This test won't be easy
If Carol R. Johnson, the presumptive next superintendent of Boston schools, wants a major challenge, it's staring right at her, and she knows it.
No issue facing the Boston schools is more pressing than closing the achievement gap between black and Latino students and their white and Asian peers.
This is an issue Johnson is intimately familiar with and vows to tackle. But it is also the kind of educational and political problem that often gets far more discussion than action.
"We have to get this right, and we have to prove that urban public schools can work for all children," she said in an interview yesterday.
The reasons for the gap, which shows up in test scores as well as dropout rates, are complex, as Johnson and others point out. But as the high-achieving product of segregated schools and modest economic circumstances, Johnson said she does not accept the presumption that disadvantaged youths cannot excel.
"I often say that I grew up in a poor neighborhood without a lot of resources, and yet I had engaged parents, very good teachers who believed in my capacity to achieve and work hard and taught me to work hard," she said.
The achievement gap is worth harping on because in urban systems such as Boston, it limits the prospects for so many of the students. Exam schools aside, too many schools accept too little from students and give them too little in return. This is a problem that the MCAS will not fix, though it has helped to quantify the extent of the problem.
Johnson said that some educators will have to rethink the expectations they bring to the classroom. "It requires some belief system work," she said. "You have to get teachers to believe that kids from poor backgrounds can learn, kids who can't speak English can learn, kids who have special needs can be taught."'
Johnson is clearly eager to take on the challenge of the Boston public schools. She said she was drawn to Boston by the sense of community and the city's intellectual capital, qualities she said she plans to draw on as superintendent. She also suggested, diplomatically, that she wouldn't mind reporting to an appointed School Committee, rather than the elected one she worked for in Memphis.
Johnson makes her odyssey from classroom teacher to sought-after superintendent sound almost accidental. Her dream, she said, was always to be a classroom teacher. "I never decided I wanted to be a superintendent," she told me. "My mother was a schoolteacher; my grandmother was a schoolteacher." When she talks about how much she loved teaching fourth-graders, how much she loved their brutal honesty about what they see and think, she sounds convincing. Mentors gave her opportunities to advance, and she made the most of them.
Theresa Perry, an education professor at Simmons College who is an expert on the achievement gap, was among a group of local activists who met with Johnson earlier this week. She was impressed by what she saw.
"Many people who express the opinion that poor kids can achieve at the highest level don't necessarily believe it," Perry said. "We came away believing that this is a belief that resides deep in her soul and that she thinks it's a moral challenge for us as a nation."
Despite the thoroughly justified criticism of the top-secret selection process, Johnson seems to have won over many of the people who have met her. She is smart, experienced, and clearly passionate. Johnson will probably prove more popular than her predecessor, Thomas W . Payzant, a technician who inspired respect as opposed to affection.
Without question, the schools improved substantially under Payzant. But the goal of making the Boston public schools work for all of the children who depend on it has proved elusive. The gap that really matters is the one that separates the children who are engaged and inspired by school and those who aren't. Closing it will be no small task, but we should all hope Carol Johnson is up to the task.
Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at walker@globe.com. 