By
Susan Caba
What if there were a public school program specifically to help
mediocre students—who might otherwise think they had scant chance
of higher education—get into college?
And what if those students persuaded their friends that they,
too, could attend college?
There is such a program. And, in its first year of operation
at two St. Louis high schools, the percentage of seniors entering
college from the Class of ’06 jumped significantly, more than
doubling at one school.
At Sumner, 50 percent of those who applied were accepted at
a college last year, compared to the average of 33 percent in
previous years. At Vashon, the increase was even greater, from
18 percent to 48 percent. Just as important, 90 percent of the
students at each school applied to a two- or four-year college.
This year, the program is reaching 900 seniors in St. Louis
public high schools (all except Metro).
The program, College Summit, is just one of several initiatives
introduced in St. Louis since Mayor Slay took office six years
ago, bringing on board with him the first official advisor to
the mayor on education policy.
The City is part of a national drive to improve education for
disadvantaged, largely African-American and Hispanic students
in urban public schools. A big part of that push is coming from
non-profit organizations that began, like College Summit, in
the 1990s as single-school experiments and blossomed into national
programs when they proved successful.
Their pledge is to improve education “one student at a time,”
rather than aiming to change large swaths of society. Mayoral
involvement, too, is part of the trend. In 2002, only 30 of
the nation’s 75 largest cities had municipal advisors on education.
Now they all do.
Robbyn Wahby, Mayor Slay’s education policy advisor, says the
network of policy advisors—supported by the National League
of Cities and The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation—helps keep
her on top of ways other cities are working with school districts.
“Education is obviously important to cities because of quality
of life issues and economic impact,” says Wahby, “But also there
is a moral imperative to deal with issues like dropouts, truancy,
governance and funding.”
“We want to help the schools innovate
with programs that have proven results,” she says, naming three
initiatives of particular interest to the mayor:
• College Summit, founded
on the East Coast a decade ago, this organization helps less-than-stellar
students navigate the college application process during an
intensive summer seminar. Those students become the seeds for
cultivating a college-bound culture among their friends. Now
operating in 14 states, College Summit has raised college admissions
among its participants to 79 percent, compared with 46 percent
from high school graduates with similar backgrounds.
• Teach for America
is a national program to recruit the best and brightest non-education
students from top universities as teachers in under-achieving
schools. In St. Louis, the program started in 2002 with 44 teachers.
There are now 123 participants teaching in St. Louis grade schools,
middle schools, high schools and charter schools. (See article
on page 52.)
• Texas Can! encourages
dropouts, age 17 to 21, to earn their GEDs. Students complete
their diploma requirements by attending school part-time, so
they can continue to work. Nationally, a student drops out of
high school every nine seconds. According to a March 2006 survey
for the Gates Foundation, 81 percent of the dropouts realized
too late that graduating from high school is important to success.
Two thirds of the dropouts who graduate from the Texas Can!
program go on to post-secondary education.
Another program that Wahby is watching with interest involves
middle schools using the Nativity-Miguel model of teaching—longer
school days, Saturday classes, brief summer vacations and curriculum
designed so the students do well both in academics and behavior
at college-prep high schools.
Loyola Academy, with sixth, seventh and eighth grades for low-income
students, became the first Nativity Miguel school in St. Louis,
in 1999. There are other “stand alone” Navity Miguel schools
in the metro area, also affiliated with religious organizations.
Now, Access Academies—the organization behind the St. Louis
schools—is “embedding” the Nativity-Miguel model in existing
faith-based schools. Wahby says the group has five and plans
to open two more. Once the seven are up and running successfully,
they may serve as a template for similar programs in the public
schools.
The common thread linking these programs is intensive attention
paid to individual students. They have longer schools days,
precise teaching goals which are closely monitored for results,
and they try to impart an expectation of success among students
who are too rarely expected to succeed.
In a recent magazine story about the reform movement in urban
schools, The New York Times noted that closing the educational
gap between middle-class and under- privileged students “will
require not the same education (for the disadvantaged), but
one that is considerably better. …They need more time in class,
better-trained teachers and a curriculum that prepares them
psychologically and emotionally, as well as intellectually.”
Unfortunately, says Wahby, recent turmoil within the administration
and board of St. Louis’ school district has made collaboration
with the city, non-profit groups and corporate benefactors very
difficult.
Until the state steps in to “settle down” the district and “put
reforms in place,” Wahby says the mayor’s influence on improving
education through school district channels is limited—“the mayor
keeps asking how can we help and he keeps getting the answer,
‘No, no, no, we’re okay.’”
She gives an example. Five percent of St. Louis public schools
students live in homeless shelters, she said, and another five
percent are in “some state of homelessness.”
One Arizona school district is addressing that problem with
a school geared to homeless students. The building is open from
6 a.m. to 6 p.m., is equipped with cots for students who need
to catch up on sleep, and serves all three daily meals. School
administrators cooperate with human service agencies.
When she mentioned the idea to someone in the school district,
the response was negative: We can’t segregate kids that way,
she was told. “But it’s a lot less expensive than allowing children
to fail.”
Only 35 percent of the district’s students are rated “proficient”
in reading, she says. “It’s not good enough. And to simply seek
accreditation is mediocrity.”
“We don’t want just clean schools. We want the best kind of
facilities. We want the best teachers teaching in our schools.
The mayor is looking for rapid and dramatic change that will
result in high quality education and high student achievement.”
“What we need is a relationship with the district in which they
feel they can trust us. We don’t have that.”
To learn more about education in the Greater St. Louis area,
click here.
