
          Initiatives in Southern Education
          By StaffStaff
          Vol. 10, No. 6, 1988, pp. 15-18
          
          After almost a decade of reform, education in America remains a
significant state and national issue. The United States Department of
Education now releases a yearly report card comparing general
educational achievements for each of the states. Legions of private
national commissions and task forces continue to study education
problems, issuing a variety of recommendations. After adopting
education reforms, many states continue to implement them, with and
without changes in their original plans. New approaches, such as the
"effective school" movement and the "essential school" reforms have
entered our professional vocabulary and some schoolhouse doors.
          These reforms have been sustained by an enlarging awareness of the
central importance of education in the nation's future. For the first
time in decades, leaders of the public and private sectors throughout
the country understand that improving education--including the
education of the disadvantaged--is necessary to safeguarding our
national future. Through a variety of programs, community leaders,
business executives, and labor leaders have become more involved in
public schools because their institutions have a stake in the success
of the education system; they now realize that, without educated poor
and minority students, America cannot have an educated workforce in
the future.
          In the American South, especially, these cooperative efforts signal
a new era in the region's development. For almost 30 years after the
United States Supreme Court's 

decision in Brown
v. Board of Education, issues of school integration suspended
most meaningful, local collaboration on education. Throughout the
South, massive white resistance to integration and the accompanying
divisions between blacks and whites immobilized local cooperative
activities, leaving the design of policy and problem-solving in
education most often to the federal government and courts. Today, this
history of local inactivity and neglect in education is coming, at
long last, to an end.
          The local control of public schools, especially in the urban South,
is more democratic today than it has ever been in this century,
primarily due to the Voting Rights Act. As a result, minority and poor
voters have a real voice, often a controlling one, in determining who
sits on the school boards and who decided the local policies for
education.
          This change in local control of schools now allows minorities and
the poor in the region to engage others in real, local partnerships
for solving problems of education instead of depending almost
exclusively on the long enforcement arm of the federal government.
          Today, community leaders, including many business leaders, now see
more clearly than ever before both the community interest and their
own institutional selfinterest in a well educated future workforce
that includes minorities. Almost every community leaders in the
South's urban areas acknowledges the importance of addressing the
education of minority and disadvantaged students. Their own
willingness in recent years to become involved in local schools and
local partnerships in the schools is clear evidence of this changed
circumstance.
          State governments are also beginning to recognize that the needs of
disadvantaged students is the large unsolved issue of education. In
all Southern states dropout rates have alarmed even the most seasoned
educators and in some Southern states that require exit exams, teat
scores clearly evidence that those who are failing to achieve are
primarily poor and minorities. As a result, education departments in
most Southern states have begun to take their first serious steps in
establishing program and policies to face these issues. (See SLRC
Bulletin, 1988.) While their work and thinking continue
to take shape, the issues of education of the disadvantaged are
emerging as a major concern for Southern states.
          Finally, the role of the federal government is also changing. For
the first time in ten years the Congress passed and the President
signed legislation which returns attention and resources to the issues
of educating the disadvantaged. For example, the new education
legislation provides in 1988-1989 $50 million for dropout prevention;
$30 million in an "improvement fund" to encourage local schools to
develop new approaches to problems especially those involving parents
in the schools; a new basic skills program for high school students
has been authorized at $200 million; and states will be required to
use a portion of their block grants for education to help local school
districts develop measurable characteristics to make schools more
effective for all pupils.
          These are encouraging trends, but they ought not blur the fact that
the problems of education for poor and minority youth persist in the
South. Oversized rates for dropouts linger, primarily among minority,
poor youth; test scores for comprehension, reading, and math remain
dismally low for poor students. For example, more than 40 percent of
students receiving free lunches in Mississippi schools failed
state-mandated tests last year. Not surprising, many minority and poor
students continue to forego college and technical schools. At a time
when education is recognized as a national priority and when the
involvement of community and business leaders in schools have become
widespread, the performance of poor and minority children is
education's moat significant failure.
          While improving education is universally supported, improving the
public schools is not. In the South segregation academies and other
private schools are growing, too often at the expense of the children
in public schools. This trend not only frustrates the integration of
public schools in many places but also drains resources and support
from the need to educate well all our children.
          The problems in the South's public schools derive, in large part,
from social and economic factors that go far beyond the capacity of
any one individual school. The fact that poverty is the most reliable,
single predictor of poor academic performance underscores that schools
alone cannot remove all barriers for disadvantaged students. At the
same time, schools and community leaders are not helpless to do much
more in addressing these problems. In the past, many school boards and
city officials have failed to make the education of disadvantaged
children one of its highest priorities in the allocation of resources
and talent. Some local school systems have not targeted poor and
minority students for additional, available resources such as
counseling and tutoring. Many school systems have responded far more
urgently to the state standards of education reform than they have to
the local needs of disadvantaged students in each of their schools.
          By the same measure, many of the cooperative activities that
parents and community leaders have undertaken at the schools have
little to do with such fundamental problems. Far too often, local
leaders in business, labor, and community work have participated in
what the chairman of the board of Xerox Corporation described as "feel
good" partnerships. "Business and education have largely failed in
the their partnerships to improve the schools ... because they keep
shoring up a system that needs deep structural changes," he
stated. To be sure, the opportunity to solve locally in the South the
problems of educating an children is now re-emerging. What has not yet
appeared is a certain and sustained collective will to make
fundamental changes in the way we focus our resources and educate all
our children. That challenge is now before the South.
          
            Dropout Prevention Project
          
          In the summer of 1986, the Southern Regional Council conferred with
groups and school officials in a dozen urban areas across the region
to determine if their communities and school systems were interested
and capable of establishing local partnerships to develop and carry
out a plan for addressing the problems of students dropping out of the
public schools. By the end of 1986, community/school groups had been
formed in six cities: Atlanta; Baton Rouge Louisiana; Columbia, South
Carolina; Little Rock, Arkansas; Memphis, Tennessee; and Savannah,
Georgia. These 

local collaboratives received small grants from the
Ford Foundation for planning activities.
          During the last two years each of these local collaboratives has
sought to understand the causes and factors of dropouts in their own
communities as well as the available services--in the schools and in
the communities--currently offered to prevent and assist
dropouts. More recently, the local groups developed local plans which
describe their collective judgment about what needs to be done locally
to prevent dropouts in the future.
          Each collaborative has had some difficulty in making choices, in
establishing a sense of priority among the different possible
approaches. Although they came to a rather easy agreement on the local
factors of dropout, all of them were of more than one mind in deciding
exactly what changes will be most effective and most appropriate. The
process understandably developed a far greater sense of informed will
to act than of collective judgment on precisely how to act.
          The plans and analysis of each community are quite different, but
they do have similarities. At least four school systems--Atlanta,
Memphis, Columbia, and Savannah--revised their own definitions of
dropouts and the procedures by which they collect internal data as a
result of the collaboratives' deliberations. In these systems, the
changes represent substantial revisions in school policies and
practices. In a fifth school system, Baton Rouge, the collaborative
documented a very high rate of suspensions and expulsions as a result
of administrative practices.
          Not surprising, virtually all the collaboratives call for extensive
administrative changes in identifying, documenting, and tracking
dropouts and potential dropouts. In Columbia, the plan calls for the
development of an extensive internal database by which the school
system can locate students who are showing the early signs of dropping
out. Most collaboratives call for revising suspension, expulsion, or
attendance policies.
          Without exception, poor classroom performance and classroom boredom
were identified by the collaborative as one of the major reasons
students drop out of school. In Memphis, the collaborative found a
strong correlation between dropouts and a history of falling behind in
grades. In Savannah, the most cited factors for dropouts were failing
grades and boredom. The other collaboratives came to similar
conclusions. As a result, most of the collaboratives are encouraging
schools to revise curriculum or classroom activities in different
ways. Columbia, for example, proposes additional teacher assistance
and tutorials. Atlanta proposes an approach of "esteem building" and
new curricula. Memphis is suggesting a pilot program including new
teaching materials and a special curriculum.
          In-school training is also being planned by the
collaboratives. Memphis envisions an "awareness" campaign about
dropout problems within the schools. Columbia and Atlanta are looking
for additional counselors and social workers to be available for all
grades (an approach intimated for the future by the Memphis proposed
pilot program as well). Little Rock already has carried out a retreat
for school counselors on dropouts and intends to do more in this
direction.
          All the local collaboratives included improving, coordinating, or
starting out-of-school programs as part of their dropout prevention
plan. For instance, Savannah and Atlanta stressed parental
involvement; the Columbia and Memphis plans include publicity
campaigns for the general public; and all the collaboratives' plane
involve programs for jobs or pregnancy counseling.
          With the plane established, the Council's work nowadays is to
provide technical assistance to the collaboratives, particularly
assuring that community and parental representatives of blacks and the
poor maintain an active partnership in the work to implement the
plane. We are also assisting in developing and using tools of
assessment and evaluation for local efforts and aiding the
collaborative, its leadership, and staff in handling the ongoing
problems of structures and personalities.
          The importance of these local efforts is as much in their process
as in their products. The local collaboratives have been able to set
in motion developments within the school systems which probably would
not have taken place without their work. In this respect, the
collaboratives' future can be reflected only in part in their plane
and proposals. While their analysis and plane have merit, their
strength and their future role reside primarily in the process of
community involvement which they have already begun and hopefully will
continue.
          
            School Accountability Project
          
          The Southern Regional Council is also beginning a program to
promote school-based accountability for improving the education of all
students in the middle grades, in five or six other sites in the urban
South. In several carefully selected communities, the Council will
work with a local community-based organization (or coalition of such
organizations) to build partnerships of local business, community, and
labor leaders in association with local school officials, parents, and
teachers to assess how well the schools of the middle grades are
meeting the needs of its students who are falling behind. These local
partnerships will work to improve the quality of involvement in the
task of improving the performance of disadvantaged students in the
middle grades of local schools. Hopefully, they will establish a new
system of accountability by which local educational systems determine
how well each school is meeting the needs of its students at risk of
failure; and determine what changes in resources, activities, and
policies are needed to assist each school in meeting the needs of
these students.
          To help achieve these goals, the Council is establishing an
advisory board composed of educators, parents, and community leaders
active in the field of education. The board will help select the site
for local work; provide general advice and guidance to the project;
and assist in disseminating information about this approach to
improving accountability and performance in education for
disadvantaged 

students.
          The project focuses on the middle grades both because of the need
to limit the number of schools involved in the program (to assure a
manageable lot) and because of the importance of the adolescent years
in determining a student's success and ambitions. Any program designed
to effect systemic change in the way schools treat and educate
disadvantaged youth is well-served by concentrating on the middle
grades, and this program has such a focus.
          Like our dropout project, this program focuses on creating a local
coalition of concern and activity to help educate the students who are
falling behind. It differs by concentrating on the middle grades, and
particularly, local schools within an educational system. Both,
nonetheless, are attempts to find ways to mobilize local communities
to address the problems of educating well all of their children in the
public schools.
        