chapter10

Chapter 10

LEARNING HOW TO WIN:

The Importance of Image

In any kind of school setting, if the community believes that nothing is happening, then, in fact, for them nothing is happening. There were some good things going on at Gratz High School in the spring of 1966, but apparently the community was not aware of them. On the other hand, the bad things were brought into focus when Philadelphia's black newspaper, The Tribune, began a seven-part series that took the school apart.

The articles charged that there were unsanitary conditions in the lunchroom, that there were insufficient showers for the gym classes, and that gangs had taken control of the halls. Day after day the paper continued its attack: teachers didn't care about the students; reading scores were among the lowest in the city; students were dropping out at a frightening rate; and on and on.

The Gratz family responded in various ways. A student action committee issued a formal rebuttal: "We are not hoodlums. We are not controlled by gangs. We do not browbeat or intimidate teachers."

As the principal came under fire, part of the faculty stood behind him. They countercharged that he was being used as a scapegoat. This sentiment was echoed by a prominent member of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers who said: "The situation at Gratz is a city-wide disgrace. You can't blame the principal. He was not provided the help and support and curriculum those teachers and students should have."

Yet even those who felt the principal had done everything he could believed a change was needed. They thought, however, that the Board should wait until the end of the school year so that it would not seem as if the old principal were "going out under a cloud."

The community, along with a faction of the teachers, saw it differently. The president of the Gratz Home and School Association called an emergency meeting. A student cried out: "Our principal told us we were going to get improvements last year and the year before that and nothing happened. When are they going to come?"

The president replied: "We can't wait until 1967 or 1968. We want a better school now."

Someone else in the audience said: "We've demanded these things before. What are we going to do if they turn us down?"

"We'll get greater forces and go down to the Board again. We've been waiting for years. We're not waiting anymore."

Apparently the Board believed her. I got the call:"Marc, we want you to go up to Gratz."

I was just getting settled into my new job at the Board. My briefcase wasn't even unpacked yet.

But they continued: "There's a dangerous situation at Gratz. We feel that you're the one we need."

Everyone knew, of course, that the Board wanted to put a black man in there, and fast. They offered me the role of "acting" principal.

I turned it down. This was the kind of situation requiring a strong hand. To make any significant changes in a crisis, you have to have solid backing or you might as well stay home. This is especially true when the place is a high school.

It is different with an elementary school. There, you are the father figure no matter how young you are. At Gamma Elementary School I was the youngest adult in the building, yet I was the father. It was, "Mr. Foster, you tell us and we'll do it." They would bring me their troubles.

Catto, as a disciplinary school, was a little different. It was similar to a high school in that the students were older. Yet, because of its special orientation, the staff still looked up to the principal.

But a high school, even one that is functioning properly, is something else again. The teachers are creatures who live on a kind of ambrosia other mortals couldn't exist on. If you don't come through the classic promotion route high school teacher to department head to vice-principal to principal you are regarded as some sort of monstrosity. And to come from an elementary school.

On top of this, a good part of the faculty were openly grumbling because they felt it was wrong to appoint a person "just because he's colored." Many frankly challenged my qualifications for the job.

Thus, my coming to Gratz High with less than the the principal's job would allow some of the diehards to feel that I should and could be moved out. With that kind of thinking, even if the faculty didn't move me out right away, they could hardly be counted on to support me in the kind of changes that had to be made. As one newspaper put it, I would be like a general without an army.

I had to say, "No, I won't come to Gratz unless I have finn backing from the Board and come in as principal." That created a bit of furor. I hadn't taken the secondary principal's examination. I hadn't even applied for it. But the Board wanted action now. They used the new home-rule charter provision that allowed the appointment of 5 percent of adininistrafive personnel without the usual competitive examinations to appoint me.

Boom! You might have thought the A-bomb had dropped on Philadelphia. The teachers' union immediately lodged a protest saying that at least six other persons had passed the exam and were better qualified for the job.

One newspaper, under an editorial entitled "Flimflam," described the "wailing and gnashing of teeth" of vice-principals and department heads all over the city and especially at Gratz. These educators, it was said, were distraught over the unfair tactic that had been used to appoint the new principaL

Interestingly enough, at this very period there were several all-black and mostly black high schools guided by cabinet-principals, vice-principals, and department heads that were lily-white. A cabinet could sit down and deliberate on the future of thousands of black children without one black person having anything to say about it. Yet few educational observers in Philadelphia found this situation unfair or even noteworthy.

But my appointment was considered "flimflam" or "unfair." A bitter editoral urged the educators at Gratz and elsewhere to "prove once again that they are Americans," to "stand up for their rights," and make schools into places "where the best education is available." A school should not be "a sounding board for pressure groups and troublemakers and certainly not a place where personal ambition can run rampant without checks and balances."

It could be said that feelings were running high. The day I first toured Gratz as the new principal, the place was in a turmoil. Meetings were being held everywhere you could get people together. There were charges and countercharges. Mainly the staff felt let down because 21st Street (the Board of Education) had not rallied to their defense and had not said that Gratz was a great school. The Board's silence, in effect, had told the school: "It's your battle."

Battle! That was the right word. The very day I showed up, a call came from a well-known black lawyer gadfly or troublemaker depending on your point of view who was helping to lead the community protest.

"Marc," he said, "it's a good thing you got there this afternoon. We were going to slap a picket line around the school tomorrow morning and we weren't going to let anybody in. Now if they try to put you out, let me know."

At the first meeting between the teachers and me, the district superintendent and the associate superintendent spoke before I did. The Gratz staff began to get angry as different reasons were given as to why my predecessor had been taken out. "It was a promotion," or "He had requested to be moved because of illness." They were told things like that instead of what the real reasons were. Of course, the people were not buying it.

I kept saying, "Put me on; let me talk." The staff was getting so upset it seemed they were going to tear the place to pieces. People were jumping out of their seats and shouting. They didn't want their noses rubbed in it.

Then finally someone said, "All right, Marc, it's your turn."

I started with Lucretius' story about the bull dancers who would fight the bull and never get injured as long as each one kept to his post. There was danger only when someone panicked and left his place, creating a gap through which the bull could attack. As a team, the dancers got so good they were doing flips off the bull's back, having a wonderful time.

"Doesn't this story relate to our situation?" I asked. "It seems to me that we have to work together to improve the school. I know you feel let down because the Board didn't come to your defense. But the last thing in the world we want is to have the Board up here examining everything we're doing and telling us what to do. The battle is our battle."

Someone shouted: "We haven't anything against you personally."

I said to him: "I realize that if one's friend is moved out rather unceremoniously, one must be upset. Or else I question his loyalty. Clearly you have loyalty to your former principal. You should have. But there is the possibility that your loyalty can be transferred. So make no apologies for feeling kindly toward your friend."

Someone else said, "You're up there now, and every new principal is due for at least a year's honeymoon."

The thing about a honeymoon is that it is a time when you can fall in love. I would take the honeymoon and see what we could do with it.

It was time to take a closer look In the first classroom I visited, a girl was writing a composition entitled "Gratz Is for Rats." Her title, in fact, was the schools unofficial motto, and painfully close to the mark.

The dropout rate was 78 percent. Or to put it more directly, only one out of five students entering as freshmen graduated. Eighteen graduates out of 600 went to college less than 3 percent.

It certainly was the worst and most potentially explosive high school situation in the city. The School Board president called it the most "shortchanged" school in the city. For example, Gratz's feeder pattern had been gerrymandered so that the school stood on its northernmost boundary. Thus students were drawn from the thirty-block area to the south, Philadelphia's largest and poorest black ghetto. The white students and the more affluent blacks, just to the north, went to other schools. Four white students out of 3,800 kept the place integrated.

The school, built for 2,600 students forty years before, was terribly overcrowded. There were two shifts for classes. Even with three lunch periods, students spilled out into the corridors causing a dangerous situation each day.

The physical education facilities were the worst in the city. There was no football field. All games were played away, thus denying the school the morale that comes from interschool sports.

One day the track team was observed at its prac-. tice field, a track with grass high enough to trip up a runner. The team had one boy act as lookout to avoid embarrassment while the others ducked under the bleachers to change clothes.

Gratz had no band, no debating team, no gym team, no swimming team, no honor society, no dances. Gratz students often viewed themselves as victims, having no control over their future, no place to go, not even down because, being at Gratz, they were already at the bottom.

The work of getting the school together again had to be done piece by piece. To start people off looking at the total picture would have been overwhelming.

There were three major problems confronting us. First, we had to raise the daily attendance. Second, we had to increase the holding power of the school by improving its program. Third, we had to get more children into post high school educational programs. These were fundamental issues, especially since Gratz had the worst record in the city on each point.

I was a veteran of the attendance war. At Catto, we began with only 40 percent of the children putting in a daily appearance. The first thing to do was to make maximum use of the compulsory attendance law. This tactic may not be very innovative or romantic, but at least it helps you get the pupils inside.

We strengthened our bookkeeping and pupil accounting procedures and then held a meeting with the district attendance supervisors. We told them that we wanted special attention for our cases, that students shouldn't accumulate months of absences with no action from the District.

Later, we met with Gratz's attendance officers.

Their role was to visit the homes. "Look," I said, "let's not be defensive about the school. When a parent says that 'they don't teach you anything up at Gratz,' you tell them that they might be speaking for their own child but not for the other children at Gratz. Tell them that their child hasn't learned anything because he hasn't been there. How can we teach him if he's out on the street?"

The attendance problem provided a chance to involve teachers in a guidance role. When a student came back from a long absence, the teacher could say: "Where have you been, son? We missed you."

We had homerooms writing letters: "We miss you, Johnny. Where are you? You're keeping us from getting 100 percent." Every class that had 100 percent attendance went to the football game free. Now, who in the world cared about a football game? Our team wasn't winning anything! But still, we got buses and made a big thing out of it. The idea was to overcome the anonymity a child feels in a school that houses almost four thousand youngsters. This anonymity, in fact, is one of the great failings of large, comprehensive high schools. Anything you can do to overcome it has to be worthwhile.

Later, in an effort to bring back dropouts, we had a "Go for Gratz" campaign. We passed out buttons, visited neighborhoods, and wrote hundreds of letters. We even retrieved a youngster who was working up in New York State. He came back and graduated.

But, important as it was to bring our truants and dropouts back, there was a third group of students we wanted even more. We realized that there has to be a kind of cross-fertilization of upwardly aspiring children with the children who have been beaten down and see life as a hopeless chore. The effect we wanted could be had from any aspiring group. It didn't make any difference if it were white or black. Either group gives your poorer students the same kind of intellectual lift. (This idea was later corroborated when James Coleman published his study on Equality of Educationa1 Opportunity.)

Unfortunately, it happens that in a disadvantaged area, there is a siphoning-off process that concentrates the most able students in a few schools. It occurs first at the junior high level. The students will duck a school they think is no good and run off to a more prestigious place. The same thing happens when it's time for high school. And who's going to fight Central or Girls' High Philadelphia's two academic high schools?

In our case, however, we found youngsters from our area being pulled from Gratz to a school whose reputation was terrible. What did that say about us?

Thus, the strange geographic arrangement that took away nearby middle-class students, plus our rock-bottom image, combined to keep Gratz from getting its share of upwardly mobile students which our program desperately needed. It was a vicious circle. We had to attract these youngsters.

After going through the list of potential incoming tenth-graders, the staff prepared a special letter. It began: "Dear Parent, Congratulations. Your child has been selected for the enriching Beacon Motivation Program. He is among 200 out of 1300 children. If you want your child to have this high honor, please tear off the form on the bottom and send it back to us.

Out of the two hundred letters that were sent out, we got back fifteen. And some of these said, No!

This let us know what we were up against. We decided to create an even more select group. The new letter read, "Your child is one of 30 out of 1300 chosen to be a member of the double-upward-boundstar-group." It was called something like that and we promised that if the child came in and did well, we would guarantee a college scholarship. We did not know where we would get the money, but knew if we found the children, we would get the money.

Only five or six parents responded. I started hitting the street, ringing doorbells, saying. "Hello, I'm the principal from Gratz."

The parents would almost faint. "What are you doing out of your office?"

"I came to get your children to come to Gratz."

No wonder they were surprised. It was not a common experience for the community to see a principal trudging up and down the streets of North Philadelphia, meeting the children and searching out certain houses.

I remember particularly a visit to Muriel's house. We really wanted this girl in our school. Her mother

studied me suspiciously through the partly opened door. Finally believing I was the principal, she invited me in. The first thing she said to me was: "You can't tell me anything about Gratz. I'm a dropout from there."

"Well, dear, things are different now. I want to tell you how they're different. We've studied Muriel's records. We have every reason to believe she has high potential. If she takes part in our new program, we'll give her a scholarship."

I went through the whole bit about the Beacon Motivation Program. Regardless of how bright the children were, most of them needed intensive help in the communication skills. One program requirement was that they had to take an extra period of English each day.

When I finished, Muriel's mother said: "Well, now, Mr. Foster, I have a boy who's sixteen years old who has had three contacts with the police. You can have him. But you can't have my Muriel."

I said: "I know what you mean. If we're worth our salt, we should have a program so extensive that we can offer something for both of your children."

But this reasoning didn't convince her. The outcome was that we got the boy and we did not get Muriel.

At another place I went, the girl was resistant. She wouldn't come out to see me, but I could hear her hollering from back in the kitchen, "No, no, I won't go to Gratz."

The mother came out. She was a foster parent.

When I said, "You know, if she comes, we're going to give her a scholarship," she said, "Girl, come out here and talk to this man." That scholarship got to her. We were losing some and winning others.

Now that we were bringing in some superior students and working on improved attendance, it was our responsibility to develop a strong and attractive program. If that meant altering the way things were done in the past, fine. If it meant changing some of the basic concepts of what a school is, we were ready.

We did expect that some of our professionals might decide to leave. Whenever you make fundamental changes in an organization, the honest person on the stall has two choices. One, he can adjust and work with you. Or two, if he sees that he cannot adjust to your style, he should move out.

Some people can neither adapt nor move on their own accord. For their own good, and for the good of the team, the leader must expedite their leaving. It's not the pleasant part of the job, and there often is no formal routine for doing it. Still, it's a necessary process if you are to be successful in making changes.

I remember one chap, one of the brightest teachers I have ever known. The problem was that he had a basic, though unconscious, contempt for Gratz students. He found them unsuited to his style of teaching. I facilitated his change to another school in a different part of town. Reports had it he was doing a beautiful job. But he was just no good for Gratz students. He had to leave.

Most of the staff, however, elected to stay even when this required some difficult changes. For my part, I accepted the role of personnel consultant. There were infinite possibilities for shuffling staff members, to maximize their individual talents while giving them opportunities for personal development. We took one vice-principal and put him in charge of innovative programs and curricula. Another was in charge of student activities. One teacher was our "research and development" man. His job was to visit banks, businesses, and foundations in order to raise money for special projects.

One month thirty churches in the school's neighborhood invited me to speak about Gratz. It was too much. We found a "PR" man on our own staff to take over this job.

There was one teacher who hated lunchroom duty. When any trouble developed, his instinct was to duck behind the counter. You always knew where to find him in a crisis. But this man was excellent at figuring out the intricacies of class rosters. That is the job he got. It is always amazing how much talent can be hidden in a large bureaucracy.

Of course, every aspect of a school's program contributes something to its overall image. Gratz had a loser's image: low academic achievement, losing sports teams, few activities. To change the image, to make the school a winner, we had to improve in every category.

For instance, it was incredible that there had been no band in the school for over a year. I called the director of music education and said: "Look we've got to have a band at Gratz. I've never see a big high school like this with no band."

He replied, "We don't have a teacher."

"Okay. You come on up and teach it."

"Now, Marc, I can't come up."

"Well, if you can't make it, get somebody in here because we've got to have a band."

In the end, he sent a music supervisor to teach the band. I told him, "Friend, your challenge is this: we need to have an instrumental ensemble by our first public meeting two months from now."

"I don't know if I can do that," he said.

"Try it. That's your job. It'll tell us how good you are."

He said he would try. Came that night in May, we had four musicians. They didn't all start together and they didn't all finish together either. But there they were, scraping and blowing away. I told the

parents:

"I want you to see where we are starting. When you come back next year, we'll have a full band here."

There was one youngster who played a clarinet solo. He was a real virtuoso. "Where in the world have you been, son?" I asked. "How did you learn to play like that?"

He said he had been a member of the All Philadelphia Junior High Orchestra. There had been no band at Gratz, so he had vegetated for a year.

We decided to introduce school-wide activities. We made plans to hold a dance. There had not been

one at Gratz for three or four years. The one requirement for admission was a Student Association membership card. After several weeks of publicity, only eighteen cards had been sold. We had to cancel the dance. Again, we gained perspective on where we were and how far we had to go. As it turned out, a year later we sold something like eight hundred cards. Kids were turned away from our dances because the old postage-stamp-sized gym held only a few hundred students at a time.

There were the old basketball uniforms handed down from another schooL We just put them in the trash, burned them, and bought new uniforms. We wanted in every way to rid the school of its loser's image.

The word "relevance" was in the air. The Superintendent of Philadelphia schools had called for a new thrust that would fuse school subjects with the hopes and backgrounds of the students. Gratz was chosen to lead the way in the development of new curricula.

The task, however, went beyond developing new materials that might show the contributions of blacks in all subject areas and the problems that have confronted our minority groups. Our goal was to involve students and parents in the process of determining what should be taught.

We distributed a questionnaire that asked students to make comments and suggestions on curriculum. Parents, community leaders, and teachers were similarly involved. We explained to the Gratz community: "When our pupils study Balboa, they will learn that when he first looked out on the blue Pacffic, thirty black men were with him as co-explorers.

"Students will learn of the contributions of Negroes to art and music and open-heart surgery. They will discover that culture is a tapestry made up of black threads, white threads, yellow threads, and other colors, all woven together. Our task will be to put the black threads back where they belong in the tapestry because when one leaves out the major contributions of any part of mankind, one distorts the entire pattern of culture."

Development of classroom curricula was only one small part of the new thrust in teaching children. There were many special services our students needed but which they had not been receiving. For instance, we designed a Center for Personal Adjustment, an informal room in our basement. Here, we could provide intensive care for children who were sending up warning signals: "Hey, look at me. I'm getting ready to be forced out of this place." Key indicators such as attendance patterns, behavior record, the expressed desire to get a job without regard to the skills needed to get that jobthese were signs of imminent dropping out. Right off, we identified nine hundred children in our school who fit the pattern. We would lose them if we didn't get them special attention fast. Once gone, it was difficult to get them back. The CPA gave us a chance to do preventative work.

We established at the same time a Youth Opportunity Center for introducing inner-city kids to the world of work. What made our center unique in the state was that it was not located downtown somewhereit was right in Gratz, where it was needed. It's a fact of urban life that social services for poor people are utilized more when you bring them to the people, rather than require the people to go to the service.

It might seem something of a contradiction, but at the same time we were bringing outside services into Gratz, we were extending Gratz out into the community. As one newspaper headline put it, we were "taking the school out of school."

For instance, many of our students had trouble relating to the sciences. "Why study biology?" they asked. This was a very fundamental question. If a person doesn't have some way to relate his studies to himself, he isn't likely to get much out of it. Many of our students needed to have the subject made concrete to them.

To do this, we began outreach projects in connection with local hospitals and science centers. At one point, we had 80 students working in 65 different labs. For many of these students, the experience of seeing biology applied in real situationsto help the sick, for instance-gave them a handle for studying science. They began to relate their experience to their work in school.

We sent some of our young men to the Naval Air Engineering Center at the local Naval Base. They moved away from the pure academic life and into the world of work, assigned to skilled mechanics on the "brother" or "buddy" system. The development of positive attitudes about work (e.g., regularity, punctuality, cooperation) was, for many of these lads, an important prerequisite to the development of specific work skills.

Students began bringing some of this new awareness back into Gratz. They often gained, through association, a more mature style of dress, an active familiarity with the social amenities thatwhile hardly ever dealt with in schoolcan make or break a youngster out in his first employment. The students, on their own, came to reject loud, raucous conversation or infantile conduct. It was easier for them to develop new styles because they had had firsthand knowledge of the sense and meaning of adult~ social behavior.

A completely different approach in moving Gratz into the community was the development of the Neighborhood High School Center, or Storefront School as it came to be called. Because Gratz was located on its northernmost boundary, many students had a two- or three-bus ride to school. It could take an hour each way. These students could not take part in afterschool activities. Their parents were seldom seen at our Home and School Association meetings. It was just too much of a trip for them to make.

Yet we needed to involve these students and their parents. We felt it was our responsibility to bring them in. As a first experiment, we had something called The Gratz Outpost. Located in a public housing project and run by our National Teacher Corps, the Outpost offered a mainly recreational program. By the time it closed for lack of funds, our sights were fixed on a more sophisticated model of school community partnership.

We wanted a noninstitutional structure where people could walk right in off the streets. Forget those long, marble corridors. The Neighborhood School would be a comfortable, you-can-put-your foot-in-the-door place. It would give parents a chance to have a full voice in the education of their children. Plans called for operating the school in the afternoons, in the evenings, and on weekends. The courses would not replace the regular curriculum at Gratz but would extend it. Activities would range from jewelry-making to special education for pregnant girls to new math and reading readiness for parents. A record and book library would be included as well as a tutorial program in which older students would work in the local elementary schools.

The proposal did not immediately win universal approval. The Board, asked to fund it, had a little trouble accepting the notion of putting educational processes right out in the open. Meanwhile, some members of the Gratz Afro-American Society thought the Storefront School might compete with the Black Learning Center they were trying to start up. They suspected that the Board was behind the idea and that I was fronting for it.

Because we didn't make these students beat down the door or picket to get a hearing for their concerns, they were willing to listen to what we had to say. We showed them how the idea had grown out of the Gratz Outpost and, more important, how there were enough customers for both kinds of centers. Not long after, the Board also accepted the storefront plan. They gave us $30,000 to get a place and buy the stuffings. It wasn't a lot of money but seemed sufficient since many area business people had promised their support.

The Teacher Corps staff immediately started to hunt for an empty store. They didn't expect any difficulty because there are always plenty of vacant stores in the impoverished area which was our target. Unfortunately, the store they finally chose turned out to have an excessive rent. A few crusading newspapermen ran some devastating stories. It looked as if our project might be raked under along with the muck.

But one never knows how apparent adversity can be a blessing in disguise. A family came forward to offer us a three-story building for a dollar a year. They also left thousands of dollars' worth of equipment for use in our programs.

Naturally, you don't get the Taj Mahal for one dollar a year. As the School Board's facilities department drew up safety specifications, it was clear that a large portion of our money would go for noneducational improvements. We went to a construction company known for its interest in training blacks in the skilled trades. They were able to spare some carpenters and also enlist the aid of several subcontractors. The Opportunities Industrialization Center (OIC) sent in men to paint and tile.

There was plenty of work left over for our own Gratz students. The sign shop made signs; art classes did paintings for the walls; sewing classes made the drapes; and shop students helped remove old plaster from the walls. It was a real bonus having our students working side by side with professional craftsmen. For most of these youngsters it was the first time they had close contact with black men earning a good living from skilled trades. These men gave our students a living example of achievement, which was just as important as the fact that we received about $18,000 worth of renovation for $373. By the time our empty shell of six months ago was refurbished, we had already got a lot of education out of the thing.

Now we brought in our program for pregnant girls, begun earlier with the city health department at a nearby settlement house. A state law forced girls six months pregnant out of "regular" school In Philadelphia, the number was over two thousand each year. The storefront school offered some of these girls a second chance at the education they desperately needed and had a perfect right to get. The program included credit courses in english. They would read books on pregnancy rather than plays by Shakespeare-and social studies. Sewing and child care were also offered.

By the end of the first year, five girls were able to graduate with their classmates. Ninety-five percent who attended the special program returned to their regular high school classes. The idea caught on. Other schools asked us to make room for their students. It was a new twist. Gratz was leading the way.

It is important to mention a practical detail at this point. The kind of in-school/out-of-school programming we were getting into meant that we had to develop a more flexible kind of rostering. There is nothing surprising about that. Everybody talks about modular scheduling and the like. Yet some people have trouble implementing the kind of flexibility required. They become tyrannized by the roster rather than controlling the roster for the ultimate goals of their program. I have heard stories about youngsters being locked into rosters, especially when there is a tracking system that segregates collegebound students from vocational education youngsters. Some people fear messing up the bookkeeping more than messing up a youngster's education. But in our first year, we changed at least three hundred rosters from low level to more challenging programs. It was a pleasure.

During this period, a teacher-training professor told me: "Marcus, we can't bring our urban education class here anymore. We wanted them to see an inner-city school and Gratz no longer has the characteristics." Apparently the fact that our students might be nicely behaved, might occasionally open a door for a visitor, jarred with this man's conception of a ghetto school. Our students were getting a bit middle class in their ways.

But it just so happens that at this point in history, the so-called middle-class way of speaking, writing, and presenting oneself is the preferred route toward getting the jobs and rewards that almost every person wants. One can make a distinction, of course, between acquiring these useful middle-class skills and accepting all the middle-class values. It makes great sense for a teacher to point out the advantages of being able to speak standard American English. Naturally, the teacher will provide instruction in it. But this is very different from a teacher's disparaging the personal and aesthetic values of a student who sees himself part of the non-middle-class culture. And if the teacher finds himself contemptuous of his students' manner of dress or choice of music, he has an obligation to himself and his students to find work elsewhere, with children he can more easily relate to.

A bit middle class we were, although, as one newspaper put it, we still were not Harvard. But for the first time in many years, the community not only believed Gratz could grow, they had proof. By the end of our second year, the dropout rate was cut in half. The graduating class was the largest in the school's history.

Agencies such as the American College Testing Center and the College Bound Corporation worked with our counselors. The result was that 168 of our graduates compared with 18 two years before were accepted into college. They received over $160,000 in scholarships.

But most of our students still did not go on to college. Our staff had conducted a study of how many of our vocational education students ever got jobs in the areas in which they had been trained. It turned out, for example, that in the last two years, no graduate of the sign painting course ever got a job painting a sign. We told the teacher: "Friend, you came to us from the industry. You will now have two periods off each week to go and reestablish your old contacts, open the door so that some children can get jobs. Otherwise, we're going to miss you next year."

Out he went. He soon arranged for our staff to visit with people in the industry. We talked with them about the need for "hands-on" experience. We weren't looking for charity. Our aim was to help the businesses develop a reservoir of excellently trained workers. They got the message. Students began to work in the field two or three days a week. They learned rigging, something we were not equipped to show them in the school shop. They learned the neon business. And every student who finished the course got a job the next year.

Thanks to our Advisory Council on Career Developmenta group comprised of businessmen from thirty-five local companieswe were able to replicate this kind of "real-life learning" in many of the areas of industry and commerce.

Back in the school, we now had a band, and a classical saxophone sextet as well. The girls' choir was giving church concerts throughout the neighborhood.

The honor society, dormant for twelve years because no one believed the students could do outstanding work, was now going strong with fifty members who had met the national standards.

Once more, we had a junior class prom and a senior class play. The baseball team improved from a 0-16 record to a 16-4 season. The gym team, winless in six years, had a record of six wins and only one defeat. For the first time, we fielded teams in debate, swimming, and fencing.

When we sent out our Beacon Motivation invitations, the letter explained that parents had to come in person to a special meeting. It was no longer just a matter of sending in a form. We played to standing room only. The community's perception of Gratz had turned around.

Some observers of the new happenings at Gratz concluded that our progress was mainly due to the many. special programs funded by the Board. They suggested any improvement could be explained by the "Hawthorne Effect," the phenomenon in which change occurs, not because of any specific action you take, but simply because you are doing something that shows interest.

Certainly, the Hawthorne Effect can be troublesome to the scientific experimenter, but it is not necessarily to be avoided by educators trying to get schools moving. The excitement of new programs alone can awaken a school that for years has been ignored. Schools, like people, need personal attention. Therefore, rather than worry about the Hawthorne Effect, educators might do better to harness it. In the context of reviving schools, this would be analogous to priming a pump.

Of course, pump priming is a waste of time if the well has run dry. It would make no sense to pour new programs into a school completely without life. But I have never seen a school, no matter how dismal or unproductive, that did not have life in itas long as the kids were there.

By the third year, our momentum was building up. Schools that are coasting along beautifully, or those which are mired down without hope, do not feel the emotions that are raised by a changing situation. As Gratz began to climb upward, we could literally feel the surging energy and joy.

In the middle of the year we received $75,000 from a community group. Our staff developed fourteen programs that dealt with student money problems, tutorial projects, job placement, curricula, and extracurricular activities. A student loan service, for instance, enabled youngsters to buy clothes in order to make suitable appearances at college or job interviews. It gave other students money for carfare to their first jobs. The scholarship support fund helped students meet the high cost of just applying to colleges. A tutorial project for athletes was designed to help these youngsters avoid being exploited for their sports skills at the expense of their academic development.

Another source of support were our older alumni, the vast majority of whom were Jewish whites who used to live in the area. Most of them had had no contact with their now black alma mater for many years. To bring them back home, we ran an ad in the Jewish newspaper: "Attention, All Simon Gratz Alumni: Have You Heard What's Happening To Your Gratz?" The ad reviewed our college record and the work of local businesses in training and employing our students. It ended with an invitation to attend a general alumni meeting. We asked the alumni to "help Gratz continve to make respectable, useful citizens out of our graduates . . . the way it did with

YOU."

It worked. The alumni began to contribute scholarship money and job opportunities.

So it went. We had hardly solved all, or even most, of the problems facing a big city high schooL But now it seemed that the problems were at least reduced to human proportions. We were not going to let them steamroll us.

Perhaps the phrase "human proportions" sums it up. If there were a single key to the turnabout at Gratz, it had to be what one observer called "people power." All the people mattered,the students, staff, parents, and community. They were all involved and pushing in the same direction.

Probably the greatest example of the meaning of people power came toward the end of the second year, even before the positive changes in the school could be seen. This was the incident of Gratz versus city hall.