Naming Our Best Schools

By Jay Mathews
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 12, 2008 6:23 AM

My search for a suitable label for the hard-charging schools remaking American education in low-income neighborhoods got more attention than I expected. Many bloggers responded. Some thoughtful critics skewered the whole exercise, adding to the fun. It was an instructive exchange of views, and I have a winner.

I imagine if you are like my wife, always reading the last few pages of a new book first, you will annoy me by scrolling down right away to discover who has earned the big prize (my undying admiration). My thanks to the rest of you for adhering to the columnist's wish that you read this the way I wrote it.

As I explained in my Aug. 18 column, the contest was inspired by David Whitman's new book, "Sweating the Small Stuff," and my distaste for his subtitle: "Inner City Schools and the New Paternalism." Whitman did a splendid job explaining how school networks like KIPP, Achievement First and Cristo Rey have brought higher standards, more instruction hours and better teaching to impoverished children. Like me, he considers them the most promising education innovation in at least a decade. But he insisted on calling them "paternalistic" schools, which I thought was a public relations disaster. I asked for a better name for this new educational species.

Not everyone applauded my request. Robert Pondiscio, a teacher in a low-income urban neighborhood, said he thought shunning the paternalistic label constituted "intellectual violence." Others took my side, like Michael Goldstein, founder of Boston's MATCH school, who said Whitman's term left the wrong impression that these schools were substituting for ghetto parents who were not doing their jobs in teaching cultural norms. "Go to a poor black church on a Sunday and to a middle-class white church," Goldstein said. The black kids, he noted, are more likely to have their shirts tucked in.

USA Today editorial writer Richard Whitmire said on the Eduwonk blog: "What matters most about these schools is what happens to these students in college. And if paternalism is the only academic glue holding together their lives, then the free-wheeling college life will unravel that paternalism, and all that academic discipline, in a matter of days."

Will our winner survive the battering of the blogosphere and others debating the future of these schools? In case my nominee does not survive, and we need a substitute, here are the top 10, based on frequency of mention and my own preferences. Let history decide. They are in ascending order, including a few by contestants who used online screen names:

10. Creative Alternative Reformist Education (CARE) schools -- Lisa McLoughlin

9. Growth schools -- Brett Pawlowski

8. By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) schools -- Jonathan Skolnick

7. Public High-Impact Low-Income Open-Enrollment schools -- Leo Linbeck III

6. Whatever-it-takes schools -- Adam Kernan-Schloss

5. Accelerator schools -- Pawlowski

4. Relentless schools -- Nelson Smith

3. Tough-love schools -- Ben Hoffman, Pondiscio and CrimsonWife

2. High Intensity schools -- Linda Mathews and lawjob. (Nat Hentoff suggested Personalized High Intensity schools.)

As we await the final envelope, check out these runners-up:

· Total schooling -- Joanne Jacobs

· Real schools -- Walter Wallis and Wayne Bishop

· Elite charters -- Whitmire

· Harder Charters, UPPiesS (Urban Powerhouse Charter Schools), NUPPieS (New Urban Powerhouse Public Schools) -- entries submitted to Whitmire by unnamed participants

· Bill Belichick schools -- Goldstein (a New England Patriots fan)

· High Impact Public Schools (HIPS) -- Frances Cronin

· RESPECT (Responsive and Effective with Students, Principals, Educators and Community Together) schools -- Leslie Wheeler

· Beating the Odds schools--Veronica

· Transformationals -- wschulz

· Authentic schools -- Ze'ev Wurman

· Focus schools -- Chris Buja

· Challenge schools -- Patti Davis

· Holistic schools -- Andrew Flagel

· Promise schools -- Erin Kylene

· Firm-But-Fair or Neo-Nudge Schools -- Jim Hayes

· College Cult schools -- Skolnick

Critics offered names emphasizing what they considered the schools' drawbacks. "How about calling them selective enrollment schools?" trunuff said on the washingtonpost.com comments page attached to my column. "That's the label applied to other schools that use the same procedures to control the inputs in order to color the outcomes." Bill57 on the same page suggested "siphon schools," since, he said, they are taking money away from the public schools, "which will remain the backbone of American education long after all of us are gone." A reader identified as bbcrock, with a very specific criticism of one of the schools featured in Whitman's book, should contact me at mathewsj@washpost.com, and tell me more.

Okay. You waited long enough.

Here is our No. 1: No Excuses Schools.

This is, in some respects, a golden oldie. The term gained prominence eight years ago in Samuel Casey Carter's short book introducing these schools, "No Excuses: Lessons from 21 High-Performing, High-Poverty Schools." It was followed by Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom's detailed 2003 book analyzing the new phenomenon, "No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning." Readers who endorsed the winning name included Paul Friedmann, Neerav Kingsland, Barbara Davidson, CrimsonWife and David Whitman himself, since he occasionally used it as an alternative to paternalistic schools in his book.

Carter, now a senior fellow at the Center for Education Reform in Bethesda, told me he and Heritage Foundation Vice President Adam Meyerson wanted his book to show "that there is no excuse for the academic failure of most public schools serving poor children." The title, he said, acknowledged that what he called "the no excuses mindset" was "a necessary prerequisite to achieving" the schools' impressive results.

We shall see if the educators doing the hard work, and the rest of us arguing about them, will eventually accept that choice and make No Excuses Schools a staple of the great American education debate.