Barclay language arts and writing scores, which were consistently below the 30th percentile, are now above the 60th percentile.
What is the most serious problem facing the U.S. today? I'd put educating poor, minority students in urban schools close to the top of the list. For many of these youngsters, a good education will be the only chance to get out of poverty and become successful and productive adults. But test scores and other measures of achievement show that, on average, these children lag far behind students in middle class schools. It's true that minority test scores have been improving over the past 20 years, but we are still doing poorly. Nobody knows this better than the people who work in these schools, and they are desperate to find answers. That is why the principal of Barclay, an inner-city elementary school in Baltimore, went, about ten years ago, to beg the superintendent to let her try something different in her school.
The principal, Gertrude Williams, knew that the program she wanted was excellent. She had visited Calvert, the Baltimore private school that has been using it for 90 years. Calvert's philosophy and curriculum are conservative. The curriculum still includes some books that were published in 1905 because the students love the stories and poems in these books, and the people in charge don't think you throw something away just because it's been around for a while. There is a strong emphasis on reading and writing and an insistence that students get things right. At the beginning of every day, students correct the mistakes they made in their written work the previous day. The curriculum is also very specific. It lays out what children should learn week by week and year by year and the way teachers should teach it.
Williams did not have an easy job talking the central office into letting her use the Calvert program at Barclay, even though she had foundation money to pay for it. In fact, three successive superintendents turned her down. (One told Williams that Calvert was a "rich man's curriculum," to which she answered, "I wouldn't look for a poor man's curriculum.") But finally the current mayor gave the go-ahead four years ago.
What has happened at Barclay? It is an extraordinary success story.
Barclay is 94 percent minority and its students come mostly from poor African-American families. Eighty-two percent are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch (the Baltimore average for free and reduced-price lunch is 67 percent; the state average is 26 percent). Before the Calvert program was introduced, achievement at Barclay was in the cellar. For example, the average reading scores for Baltimore students in grades 2 to 4 were between the 3 5th and 40th percentile; the average scores for Barclay students were in the low 20th percentile.
Now, according to a fourth-year evaluation of the program by Sam Stringfield, a Johns Hopkins University researcher, Barclay reading scores are "consistently at or above the 50th percentile, and, in one case, approach the 70th percentile" -- a gain of 30 to 50 points. Language arts and writing scores, which were consistently below the 30th percentile, are now above the 60th percentile. Student achievement also compares very favorably with that of youngsters attending private schools. For example, a reading exam given mainly to private school students places Barclay fourth graders at the 69th percentile. In other words, they read better than 69 percent of a national sample of children who took this test. And there are comparable gains in every area. At the same time, attendance is up, the number of students qualifying for the school district's Gifted and Talented Education program is up, and the number of children diagnosed as needing special education services has gone down by three-quarters.
I'll have more to say about why the Calvert program has been so successful at Barclay School in another column. The bottom line is that Barclay students have gone from being just another group of low-achieving Baltimore students to youngsters whose test scores are consistently above the national average. These are outcomes of which any school district in the country could be proud.
All of which brings up some interesting questions. Earlier this month, Baltimore decided to continue the contract of Education Alternatives, Inc. (EAI), the private, for-profit firm that has been managing nine Baltimore schools over the past three years. The city did this even though an independent evaluation found that students in EAI schools are doing no better than students in other Baltimore schools. Why does Baltimore continue to bet taxpayers' money -- and the future of Baltimore youngsters -- on a firm that has yet to prove that it knows anything about educating kids when the Calvert program has shown the change it can make in the very same group of children? Why is Baltimore ignoring what looks like one of the genuine successs stories in urban education? I'm sure Baltimore's children and their parents would like to know the answer.