By Marc Fisher
Thursday, August 30, 2007

Jack Dale and Jerry Weast came prepared with slides, bar graphs and statistics demonstrating that the schools in Fairfax and Montgomery not only prepare the children of the affluent for the nation's top colleges but also achieve unparalleled scores for the black and Hispanic kids in their counties.

Michelle Rhee came prepared with empty hands and a plea to the audience. "If you have the answers for me, you can e-mail me. I'm light-years behind my colleagues," the new D.C. schools chancellor said.

When the chiefs of public schools in Fairfax, Montgomery and the District gathered Tuesday to talk to education policy wonks about improving their worst schools, the contrast between the suburbs and the city could hardly have been greater.

While Weast and Dale rattled off a mind-numbing catalogue of acronyms -- each standing for a different expensive effort to focus staffing and individualized care on their systems' lowest-performing children -- Rhee told how she arrived in Washington and asked the brass in her office what the District's plan was to deal with its most troubled schools. "There was no coherent plan," she said. "Somewhere in a folder there was a list of those schools."

While Weast and Dale preside over systems in which black students score higher on Advanced Placement exams than the average of all students nationwide, Rhee must worry about tamping down racial tensions as she starts work on closing underenrolled schools.

In Montgomery, the nation's 16th-largest school system, Weast spends big money every year "trying to teach parents how to kick my butt . . . how to work the system just like affluent people." With seminars on advocacy in several languages, Weast's system tries to translate the frustration low-income parents have over their kids' poor performance into the kind of agitation that forces schools to do their jobs better.

In the District, by contrast, Rhee is learning that one of her greatest barriers to success is complacency. Visiting a school in Southeast, Rhee stepped across the street to talk to men hanging out in front of a housing project.

"Great school. We love the school," the men told the chancellor, knowing full well that their school is slated for closing. But Rhee knew that "this was not a great school -- only 9 percent of the kids are scoring 'proficient' " on standardized tests. Before she can even begin to move resources from propping open nearly empty schools to jacking up expectations for low-performing students, Rhee must face the reality that many D.C. residents are emotionally attached to awful schools.

Rhee believes she can turn that around "if we can talk to these folks about what 9 percent means -- that if you're not reading at grade level by third grade, your chances of ever getting up to grade level are nearly none."

You might expect that suburban superintendents would face completely different challenges from the head of perhaps the most troubled urban system in the land. But all three schools chiefs seemed riveted by the same persistent problem: the gulf between the achievement of Asian and non-Hispanic white students and that of Hispanic and black students.

Weast and Dale, who has run the nation's 12th-largest system in Fairfax since 2004, say their jobs are made much easier because they work in liberal counties where elected officials spend whatever it takes to polish their schools' national reputations. That political support stems from the belief among Fairfax and Montgomery residents that school quality is directly connected to the value of their real estate.

"Only 25 percent of our county has kids in the schools," Weast said, "but 75 percent own homes, and the schools are a big part of the value of their homes."

"If you have to take resources away from your active, involved -- read 'affluent' -- parents, you're going to be in trouble," Dale said. But Fairfax hasn't had to do that; the county government has understood that if it maintains high quality at the high end, it will have the political running room to inject extra resources into schools serving low-performing students.

Montgomery spends $60 million more on its high-poverty schools than on its affluent schools, gives schools in the poorest neighborhoods first pick of the system's new teachers and funds a 15 to 1 student-teacher ratio in those schools, compared with 23 to 1 in more affluent areas, Weast said. Few affluent residents protest because they know the system's reputation -- the "brand," as Weast calls it -- depends on how well schools do with their lowest-performing students.

In Washington, the public schools have failed to make the political connection between rich and poor, or between parents and non-parent taxpayers. Unless the District, like its more successful neighbors, provides meaningful alternatives for middle-class, affluent and poor children, the schools will fail to win the political support necessary to improve quality for all.