I taught at the worst school in Texas
My time at Pearce was an unforgettable lesson in what the education reformers get wrong
JOHN SAVAGE
I taught at the worst school in Texas
J. E. Pearce Middle School sits in a part of Austin my students called the Two-Three. Short for 78723, the Two-Three is a ZIP code that better captures the broken spirit of East Saint Louis than the progressive-minded ethos of Austin. In 2002, the year I started teaching at Pearce, many of the faculty had been hand-selected to revive the struggling school. Ron Bolek, our Ecuadorean-American principal, liked to compare our situation to the Peace Corps. If recent college graduates could donate two years to a starving village in Ghana, why not commit a few years to a school in a neglected corner of East Austin?
Seven years later the Texas Education Commissioner would call Pearce the worst-performing school in the state. I would rather not recall the aspects of my stint at Pearce that seem to affirm this assessment: the death threats, the police roaming the hallways, the schoolyard beatings. For all the turmoil, though, the school taught me some powerful lessons that, in their poignancy, not only warrant reflection but potentially hold educational lessons for a brighter future.
In the last decade a new species of educational reformer has captured the public’s attention. Talk show-friendly celebrities like former Washington, D.C., Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, and award-winning movies like “Waiting for Superman,” have gained fame by blaming teachers for the achievement gap between poor students and middle-class students.
The appeal of this educational axiom — ascribing student achievement to teacher quality — is understandable. It suggests a silver bullet solution: improve teaching and you improve test scores, especially for poor students. And because test results predict life outcomes — the likelihood of securing a job, getting divorced, going to prison—better teaching can lift students from poverty. Or so the thinking goes.
Some have called this narrative the myth of magical teaching. We yearn to believe it. We yearn to think that caring, hardworking teachers can change the world, or at least their students’ lives. Like American Exceptionalism and Horatio Alger stories, this supposition has become part of our national mythology. As an idealistic young educator I, too, gladly accepted the myth of the magical teacher as reality — that is, before Pearce shattered my naïveté.
* * *
On a warm spring day in 2003 I stood in the middle of the hallway outside my classroom. A row of permanently locked orange lockers lined the cream cinderblock walls. Rumor had it that the administration, fearing students would hide weapons in lockers, barred their use. Being without lockers worked fine for my students. I didn’t have enough books for them to take home anyway.
The bell ending second period rang, and I braced myself against the commotion as a river of arms and legs, low-slung backpacks and sagging jeans, the in-kids and the trying-to-fit-in kids pushed their way to class. In some ways the scene was common to any large, crowded American middle school — a wash of hormone-addled young men and women not sure of their place and not fully in control of anything, much less their emotions. An Austin police officer — cops were a frequent presence at Pearce — stood 15 feet behind me. I smiled and nodded hello to a boy who approached me. He wore baggy jeans and a white T-shirt several sizes too large for his wiry frame. The boy cocked his head back and returned my smile with a stare — “mean muggin’,” students called it.
“f*ck you,” the boy yelled as he lunged at me, swinging his fist inches from my face.
Speechless, I watched the scene unfold. The police officer sprinted over, yanked the boy’s right arm and pinned him face-first to the wall. Roughly. He whispered something in the boy’s ear, then dragged him to me. “What do you say?” the officer prompted.
“Sorry,” the boy muttered.
The officer pivoted to me. “What do you want me to do with him?”
Part of me wanted to grab a fistful of the kid’s shirt and ask what the hell he thought he was doing. Another part of me, a better part, wanted to know if there was any way I could help this kid. Right here, right now, what could I do? Not much.
So I drew a deep breath, turned to the officer and said, “You can let him go.” The boy walked away. I stood in the hall and tried to slow my breathing.
A minute later the bell rang again. Rattled, I walked into my classroom where my students were completing a warm-up assignment, like they did every day. As I walked to my desk, I noticed Leticia, one of my best students, clandestinely reading something tucked under her desk. (Students’ names have been changed.) I paused and glared at her. She knew she was supposed to be doing her warm-up assignment. I coughed to get her attention, but Leticia was mesmerized by this note. A couple of students noticed and started smiling. I had given her a chance — she knew what she was doing. I marched to her desk and stuck out my hand. “Give it to me, now.” If I hadn’t been so shaken by the hallway incident minutes earlier I probably would have been more empathetic, more myself, sensitive to the fear and embarrassment in her eyes. She handed me the notebook. I walked to my desk and slammed it down with a force that surprised even me. Leticia — quiet, conscientious, kind, never-got-in-trouble Leticia — started crying.
“f*ck me,” I thought.
* * *
Before I came to Pearce I knew that many of its students scored poorly on standardized tests; the school was rated “Low Performing” the year before I arrived. The only other non-elementary school in Central Texas rated “Low Performing” was in the Travis County Juvenile Detention Center. I also knew that 80 percent of Pearce students received free or reduced-price lunch, and almost all were African-American or Latino.
Like many attendance-zoned high-poverty schools, Pearce was often a chaotic place where discipline issues, student absenteeism, low parent involvement and high teacher turnover were the norm. Why would a teacher with other options work in such a stressful, violent setting? I chose Pearce because I was going to make a difference; I would do whatever it took to help these kids overcome classism and racism and escape poverty. Full of youthful enthusiasm and self-flattery, I could change the world by working at Pearce. Why not?
Here is the hard truth about my experience: I didn’t have much of an impact. Sure, I made a small part of the day more pleasant for some students, but I didn’t change the course of any of my kids’ lives, much less the nature of the school. A middle-class teacher coming into a low-income school and helping poor students realize their true potential makes for an excellent White Savior Film, but “Dangerous Minds” isn’t real life. Real life at Pearce is survival.
This is not to say Pearce didn’t have a stable of talented staff, some with deep roots in the Two-Three. Mr. Green, who attended college down the road at historically black Huston-Tillotson University, was a committed and graceful algebra teacher with an infectious positive energy. Born in Panama, he had as much street cred with the Latino kids as the black kids. I once asked Mr. Green how he stayed upbeat at the end of a difficult day. “I’m too blessed to be stressed,” he said with a smile.
Mrs. Ologban, despite her diminutive stature, displayed absolute control in her classroom. I spent several planning periods observing her to improve my own teaching. Mrs. Ologban taught me it was more important to reward good behavior than to punish bad. The first time I observed her I noticed she kept two lists of students on her board — a good list and a bad list. Too simple to work, I thought. But I was amazed when even disaffected students smiled when Mrs. Ologban wrote their name on the good list.
Mr. Parish, who grew up close to the Two-Three, had some street in him and knew how to use it. He could convince even the most recalcitrant 13-year-old to see a problem from a different angle. When a disagreement between the Latino boys from the soccer club and the black boys from the basketball club culminated in a fight, Parish was instrumental in calming everybody down. Mr. Green, Mrs. Ologban, Mr. Parish — these people taught me a great deal about teaching, relationships and toughness in the classroom. They were the bedrock of Pearce.
In spite of their efforts, Pearce was still a failure — at least according to the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS). The TAKS is just a test, and by no means the only indicator — or even a good indicator — of the commitment of a school’s teachers and administrators. But in the modern era of test-driven school reform, filling in bubbles is the bottom line, the final word and the only thing that matters in the eyes of Bush’s No Child Left Behind and Obama’s Race to the Top.
Poor students typically face challenges that inhibit their chances of performing well on standardized tests. Whether it’s the lack of a cognitively stimulating home environment or the higher prevalence of health and emotional problems, the bubble exams might as well be in Mandarin. A 1999 Department of Education study compared students’ test scores when entering kindergarten. Children from the most affluent homes scored 60 percent higher than students from the least affluent homes. High-poverty schools like Pearce only perpetuate this gap.
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