Four Steps to High School Greatness

1. Have high expectations for all students.

Jaime Escalante did not think Hispanic students were too ill-prepared or fragile to handle AP. He had taught nothing but Hispanic students, many of them poor, in his native Bolivia before he moved to the United States. He thought their only problem, like most teenagers, was that they were lazy. At Mamaroneck, there were many teachers who shared Escalante's view, but Mamaroneck's official policy was much more in tune with the thinking of most American high schools. Most U.S. educators still believe that letting students with bad work habits or disadvantaged backgrounds take difficult courses is setting them up for failure, and they are better off in an easier classes.

2. Give students more time to learn.

Escalante's cure for laziness was to steal time from students' days for more homework. He insisted that students struggling in his classes see him after school and put in two or three hours of extra work. These makeshift homework clubs became such popular gathering places that students' lives were transformed. Mamaroneck did not have to encourage homework in this way because the school had mostly middle-class students with parents who usually made sure their children were prepared for class. The Garfield method has spread to some of the most successful inner city schools. The Southeast campus of the YES College Preparatory schools of Houston is number 87 on the Newsweek list this week, despite that fact that 75 percent of its students are low-income. One of its secrets, YES founder Chris Barbic notes, is that its students spend 62 percent more time in school than regular Houston public school students.

3. Measure each student by a high and incorruptible standard.

For Escalante, this was the AP test. Both AP and IB exams are given each May in dozens of subjects. Unlike regular school final exams, they are very long (usually three hours for AP, five hours for IB), require much analytical thinking and writing, and are created and graded by outside experts who have nothing to do with the school. Escalante's students were impressed and motivated by the fact that they were preparing for the same college-level tests that were taken by the rich kids in west Los Angeles, and that if they did well they could earn college credit. This had some influence on Mamaroneck AP students too, but the school put less emphasis on all students taking the tests, and further reduced the number of test-takers by either barring students from taking the AP courses or at least not encouraging them to do so.

4. Create a team spirit.

Escalante had AP calculus team shirts and songs and chants. He harnessed the special dynamic of an AP or IB class in which everyone is going to take the test that the teacher did not write or grade. In a normal class, students try to persuade the teacher to go easy on them, and some teachers find it hard to resist the temptation. In an AP or IB class, dumbing down the final exam is not an option, so teacher and students are motivated to unite as a team to beat that test. There was some of this spirit in some Mamaroneck AP classes, since there were teachers who appreciated the power of uniting teenagers in a common goal, but average students at Mamaroneck who would have most benefited from this experience were shut out.

Today, many AP and IB teachers have learned from Escalante or teachers like him and swear by these four steps, or something like them. Such teachers persuaded me that the Challenge Index was a good idea and continue to tell me it helps them.

But there are, my e-mails and the Challenge Index data indicate, more teachers who think this approach to teaching is mindless and dangerous. They are professional educators who deserve respect, so let me share a quote from one of them that I used in the article "Why AP Matters" I wrote for this week's Newsweek:

"It is one thing for a bright student to be absorbed for hours working on a favorite subject. It is quite another story when an 'average student' struggles until two o'clock in the morning to master the massive amount of material of a course in which he has little interest. How much of a favor are we doing these youngsters?"

The teacher I quoted is Kathleen Donnison, a veteran AP American history teacher whom I first met in 1994 at Mamaroneck High School. She is still there, and many educators share her view.

I don't, and neither do hundreds of other AP and IB teachers I have met over the years. They would say that instead of telling this struggling student to drop the course, you should look for ways to help the student master the material and find the parts of it that have beauty and interest for him or her.

This is a debate among well-intentioned teachers that will yield useful results. What I know is the number of low-income and minority students taking AP and IB is increasing, as is the number of such students doing well on the tests. That is good, and I hope the trend continues.