum. All some companies want is a tough curriculum and computer technology. Businesses can't develop long-range plans for schools if they don't see that educating children is about more than acquiring a job.
What has been the most successful part of your program so far?
I would say the transformation of the teaching and learning environment. And that has come about because the teachers were empowered through developing their own curriculum. Last summer teachers created an environment that they wanted to replicate when September rolled around. We had morning meetings—time for people to express concerns, to share and to write, to understand what others were doing. We had time to talk about how we would team. We were able to attend to all eight curriculum areas. In two of our schools the teachers are of the highest order. I would be willing to have them go and teach anywhere in this country because they are just that good.
When I first came here, there was this pervasive air of hopelessness and a lack of understanding about what they were to do. But just recently, one teacher told me, "Ms. Peters, I had not been to a library in 20 years, but now I'm using the library all the time." At one of the schools the teachers have become very computer literate because of their contacts through the Net. What was really important was for them to feel that theirs was a special profession. If they wanted children to learn, they needed to keep learning all the time. Once the teachers were walking their talk, the children could see that there was something going on.
When you find teachers coming very early to school and staying very late, that's success indicator Number 1. When teacher attendance is up, that's success 2. When parents are trying to get their children into your schools, and when you begin to see teachers talking about the nature of their practice in the classroom, you know you are on your way. And when parents become interested in participating in what's going on at school, that's a measure that good things are happening.
You are a member of the character ed partnership?
Yes, I am. Throughout the three compact schools, character ed is not an add-on subject, but fully integrated into the Core Knowledge Curriculum. Teachers are models of good, ethical behavior, creating a kind of ethos in the school that is really effective.
Is there anything about the character ed movement that worries you?
Character education is not a quick fix. It is not a series of slogans or sayings or phrases. Real character education is about finding one's way through life so that one has a sense of balance and a sense of appropriate behavior. It also involves helping children to be accepting of themselves and others. It is not easy to teach character education. It requires great professional skill, especially good questioning skills and the ability to lead discussions well. I worry that people sometimes want to shape children into their own image. Character education should help children find themselves and to become the best persons that they can be.
I know that you've come from a strong tradition of public school educators. Tell me about that.
My grandmother at the turn of the century graduated from a Latin school. She became a teacher in a little country school for black children in Indiana. She had to quit when she decided to become married. In the '40s, one of my aunts became one of six black principals in Chicago. And then I became a principal in Chicago in 1983 after being a teacher there for more than 20 years. I also have sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles who are teachers. I come from a long line of public school educators who are committed to public service.
Based on your years of experience in urban schools, what would you say are the most pressing problems facing city schools?
Equity in funding is the most serious issue. Take the largest 100 systems in the nation and look at their funding base. Look at schools dead in the city and then look at the funding allocations for the surrounding collar counties. You will find a huge discrepancy.
The next serious issue is professional development. Rather than always emphasizing how children learn, we need to make a dramatic shift and think about how adults are learning. The most significant thing about two of our schools is that we are making it possible for adults to become serious learners.
And we must also retrain our administrators. Schools are different places now than they were 25 years ago. We have a different kind of customer/client relationship. Parents are our customers. There's a great deal of money being spent on parent involvement today, but schools and parents are adversaries at this point. Across the nation people are saying we want more parental involvement, but the parent involvement is not real. It's superficial and adversarial. We don't trust parents.
We think we know better as professional educators?
Yes. Which brings up the whole issue of teacher training institutions. We have to do something about these universities where there are all kinds of turf wars.
What kind of a teacher training institution would improve urban education?
Teacher training institutions should be community-based and reside in the place where the work needs to be done. Teacher educators need to look at the child as a whole and the child's environment. The cultural patterns in many communities are so different from the cultural patterns of those who are expected to teach children there.
We need to have a very strong professional development teacher training orientation and go beyond methodology and toward helping teachers develop themselves to be continual learners. The present system of developing teachers is very terminal. We tell people if you take e courses, you will be a teacher. And some of the courses are absolutely ludicrous. The people who are teaching them have not been inside a classroom in years. They have no sense of what is really going on in these life spaces called schools.
One of the things I would do is require every young person who wants to become a teacher to go sit in an urban elementary school classroom and tell another person what they are seeing. The gravest thing is that we're sending people into classrooms who absolutely are not able to observe situations accurately. Their observations are clouded by their own notions of things—and some of the notions have sexist and racist overtones.
Do you believe that African-American teachers are a vanishing breed?
Yes, they are. People of my generation tell their children not to become teachers. The turmoil that is associated with teaching and the lack of respect for the profession has led a large group of African Americans to feel that there really is no benefit—social, psychological, financial, or otherwise—to teaching. And, unfortunately, many people who are in the reform movement are saying, "Well, we can do without a lot of these people. Let's replace them with younger teachers." And those younger teachers are mostly Caucasian.
A few years back, only about 6 percent of the entire public school work force was African American. Schools in the South used to be populated by black teachers. Desegregation has eradicated black administrators, black teachers. The number is now below 5 percent.
Unless we really try to turn things in the other direction, we're going to see a backlash. Boards of education who think they've poured too much money into inner-city schools are already at odds with the few remaining black educators. Many people in positions of funding authority and policy authority who think they understand what's happening in schools in reality want schools to be the way they were 50 years ago, when the American dream was a chicken in every pot. And they fault urban educators for what's going on. You hear the arrogance in their voices. And you feel the results of their arrogance when they set unrealistic school requirements without taking personal responsibility for the schools. I've heard people say, "I don't want to go into the schools. I just want to see the results." And the results to them are high academic scores.
A lot of the standards movement is based on the idea that education must prepare students for work, isn't it?
Yes. And we don't even know what kind of jobs we're going to need a few years from now. This single-minded move to drive schools to develop people for the future work force worries me in the face of the downsizing of America. We should be educating people for more than just work. We should be educating people to sustain life. We should be educating people to become creative thinkers, to become wonderful citizens, wonderful mothers and fathers. We should be educating people so that they can find their way through the world. We should be educating people for global interdependence.
The present trend is very limiting. I see children with a great deal of potential who do not do well on some standardized tests. Schools have to think of ways to give these children the confidence to become what they can become—caring, empathetic, wonderful human beings. The present drive is taking away from the lives of our children and their families, and a lot of the policies are race-driven.
Integration seems to be an ideal of the past in our society. Do you still believe in integration as a goal?
Our strength lies in our diversity, and our children need to see diversity in their lives. But I hate to see integration forced. Schools have to find ways to create a diverse teaching staff and provide a variety of experiences for children and their families. In our society, the anger and the hatred reside within all the classes. We're so afraid of one another. We don't even want to get near anything that's different.
With so few African Americans going into education, our children are going to have to become aware of people who are culturally different. But we don't want people coming into our community who feel they have to be paternalistic and sing sad songs for us. We want people who will come in and who understand the value of education—of learning, of teaching, and creating wonderful extraordinary experiences for children.
