Public Schools: Big-City Answers

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Washington, D.C., last week closed the books on a school year that made respectable progress in answers to the big-city public school headache: how to turn out ever-brighter graduates from incoming students whose average cultural level drops as the proportion of underprivileged Negroes rises. With a student body now 88% Negro, Superintendent Carl Hansen, 59, has mixed innovation and firmness effectively on a big scale. Some of the methods:

>A system of four "tracks"—basic, general, college-prep and honors—finds for every student a place that matches his ability, although it differs from "ability grouping" as practiced experimentally elsewhere in that it fixes curricula firmly beginning with the fourth grade and allows little choice of courses. Kids are permitted to jump up a track or so, if capable. Keeping classwork commensurate with abilities seems to decrease the incentive to quit school: Washington's dropout rate has declined to 36%, from 52% when Hansen took over seven years ago.

> An Amidon Plan (piloted at a Washington school by that name) outlines what material teachers must cover.

> Twilight Schools let tough boys who disturb regular classes as they near the dropout age of 16 go instead to small all-male classes from 3:30 to 7:30 p.m., getting on such personal terms with teachers that sometimes they play basketball with them after class. Explains Coordinator Robert Belt: "The boys don't have audiences to show off how disruptive they might be—there are no girls." Three-fifths of the 180 boys enrolled in two such pilot schools are to return to normal classes in the fall and remain in school past 16.

> An Extended-Day Program allows students and their parents in three junior highs to attend voluntary courses at night. Their interests determine the classes offered, which range from sewing to remedial math and business-school English. Teachers hoped to get 100 volunteers, were startled when 500 turned out at each school.

> A School for Pregnant Girls gives them consultation by nurses, psychologists and doctors, and teaches them how to care for themselves and a baby while keeping up on academic subjects. After a six-week absence, they return to regular classes, but not in their original schools. Of 141 girls enrolled last year, 117 continued their studies. Said one: "I've learned that what I've done is not a crime, but a mixture of shame, love and happiness."

>A School to Aid Youth (so named to form the acronym STAY) teaches students who leave school to work but want to earn a diploma in night classes. Of 205 students who volunteered, a surprising 70% are from the top two tracks of the school system. "A dropout student is not necessarily a dumb student," says Project Director William Carpenter. "He is usually bored, maladjusted, has problems with his family, or needs money."