While I share Geneva Overholser's desire to improve the educational lot of the nation's poor children, I do not share her belief that the Heritage Foundation's "No Excuses" report shows us how to do it.  Let us give the report and Ms. Overholser the benefit of the doubt and assume that the high test scores of the schools in the report are 1) real and 2) reflect learning that generalizes beyond the test itself (many test scores do not).

Here are some things that contribute to those high test scores that Ms. Overholser doesn't mention:

1.        Extra effort.  Even one of the principals admits that to replicate his school on a national scale "would require a group of educators that does not exist today."  These principals are obsessed with their schools.  They work 14-hours days and ask that their teachers live similar lives:  "I ask them: will they make the time, will they sacrifice their other commitments…"

Sacrifice their other commitments?  Little wonder then that one principal interviews 100-150 teachers before making a hire (that would require 25,500 interviews to put just one teacher in each of the nation's roughly 17,000 low-income schools).

Little wonder, either, that another school reports a 40% annual turnover in teachers.  In yet another school, teachers carry cellphones at all times and are on call 24 hours a day.  Says the principal "Ten calls a night might sound like a drag, but everyone goes to bed ready for school the next day." This is wonderful dedication, but how many people can we expect to put up with such disruptions to their own personal lives?

2.        Extra money.  Several of the schools are private and charge $5000-6000 annual tuition.  Given that few of the students receive scholarship assistance to meet this fee, one wonders just how poor the families in these schools really are.

In addition, some schools receive considerable amounts of money from private sources.  A press release describing a $300,000 donation from Johnson Controls to four private, religious schools in the study reads "We are pleased to join Chrysler, Ford, General Motors and many other corporate sponsors in this worthwhile effort."  

3.        Extra time.  A number of the schools have eleven-month school years.  Many have test-oriented after-school programs and some, Saturday programs. 

4.        Smaller size.  Small schools and small classes achieve more.  Many of the report's schools are small.  One, for instance has only 152 students in 7 grades, another has 285 spread over 14 grades (pre-kindergarten through grade 12).   If we attempted to render such small schools and small classes nationwide the construction costs, not to mention salary costs, would be staggering.  Such an effort might well be worth it, but it requires much more than Ms. Overholser's challenge to simply "Free the Principal."

5.        Selectivity.  Public schools take anyone who lives in the neighborhood.  The study's schools do not.  One fourth of the schools are private.  Others are magnets.  These schools exercise substantial selection in whom they admit.  It is clear that the one high school in the study is selecting high-scoring middle school students.  And at least one, maybe more, can select teachers: It pays starting teachers up to $35,000 a year whereas local public schools pay a paltry $22,000.

The report omits many important data, including those for staffing, funding, and expenditures.  The most important missing data, though, are those bearing on the long term successes of the students.  Most of the schools are elementary schools.  Although many of the schools have been in existence long enough to produce such information, one looks in vain in the report for evidence--even a single testimonial--that these students meet with success in high school and college. 

In my own writings I have often called attention to the enormous performance gap between poor and middle class schools in this nation.  Some data I have shows that in an international study, a suburban, but not exquisitely rich, high school scored as high as the highest nation in all areas tested: general mathematics, general science, advanced mathematics and physics.  Other data show that only 1 of 41 nations in the study (South Africa) scored lower than the District's public schools in math and science, and only 2 of 41 (Colombia and Kuwait) scored the same.  The other 38 all scored higher.

To eliminate this colossal gap will require a colossal effort.  To date, we have lacked the political will to undertake it.  That the "No Excuses" project could only find 21 low-income, high-performing schools out of 17,000 says something about how difficult the task is.  That these schools have so many additional resources going for them, as described above, only emphasizes that difficulty.

Poverty is like gravity, a condition that affects every aspect of life.  People tried for centuries, without success, to overcome gravity and fly.  They succeeded on a systematic basis only when they attached immense power to the right design.  Even if "No Excuses" provides some clues about the design, it fails to show the enormous power that will be required.  Ms. Overholser says, "we [should] allow ourselves no more dodges."  Diminishing the enormity of the task, as she does, is itself a dodge.

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Gerald W. Bracey is an independent educational researcher and writer living in Alexandria, VA.  He is author of the annual "Bracey Report on the Condition of Public Education (Phi Delta Kappan, October), and of Bail Me Out! Handling Difficult Data and Tough Questions About Public Schools (Corwin Press, April, 2000).