CCSD's Cinderella Gets Invitation to the Ball

"Of all human powers operating on the affairs of mankind, none is greater than that of competition. It is action and reaction." So said Henry Clay, nineteenth-century Kentucky statesman, past Speaker of the House of Representatives, the "Great Compromiser," and multiple-time nominee for President of the United States.

Does anyone believe that CCSD would have gotten around to adding rigorous course offerings at Burke High School if the downtown Charter High School for Math and Science had not taken form?

• Sure, lots of talk but no action in the decade or so since the Academic Magnet moved from trailers at Burke to the old Navy Base. Those were Burke students in geography but not in makeup or name anyway.
  
• Sure, lots of talk but no action as Burke gradually deteriorated to its unsatisfactory rating and near takeover by the State Department of Education.
  
• Sure, lots of talk but no action as parents of students living in District 20 found various routes (including permission to attend high schools off the peninsula) to avoid attending Burke, resulting in a decline in the size of its student body and de facto segregation.

Oh, excuse me. I should have said effective action. Lots of motion has occurred. Even lots of taxpayer dollars have been thrown at the problem. Look at the A+ Program instituted by Goodloe-Johnson that failed for various reasons, not the least of which was that it was not properly implemented or supported. None of them have worked.

Probably more than a third of high-school-age students resident on the peninsula attend schools-other-than-Burke, with resulting transportation costs for CCSD that are probably in the hundreds of thousands of dollars over the last decade. Finally NCLB has added the options, thanks to several years of Burke's failing to make progress on its standards, of changing the school's structure, allowing it to become a charter school, replacing all teachers and administrators--well, you get the idea. CCSD is being forced to address the Burke problem again for the 2009-2010 school year, both from competition for higher-achieving students from CHSMS and from NCLB oversight.

Thanks to millions of taxpayer dollars, Burke High Middle has a beautiful facility, even if its playing-field situation is less than stellar; however, there are other ways to have a "Corridor of Shame" than decrepit buildings. You only have to contemplate what has happened to schools on the peninsula since their consolidation with those in Charleston's suburbs. It's been a downhill slide all the way. While you could argue that CCSD's academic "corridor of shame" actually meanders all over its district (with the exception of Mt. Pleasant), certainly District 20 has become the Cinderella ill-treated by the stepmother and her ugly step-sisters. Even true representation on its Board of Trustees has been bought away by political payoffs and at-large voting.

So, with great fanfare, Superintendent McGinley officially announces her plan for an "AP Academy" at Burke, first put forward as a counterpart to approval of CHSMS last year.
[See Burke to offer new AP Academy ].

Everyone wishes those at Burke who will try to make this "school-within-a-school" effective the best of luck. It is not automatically doomed to join its sister programs in failure, but as the old proverb goes, "The devil is in the details." One detail that should have been obvious is that the Academy will begin in the ninth grade: it should have begun at LEAST as early as the seventh. And that would have been possible, since Burke High Middle, as its name implies, does contain seventh and eighth grades. This start at ninth grade probably was a political decision made primarily because only middle school students at Burke would have been given the opportunity for these classes, leaving out other middle-schoolers on the peninsula. [Hmm. Why not spread resources to other middle-schoolers, say those at Charleston Progressive Academy? Oh, I forgot--that's a "magnet" school. It doesn't need an AP Academy. Right? What a can of worms that would open.]

Effective middle-school teachers are saints. There are some great middle-school teachers out there. They are definitely racking up brownie points in heaven by teaching at the sixth through eight grade level. Anyone who has ever attended middle school, subbed in middle school, or taught in middle school knows exactly what I am talking about. Despite the best efforts of all, middle schools in general [and that goes for many private ones as well as public] are sinkholes of academics for all but the most highly motivated and gifted. It's the nature of the beast. Whoever decided to invent schools that separate these specific grades from their saner counterparts deserves a special place in hell--maybe in the ninth circle,--that would be traitors to preteens.

Why do I say to start at seventh grade at the latest? Partly for the above reasons gleaned from personal observation and partly from knowledge of the national College-Board sponsored AP program itself. Probably McGinley is well aware (at least I hope she is) that the CB recommends the use of Vertical Teams to prepare students for AP courses. If you look at the materials for these Vertical Teams, you will see that they assume that preparation begins prior to high school. That is especially necessary for students who come from less-educated, lower-income families. Isn't that what CCSD is dealing with here?

A rigorous academic course in ninth grade is a shock to incoming students, no matter what previous school they attended. Even students from highly rated middle schools will have difficulty reaching the place they need to be to take AP courses successfully in the junior or senior years. We can hope that CCSD's administration has thoroughly thought through the needs of this program at Burke and will extend the serious help needed to make it successful.

If my calculations are correct, CCSD plans for up to 50% of its incoming freshmen to be in these honors courses. That's a high percentage for any school, even those with entrance requirements (except for the Academic Magnets of this world). Only time will tell.