The ABCs of high achievement

THE COUNTRY is stuck in an achievement gap. Many students with low test scores tend to be poor and members of minority groups. The education system is scrambling and too often failing to become a success factory. What will close the gap? Here are some answers:

Sheer force of will. In Worcester, founding principal Donna Rodrigues of the University Park Campus School simply refused to let students fail. In grades 7 through 12 there, the assumption is that "every kid will make it," Rodrigues, now retired, said in an interview. They may not all do it at the same time, but they can all do it.

Until recently, no one at the school had failed the 10th grade MCAS. The one student who did fail last school year -- she got 218, just below the 220 passing score -- arrived at University Park in the ninth grade, missing the two crucial middle-school years that are spent turning youngsters into scholars by building skills and inviting them to take on new identities as learners, not just members of a trudging teenage parade.

Housed in an old-fashioned brick building, University Park is up against modern-day poverty. Of some 230 students, more than 70 percent are low-income, qualifying for subsidized school lunches. But step inside and that's hard to see. In the 12 classrooms, it's all about college prep. Classes are lively and congenial, a byproduct of the school's insistence that students work together to help each other succeed. In seventh grade, students read eight books, a total of roughly 1,735 pages. By senior year, it's a dozen books, totaling some 3,010 pages.

Behind the scenes, faculty and staff handle tough social problems, from homelessness to pulling students out of unfit homes and getting them foster care placements. But home life, no matter how bad, isn't accepted as an excuse for not doing well in school.

The school's neighbor and partner is Clark University, which shares its gym, library, and professors, as well as a promising view of the future. Clark graduate students teach at University Park. Some become full-time faculty members. And some University Park graduates go to college at Clark.

University Park teachers are paid union wages. The school gets the same per-pupil funding as other district schools. Yet the outcome is above average: Everyone goes to four-year college or community college. And the staff is retooling senior year to make it a better stepping-stone into higher education, adding information about how to achieve college-level academic and social success.

The small size matters: Teachers know us, the students repeatedly say. There is literally nowhere to hide, and, says Tiffani Brown, who graduated in 2003, it's "more of a family," where "everyone knew everyone's business." Brown, a nursing student at Becker College in Worcester, thinks the school should stay small because "you learn more that way."

What the skeptics say. Point to a school that defies the achievement gap, and it is often branded a fluke, a one-off, atypical, location-specific aberration led by some Eleanor Roosevelt figure that just can't be replicated. Successful schools are accused of creaming talented students -- and teachers.

The pessimism makes national sense. By 2014, all students are supposed to score at or above grade level on state reading and math tests, a deadline set by the federal No Child Left Behind Act. But the nation's report card, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, shows that while younger children are making progress, the math and reading scores of 17-year-olds are stagnant.

"The evidence is now overwhelming that if you take an average low-income child and put him into an average American public school, he will almost certainly come out poorly educated," Paul Tough wrote in a New York Times Magazine article last week on the achievement gap.

The cure? Build a better system.

Key ingredients. Teachers need more class time, resources, training, and interaction with each other. At University Park, a common claim is that teachers are never alone. They're sitting in the back of each classroom and comparing strategies on Wednesdays, the faculty's planning day. It's demanding and it takes time. Teachers have to know their students extremely well and stay devoted to the faith of universal achievement.

"You have to hand over the capacity to achieve," says Simmons professor Theresa Perry. Students need new narratives. As she argues in her book, "Young Gifted and Black: Promoting High Achievement among African-American Students," African-American history is full of people risking their safety to get an education. Still, the stereotypes linger. And people read books that reveal the secrets of Asian-Americans' academic success.

And schools have to "speak," Perry argues. From posters to AP courses to a language specialty in Latin or Mandarin, schools have to say: Join the academic party.

"Teach everything" should be a motto: academics, time management, study skills, and the value of a positive attitude. Instead of laboring for hours over opaque material, students should be trained to ask for help early and often.

To build effective skills, University Park sets high standards and has students work in groups. It's what University of Texas professor Uri Treisman did as a graduate student in the 1970s and 1980s with University of California students studying calculus. His program served students of all races, with a goal of boosting the grades of minority students. His work is a classic example of the importance of equipping students with better strategies.

Finally, a growing consensus is that students caught in the gap need more resources, not just equal per-pupil spending.

Achievement isn't about genes or race. It's just making a choice to work hard. Good schools give students a personal map and the tools to do that work.