JUNE 15, 1998
SECTION: Pg. 16
LENGTH: 1404 words
HEADLINE: PEOPLE'S PREP
BYLINE: Mark Francis Cohen
HIGHLIGHT: Trenton Postcard
BODY:
Inside the make-do dining hall, at the northern end of the clock tower building, the students are microwaving breakfast. The room's acoustics amplify the din, as more seventh- and eighth-graders storm in for bacon strips, cereal from plastic containers, and bottled water. At one table, Slimer (pronounced Se-lema) Jackson, a 14-year-old in curlicue earrings, is finishing a bagel--and avoiding eye contact. "I know I go to school here and I sleep here," she huffs, "but this is not my home." Her roommate and dining partner, Tanesha Boyd, couldn't agree more. "It's just a place where you lay your head at night."
Go to any prestigious boarding school in the country, and you'll find privileged, overindulged children who think the exact same way. But Jackson and Boyd aren't children of privilege, and they're not getting indulged--at least not in the traditional sense. Rather, Jackson and Boyd are among 48 children who attend New Jersey's Samuel DeWitt Proctor Academy Charter School, a cross between an academic boot camp and an elite prep school that has been billed as the nation's first public boarding academy.
Proctor's mission is to remove disadvantaged children from their disadvantaged backgrounds, place them in a secluded boarding school environment, and prepare them for college. Although the idea of a public boarding school may strike many Americans as odd--remember the ridicule of Newt Gingrich's proposal for more orphanages four years ago--Proctor may well represent the beginning of a new trend in American education. Residential schools focused on needy children are set to open in Washington, D.C., and throughout Minnesota. One opened late last year in Boston.
And that might just be a good thing. When I ask Jackson and Boyd whether they are glad to be here, complaints and all, they quickly say "yes." Although reluctant to give up some of the rites of childhood, they are eager for a chance to get a leg up on college--and beyond. "You can't do nothing without money," says Slimer, whose average-sized dorm room is plastered with dozens of pictures of rapper Sean "Puffy" Combs. "This education will take me farther. Here I'll be able to get a scholarship. I can't afford to pay college tuition." I hear the same sentiments from other students: "Here they push us," says another breakfast companion, seventh-grader Amaris Horton. " They know we can do better."
It's not hard to understand why these kids would appreciate such encouragement, even at such a relatively young age. Proctor draws its student body from nearby Trenton, where the unemployment rate is 9.7 percent. Sixty percent of Proctor students qualify for the federal student lunch program; at the outset of the year, the school decided to test the children's eyesight and found that a quarter of them needed glasses.
Back home, most children choose playing around instead of studying, and they shun those who do otherwise. Of the more than 2,600 children who attend Trenton Central High, generally only one-third of them graduate within four years. Last year alone, almost a quarter of the students dropped out. As for the children who stuck with school and were presumably excelling, the statistical portrait is equally withering--a function, in part, of all the problems that so famously plague public schools. Ten of the twelve students who were confident enough to take the Advanced Placement test in United States history scored the lowest possible score: one on a five-point scale. The others earned twos. Only 146 students took the Scholastic Assessment Test, and their average combined math and verbal score was 799. The state average was 1,006.
The scores from Proctor won't be in for some time--it's still in its first year--but they'll likely look a lot different. Proctor is located on a sprawling, golf-coursegreen campus with tree-shaded drives and red-brick, colonial-style buildings--a setting that creates a quiet, serious environment for learning. Students live by a strict regimen that firms up their behavior and taps the mind: five class periods, morning and afternoon advisory sessions, two hours of study after class, virtually no television, homework check-ins with residential advisers, laundry chores, and uniforms. Generally, the only time they leave the campus unmonitored is during the summer and on weekends, when they can go home. If a student skips a homework assignment or makes an unsatisfactory grade, the consequences may be an early bedtime, missing out on a field trip, or remaining at school for the weekend.
A key element of Proctor's education is small class size--just twelve students to a class. "It's better academically," says Fiona Simpson, an eighth-grader. "Teachers pay more attention to you." Teachers appreciate this, too, just as they appreciate the freshly painted rooms and ample supply of materials lacking in other public schools. Over the year, they have gotten to know their pupils well and to like them. In fact, many of the teachers stick around after school for study hall; some even bring students into their homes to meet the spouse. In group advisories, they encourage the children to read interesting magazine articles, seek promising summer jobs, and take music lessons. "Because the classes are so small, I can touch all the kids," says Jennifer Geoghan, the school's upbeat English teacher. "Sometimes I take it for granted, but then I remember how lucky I am. And I am lucky to have so few students." The school's director, Gary T. Reece, puts in long hours (he frequently stays at work past nine o'clock in the evening) and spends a lot of time thinking about innovation. His latest idea is a fully integrated curriculum, in which students would learn science at the same time they were learning, say, Spanish and math.
Of course, while it's pretty clear Proctor has been good for the students lucky enough to attend, it's not so obvious that Proctor is good for public education generally. Schooling at Proctor is enormously expensive--about $17, 000 per student, including room and board--and only $7,911 of that comes from the school district. This is a state requirement; private donations make up the difference. Proctor's administrators--who say they're struggling to stretch their budget already--would prefer the district send more money their way. But Trenton officials complain, understandably, that Proctor is already siphoning off money, and some of the best students, from the district's other schools.
Educators elsewhere looking to replicate Proctor's success should also realize that a key factor in the school's success is the strength of the student body. The same legislation that made Proctor possible, a 1996 state charter law, forbade discrimination of any type. Although the original idea of Proctor was to target at-risk kids who had already displayed emotional and educational problems, enrollment came down to a lottery. Of the parents who entered their children, most were already involved in their kids' education; as a result, the applicant pool represented an unusually well-motivated (and often high-achieving) bunch. "I wanted to get him out of the environment he was in, but I couldn't afford private school," says Vernell Shabazz, whose 13- year-old attends the school.
But these are caveats, not rejoinders. Too high a concentration of problem children could bring down a school anyway; mixing the achievers and underachievers might just be the formula for success. And wealthy families send high-achieving children to special schools. Why shouldn't less wealthy families have the same opportunity? Finally, while the high expense may preclude replication of Proctor on a grand scale, there's no reason that some districts--particularly those in areas where sources of private money may indeed be relatively accessible--can't use public boarding schools to help some kids.
At the very least, it will be interesting to watch Proctor's progress over the next few years. Says Reece, Proctor's director, "We've created a safe haven here where kids can risk caring about school without suffering for it." By all appearances he's right. And, given all the well-chronicled problems with public education these days, that's no small achievement.
(Copyright The New Republic)