What Makes This School Work?

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MALCOLM X ELEMENTARY School is in the heart of Washington's seventh police district. It is known to some officers as "the jungle," because, as one black patrolman observes, "it's all about survival here." Across the street from the school is a graveyard, its iron fence mangled where a sixth-grader crashed a car he had hot-wired. Near an outside corner of the school is "the penthouse," where at night, under a mural of the U.S. flag and the words WE WANT A DRUG-FREE AMERICA, the crackhead prostitutes of Alabama Avenue sell themselves for $2 or $3. Every morning the school custodians splash bleach against the doorways to wash away the stench of urine. Behind the building are the projects -- public housing and empty lots. On the playground, thieves have carried off whatever of the jungle gym is not bolted to the ground.

This is a school with little going for it: no special government programs, no foundation grants, no major benefactors. It is not a magnet school, not a school for gifted children, not special in any way -- except for the extraordinary things that go on inside. America's abject inner-city schools may yet be rescued by a new commitment from Washington or by the bold reform movement gathering strength in the think tanks and universities. But in every city there are schools like this one that are not waiting to be saved, which offer a case study in how to make the most of nothing at all.

Malcolm X thrives on ideas, stubbornness and high expectations. Its teachers and staff are realistic about the lives students live during the 16-plus hours a day they are not under the school's protection and are aware of the lessons that must be unlearned. "They're not kids, they're really not," says Chester Earl Jordan, father of a five-year-old Malcolm X student. Jordan, along with others, patrols the neighborhood at night, a flashlight in one hand, and -- until recently -- a gun in the other. "If you sat down a third-grader and asked him how to weigh crack, how to bag it, how to load a 9-mm, how a beeper works, you're going to get first-rate answers right off the bat."

All but two of Malcolm X's 30 teachers are black. The classrooms feature pictures of famous African-American artists, scientists and writers, and there is a clear, though unspoken, sense of pride that it is blacks helping blacks reclaim this troubled community. But there are many teachers who knew little of the inner city before arriving here. "It was a culture shock even for me," says second-grade teacher Avis Watts, who was raised in the Virginia countryside, and whose parents taught college. Now she appreciates just how critical the school is to the children. "This is their lifeline really," she says. "They know they'll be fed, loved and everything else in this school."