Education: The Bus Doesn't Stop Here

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Peters also kicks behinds. "Our kids are no different when you instill the work ethic and tell them, 'You've got to move your buns.' " Students will start wearing uniforms in January. They listen to Mozart in music class and begin Latin in the fifth grade. James Coleman, a sociology professor at the University of Chicago, argues that black schools can challenge black youngsters in ways integrated ones cannot. "You can make very strong demands on the kids. They can't blame it on whites," he explains. "In integrated schools, white teachers are often afraid to make strong demands on black kids." At Dumas, that means offering sympathy that a student's parents had a fight the previous night but then insisting on the need to do one's homework anyway. Bart Simpson, in short, is a lousy role model; try Martin Luther King.

Dumas is far from perfect: its students still test below the Illinois state average; its physical plant is fraying; services are bad. "They send me inferior hamburger, moldy bread, spoiled milk," fumes Peters. But Dumas, with its emphasis on bootstrap help, is light-years ahead of most black public schools in the U.S. "There are several hundred black schools in Chicago alone, and most of them are still doing terribly," says Gary Orfield, a visiting professor at Harvard's graduate school of education.

Some blacks and a lot of whites are concerned that all-black schools amount to debilitating racial isolation. Stan Conner, whose grandchild attends Dumas, concedes, "You don't know whites on a personal basis. You grow up more isolated." Sociologist Coleman believes integrated summer camps could help offset the classroom separation. Students themselves are unconcerned. "We're not prejudiced," shrugs eighth-grader Keith Harris, 12. "White kids are welcome here."

Most black parents are far more concerned about good teachers, discipline and curriculum. And it is parental involvement that makes Dumas special. Upwards of 60 parents (all women) volunteer on any given day to work as teacher's aides, help out in the cafeteria or cut up frogs for biology class. It's 9 a.m., and they know what their children are doing. So does Sylvia Peters, who tries to keep discreet tabs on the sexual activity of her seventh- and eighth-graders. She proudly cites a lone pregnancy during her tenure.

Yolanda Raddle, a Dumas parent, marvels that her daughter Danielle, 6, can recite two poems by Langston Hughes, the gifted black writer. "I never heard of him in high school," she says. Dumas has already made a difference.