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.
However, she faced tough obstacles. There was plenty of rigor in Jewish studies at the school: Each day, students took Hebrew, two Bible classes, and courses in Jewish law, philosophy, and history. But the only required science courses were physical science and biology. Some faculty and parents protested that more secular studies would overburden students, some of whom already had a school day that ran from 8:15 a.m. to 5:20 p.m. Raising standards for admission to the National Honor Society would promote unseemly student competition, parents argued. Teachers doubted they were up to the task of instructing Advanced Placement courses.
Bechhofer discussed the objections with parents, students, and the school's lay and rabbinical leadership. She gently sought to remind different groups that expanding the school's secular studies would honor the Orthodox tradition of doing well in all aspects of life. "The more there is to a person, the better she is able to serve God," she would say during the sometimes tense gatherings.
Those discussions won over skeptics. "It is important to make the decision-making process transparent," says Bechhofer, "so there's no mystery about how things happen." She also demonstrated by personal example the possibilities of hard work and the prospect of being professionally successful yet deeply observant. Despite her large family, she's at Hanna Sacks early and late--often very late. Once, a sleepless student called the school to leave a message at 3 a.m. To the girl's shock, Bechhofer picked up the phone. She was going through prospective teachers' resumes.
Unorthodox tales. After Bechhofer and the rabbinic board cleared the philosophical hurdle, Bechhofer began transforming Hanna Sacks's curriculum. She started with English, because English department head Dinah Rubinoff had raised the prospect of teaching AP English literature several years earlier (only to be told the girls were probably not up to it and that some of the curriculum, like The Scarlet Letter, was off limits to Orthodox teens). Bechhofer endorsed Rubinoff's Advanced Placement plan, encouraged her to contact another Orthodox school that offered AP, sent her a draft of state and local curriculum models, and gave teachers funds to travel to national conferences.
In the fall of 1996, Rubinoff tried teaching AP English composition (rather than the controversial lit course) to a select handful of seniors. It quickly became clear that the teachers needed to do more in earlier grades to prepare students for this challenging course. To ensure that more students could pass the AP test the next year, Rubinoff began working with Bechhofer and the other instructors to revamp the school's entire English curriculum. Today, three years after the rocky start, there are 12 students in Rubinoff's class.
In her pursuit of a more rigorous and varied curriculum, Bechhofer has had to think imaginatively about staffing and other administrative tasks. Hanna Sacks has long relied on part-time teachers, who make it possible to offer so many courses to this small student population. Bechhofer embraced that tradition, working tirelessly at recruiting part-time specialists. Today, 38 of the school's 42 instructors work part time, including English teacher Susan Albert, who earned a master's degree in humanities at the University of Chicago and who also teaches at a local community college.
Limits and rewards. As dedicated as Bechhofer is in pushing her students academically, she knows she has to ease up at times on her hard-working charges. When students protested last fall that they were overwhelmed by their workloads, she put a student committee on the problem and backed its recommendations that no more than 20 minutes of homework be assigned per night per class and that no student face more than one test per day. (She and her colleagues spent hours creating a complex testing schedule to enforce this.) She rewards the school's 40 or so seniors for sticking with the school's tough science curriculum by letting them select among three courses for their final year's focus--AP biology, AP psychology, or child development.
Bechhofer's steadfastness has paid off. Hanna Sacks now has 35 of 37 seniors enrolled in AP courses in English composition, calculus, biology, psychology, or American history. Two thirds of its students take four years of math, and the entire school takes four years of science. "We raised expectations and found doing so wasn't beyond their capabilities," says math teacher Dan Mix, who has 26 students preparing for an Advanced Placement test in calculus.
Short, soft-spoken, and driven by a commitment to each and every child, Bechhofer couldn't be more different from Joe Clark, the bat-wielding former principal of Eastside High School in Paterson, N.J., who was hailed a decade ago as a get-tough savior of urban schools for hounding troublemakers out of his hallways. Bechhofer, to be sure, is running a school where chewing gum, wearing nonregulation socks, and plopping a head on the desk during class are considered discipline problems. But if Clark established order in Eastside High--undeniably a prerequisite for education to take place--it is Bechhofer's vision, drive, and savvy that get students to reach their full academic potential.
Examples of excellence
Includes all or part of the following counties: Cook, De Kalb, DuPage, Grundy, Kane, Kendall, Lake, McHenry, and Will
URBAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Hyde Park Academy (S), Chicago
Kenwood Academy, Chicago
Von Steuben Metropolitan Science Center, Chicago
Whitney M. Young Magnet (S), Chicago
SUBURBAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Adlai E. Stevenson, Lincolnshire
Buffalo Grove, Buffalo Grove
Elk Grove, Elk Grove Village
Glenbrook North, Northbrook
Glenbrook South, Glenview
Maine West, Des Plaines
Niles North, Skokie
Palatine, Palatine
Prospect, Mount Prospect
Rolling Meadows, Rolling Meadows
Schaumburg, Schaumburg
William Fremd, Palatine
[Data for chart are not available.]
CATHOLIC SCHOOLS
Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary, Chicago
Benet Academy, Lisle
Fenwick, Oak Park
Marian Catholic, Chicago Heights
Resurrection, Chicago
St. Rita of Cascia, Chicago
[Data for chart are not available.]
INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS
Hanna Sacks Bais Yaakov, Chicago
Northridge Preparatory, Niles
Timothy Christian, Elmhurst
[Data for chart are not available.]
SUCCESS RATIO: Ratio of actual to expected performance. When this equals 1.0 (at the PERFORMANCE THRESHOLD line), actual performance equals expected performance. Above the line, schools are performing better than expected.
Below the line, schools are not performing as well as expected. AP TEST TAKING: Number of Advanced Placement tests taken divided by number of seniors. SAT/ACT TEST TAKING: Percent of students taking college-admissions tests. STATE TEST SCORES: Average scores on the math and reading sections of the Illinois Goal Assessment Program. SAT/ACT TEST SCORES: Average college admissions test scores. S: A public school (a magnet, in some cases) that has selective admissions for at least half its students.
This story appears in the January 18, 1999 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.