Strong Principals
Can a rigorous religious academy like Hanna Sacks Bais Yaakov High School be transformed into an excellent all-around school? Yes, but such dramatic changes require . . .
Not long after sunrise one day last November, Shoshanah Bechhofer wheeled her 1988 Chevy Nova into the parking lot of a kosher Dunkin' Donuts on Chicago's North Side. She was running late for a meeting. The 34-year-old principal of the Hanna Sacks Bais Yaakov High School, seven months pregnant with her sixth child, had already spent an hour at her desk at the Orthodox Jewish girls' school. Shortly she'd be sipping tea with Deborah Garfin, the school's psychologist, in the eatery because they needed to discuss ways to help several students who were struggling with their schoolwork and Bechhofer didn't want to be disturbed.
Until recently, Hanna Sacks did not have a school psychologist. Nor did it have Advanced Placement English, college-level calculus, or a competitive National Honor Society. Founded in 1965 as a gender-segregated annex of the Orthodox, coed Ida Crown Academy, Hanna Sacks until recently steeped its students in religious preparation, while doing little more than fulfilling the state requirements in secular academic subjects. Within Orthodoxy, there is a wide spectrum of belief about the value of secular studies, and those associated with Hanna Sacks represent many points of view. While the mission of the school theoretically was to promote excellence in all areas, it wasn't happening.
Building consensus. Over several years, Bechhofer, a teacher of biblical studies, the wife of a rabbi, and a doctoral candidate in education at Northwestern University, was able to build consensus around the notion of high standards as both a religious and an educational goal. Beyond that, with the help of a supportive board and a core of committed parents, she was able to turn her hopes into reality.
Her independent school is very different in many ways from a typical public high school. But her struggle to raise standards is a challenge confronted by principals everywhere. And the strategies she employs at Hanna Sacks are used by outstanding school leaders in public and private schools alike. Just as many resist higher standards in some urban schools because pessimists don't think poor kids can handle a demanding academic education, some in the Orthodox Jewish community were skeptical that girls could manage a rigorous secular education on top of their religious studies. Schools that battle those expectations to push students to achieve regardless of their backgrounds must have strong leaders like Bechhofer. "Good principals have high expectations for all children and continually work to compare where students are with the goals that they are capable of achieving," says Willis D. Hawley, a professor of education and public affairs at the University of Maryland.
Bechhofer's crusade at Hanna Sacks, a school of just 155 students housed in a former public elementary school, was born of educational philosophy and strategic necessity. When a competing Orthodox girls' school with a very traditional curriculum opened only miles away in 1994, Hanna Sacks marketed itself as a school consistent with Jewish tradition that stressed all-around excellence. Bechhofer, the daughter of a mathematician, also wanted to give students the rich options and variety in secular education and Jewish tradition that the tiny Orthodox school she attended could not provide.
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