There's no time to fool around at the Frederick Douglass Academy.
Students decked out in crisp white shirts and pressed navy slacks or skirts quickly move to class and immediately get to work.All students are college bound, some accepted into the ranks at Columbia and Dartmouth. Students elsewhere ask which private school they attend.
Private school?
The Frederick Douglass Academy is a public school in Harlem, N.Y., amid abandoned buildings, crack houses and Harlem Renaissance townhouses. Eighty percent of students are black; 20 percent are Latino. Many come from low-income families and from broken or single-parent homes.
The academy replaced violence- and chaos-ridden Intermediate School 10, whose test scores ranked at the bottom of New York City's 179 middle schools. But at the end of the academy's inaugural year, test scores of students, many who had performed barely at grade level, ranked first in District 5 and No. 11 in the city.
How?
The academy is influenced by "The Monroe Doctrine," a leadership method penned by Lorraine Monroe, academy founder and former principal. The school, with its intense college preparation, does not use race and income as excuses for poor performance.
"Our inability or reluctance, caused either by prejudice or lack of training, to create real schools and make them available to all children works cruelly against the success of needy kids," said Monroe, who retired in 1996 as the academy's principal and now directs the School Leadership Academy, which trains public school principals in innovation strategies.
"The heart of the matter is that requiring solid, challenging, interesting work on a par with what excellent public and private schools demand works, with poor kids and with all kids. What is good for the best is good for the rest. To do anything less is obscene."
Monroe's comments are included in her book, "Nothing's Impossible: Leadership Lessons from Inside and Outside the Classroom," published in 1997 by Random House, a division of Times Books. She recently was featured on CBS-TV's "60 Minutes."
While Harlem is far from Salt Lake City, its problems aren't foreign.
Many Utah schools have at-risk students who are poor or have limited English skills or educational experiences and come from single parents or broken homes. Some Utah students come to school hungry or with bruises from abuse, and some forgo school to baby-sit siblings while mom works.
Sometimes, teachers can't help but focus more on children's survival than academic performance. What else can they do?
A lot, beginning with maintaining high expectations and giving students tools to achieve, Monroe told the Deseret News in a telephone interview.
For instance, most non-English speakers should learn the language by total immersion, Monroe said. Schools can set up mandatory tutoring classes, where teachers tell students they understand their struggles and pledge their commitment to help.
Tutoring sessions were a must for many at the Frederick Douglass Academy, which premiered in fall 1991 and graduated its first class last spring.
Students begin preparing in September for springtime standardized tests. Preparation intensifies in February, amid Black History Month observances. The New York Times annually publishes each school's standardized test scores; Monroe saw this as a way to display the school's effectiveness.
"If your school is judged on how your kids do and you don't prepare kids, something is wrong with you," Monroe said in an interview. "Kids feel so powerful when they ace a test."
Academy teachers targeted students struggling in math and reading. Parents were notified if students were to attend mandatory tutoring sessions. Practice test questions and circumstances mirror the real thing.
The methods worked, and the school's scores topped the district that first year. The academy subsequently had to turn away applicants and was accused of "cream-ing Harlem" to get desired results.
"The fact is that we tell our kids, `You have been specially chosen to attend this special school, and we expect you to be special in every way.' The kids believe us, and we then proceed to make them gifted and talented - the job of any school worth its salt," Monroe wrote.
Monroe's words reveal lessons learned as a Harlem student and in 30-plus years as an English teacher and education leader.
Monroe's sink-or-swim introduction to middle school teaching forced her to learn to quiet the unruly and to provide structure. In the early 1980s, she earned her first principalship at the Bronx's Taft High, which was out of control and wracked with violence and low morale.
At Taft, Monroe introduced the "Twelve Non-Negotiables," rules that include mandatory punctuality and homework and outlaw violence (see chart). Students with the fewest credits were offered programs to prepare for the GED (high school equivalency) test and to participate in internships.
Hall loitering halted with the visibility of Monroe and staff. A "Do-Now" - a short assignment completed, checked and collected in the first few minutes of class - brought stragglers to their seats.
Order in the school pleased staff and students.
"Most kids, I'd found, hate violence, especially in school. They want their school to be a place where they can drop their facades and the shells of toughness that they need to shield them in their tough neighborhoods," Monroe wrote.
"If the street is crazy and chaotic, home is crazy and chaotic, and school is crazy and chaotic too, then kids have no choice but to behave in crazy, chaotic ways - or to turn to gangs to give them the structure, security, and discipline they crave."
Taft teachers received staff training, developed community education and service programs - what Monroe calls "soul shining" - and volunteered talents for the 745 clubs tailored for early arrivals. The clubs ranged from needlepoint to gardening.
"Kids who get to know teachers in informal club or team relationships are less likely to vandalize, get into trouble or cut school," Monroe wrote. "You see, kids will often open their hearts and speak about their special problem or pain while in the midst of doing things with their hands."
Such clubs have been a point of controversy in Utah. In 1996, efforts for form a gay-straight alliance at East High School resulted in national media attention, an illegal Utah Senate meeting, student protests and a ban of all non-curricular clubs in Salt Lake City School District.
But Monroe says clubs - even the non-academic clubs - help stimulate interest in school and prime students for academic success.
"I would never run a school without rich, extracurricular opportunities," Monroe said. "Memories are built on what some school systems call the throwaways."
In 1983, Monroe became deputy chancellor in charge of curriculum and instruction under New York City School Chancellor Anthony Alvarado. After her dismissal upon Alvarado's resignation, Monroe finished her doctorate degree, taught graduate school and became a globe-trotting education consultant.
In 1990, the superintendent of District 5, which encompasses Harlem and many of New York's most troubled schools, mentioned his vision for a school to prepare kids for college and careers. Monroe said she wouldn't mind becoming its principal.
After receiving the go-ahead in May 1991, Monroe molded Intermediate School 10 into the academy, the namesake of a former slave who taught himself and others to read and write and became a leading orator in the abolitionist movement.
Monroe hand-picked her teaching staff - creative and "crazy" people like herself - but had to beat the bushes to fill desks.
Students in District 5 choose their schools; by mid-May, most who cared about academics had done so. But Monroe managed to recruit 150 from a few brave parents and a "collection of leftover kids" barely performing at grade level.
Monroe decided to close the campus during lunchtime. Uniforms - a controversial topic in Utah schools and worn at Nibley Park Elementary in Salt Lake City School District - were a must.
"Uniforms are cheaper than a wardrobe of outfits, and they look good, too. I believe that uniforms matter, since kids tend to behave the way they're dressed," Monroe wrote.
Academy teachers attended a staff retreat to dream up a place where learning was serious business. It was OK to be smart, and teachers could choose their own texts and methodologies, so long as they worked.
The group planned the school year, including diagnostic tests, extracurricular activities, parents days, performances, charitable activities and observances. Such retreat planning continues annually, thanks to grant money.
Monroe often is asked how others can create schools like the Frederick Douglass Academy. Success of such institutions balances on a visionary leader who has a plan, is visible in the school, fearless, aspires to a noble ideal of education and has loved an academic subject and taught it well, Monroe says.
"And once you've identified the leader who will spearhead your new creation, surround him or her with a group of insanely dedicated followers, a few people who can infect the rest of the staff with the values and ideals that make education or any work exciting, fruitful, and worthwhile," she wrote.
"I believe that the site of lasting reform must be every school. And I believe that the spirit-killing demons of poverty - unemployment, inadequate housing and lack of health care - should make the work of creating effective schools for every child in this country the mission not just of educators but also of politicians and the powerful monied people who see the lives of the poor only from a vast and comfortable distance."
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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
The academy's `Twelve Non-Negotiables'
The Frederick Douglass Academy's "Twelve Non-Negotiables" are based on respect.
1. Attend school daily and come on time. There is late detention.
2. Leave all outer clothing in your classroom closet.
3. Move quickly from class to class. Enter the room quietly, take your assigned seat and begin work immediately.
4. Be prepared to work every day. Bring large loose-leaf notebook, assignment notebook, pens, pencils, rulers, protractors and whatever equipment is required for learning.
5. Do homework nightly. There is homework detention and homework help.
6. Eat only in the cafeteria. Gum chewing and candy are prohibited, even in the cafeteria.
7. Do not bring radios, Walkmans, beepers or games to school.
8. Keep your desk area clean.
9. Do not engage in physical or verbal violence. Learn to disagree without being disagreeable. Do not fight.
10. Respect the building. Do not use graffiti or deface any part of the building.
11. Show your student program card or ID card to any adult in authority in the building who requests it.
12. Wear the school uniform daily. Hats are not to be worn in the building.
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Excerpts from `The Monroe Doctrine'
On Teaching and Learning
- What a teacher feels and thinks about the children in front of her makes all the difference in how much those children learn.
- When a teacher demonstrates sincerity and decisiveness in the classroom, the children will unconsciously give her permission to teach them. And without that permission, learning won't happen.
- A teacher who keeps teaching the same things in the same way slowly but surely dies in front of her students.
- Designating a few kids as gifted and talented brings out all their gifts and talents. In education, elitism works.
- Race, ethnicity and poverty are poor excuses for low expectations.
Other excerpts
- All good work is worthy of our dedication. And the most worthy is what changes lives profoundly - in mind, body and spirit.
- Life ain't fair, but it can be beautiful!
- Work hard - deserve to play hard.
- Consistency and perseverance beat running from fad to fad.
- Keep asking, "Why not?" until you run out of excuses and fear.
- You get what you work for and what you deserve - sometimes.
- The real leader is a servant of the people she leads.
- When you compete, don't just hope to win. Plan to blow away the competition.
- Don't expect support from others for your creativity and risk taking. Only after your ideas work will support come - and credit be taken!
- A leader who expects the best from everybody usually gets it.
- Formula for victory: First you pray, then you work.
- We can reform society only if every place we live - every school, workplace, church and family - becomes a site of reform.