Getting Young Lives In Line
While the nation still struggles to fulfill the promise of Brown , these schools are proving that high achievement can also be colorblind
In many high-achieving schools, Advanced Placement classes tend to be stratified by race. But on a recent day in Greg Gillis's Advanced Placement world history class at Fort Campbell, where pupils were taking in a slide show of works by masters like Botticelli and Raphael, you could see African-American, Latino, and Asian students mixed in with all the white faces. All told, Fort Campbell offers 13 AP courses, with African-American students making up 20 percent of enrollment and Hispanic students accounting for 9 percent.
That's not to say that plenty of students, many of them minorities, don't need extra help. In the reading lab, a supplemental offering for students who score poorly on reading tests, Chiantae Rodriguez, a sophomore, is puzzling through an assignment for her English class. "We'll buddy up right here," says teacher Patty Greene, motioning to a desk near a tie-dyed futon. Across the room, students scan a story about Denzel Washington's boxer character in The Hurricane. Then comes a yell: "I'm ready for something harder!"
Moving up. "Where in other schools you begin to see intensive sorts of tracking that would leave the black students at lower math levels, you do not see that sort of segregation" in DOD schools, says Claire Smrekar, an associate professor of education at Vanderbilt University and coauthor of a report on minority achievement in DOD schools. Instead, the lab classes are used to prepare kids for more-challenging offerings. Says Principal Killebrew: "We didn't want to just throw them in there."
The military community helps out, too. Parents regularly stop by to sit in on classes, and soldiers are often released from work to tutor the kids. The command structure also gives teachers unique leverage with parents. "If I say [to the commanding officer of a student's father], `Colonel, you know Mr. Smith really needs to be at this meeting,' that's pretty motivating," says Scott Lowe, a special-education teacher.
But contrary to widespread belief, DOD-run schools aren't particularly, well, regimented. Fort Campbell students delight in rattling off the misconceptions they routinely encounter: "They ask us, `Do you march to class? Do you wear [fatigues]? Do you carry a gun?' " says Adam Mines, a 17-year-old senior.
In fact, at first glance, Fort Campbell High might even seem more Montessori than military. Sure, there are the kids in their junior ROTC uniforms--15 percent of students participate. But there are also two sections each of guitar and piano classes, along with courses on psychology and computer-assisted animation.
The appeal of DOD schools is so great that parents of all races are willing to endure cramped and often shabby housing to keep their kids enrolled. "People tell me all the time, `Drive by where I live, see the kind of housing I have,' " says DOD schools director Joseph Tafoya. " `I'm there for one reason: so my kids can go to these schools.' " -Anna Mulrine
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