Nowhere are those changes more evident than in the Duncan housing project, a drab, troubled complex that once had a mini police station on the ground floor. Now that space has been converted to something far more productive: brightly painted classrooms of the Jersey City public schools. In one room, 4-year-olds attending summer school play in the kitchen area, where their games are salted with lessons in vocabulary and grammar. In another room, social workers prepare for the weekly two-hour meeting of a parent-support group. Across town, the Montgomery Gardens project hosts a similar program, one where parents attend adult-education classes, too. Schools that once hardly taught anybody anything are now trying to teach everybody something.
The turnaround was born of a reform of last resort. In 1987, only 25.9 percent of Jersey City’s ninth graders passed the math, reading and writing components of the state-required High School Proficiency Test. New Jersey, like 18 other states, has a law that allows it to seize a troubled school system. Nearly four years into the five-year takeover, the state-appointed superintendent reports that “sweeping efforts have changed the…Jersey City school system from a symbol of decay and despair in urban education to a model of hope.” These programs range from innovative preschool classes to career-oriented education regimens that run through high school and are linked with local businesses. The state legislature hired consultants at Arthur Andersen & Co. to assess the changes. Their recent report to the legislature concluded: “the takeover is working.”
At least so far. Before the takeover, only 27,727 of the estimated 52,000 school-age children in Jersey City attended public school. Today, enrollment is up dramatically, to 30,266. (About 44 percent of the 30,266 students are black, 33 percent are Hispanic and 13 percent are white.) And according to Ray O’Brien, vice president of the school board, “the school system was a political-patronage sewer line, and that’s pretty much dried up.” More than 100 members of the overgrown central-office staff have been reassigned, demoted or fired, freeing up money for programs. The state has given principals authority over their buildings; several have been ousted for failing to meet state standards.
The early-childhood program makes school a family affair. Social workers regularly visit the homes of the–Children. The schools feed the kids two meals each day. And the parents are expected to cooperate. Single parent Maria Morales has five children in school. Morales, who dropped out of school herself, had problems disciplining her children. “I figured grabbing them around the neck or smacking them was the right thing to do,” she says. But the children only misbehaved more–particularly teenager Jeannette, whose grades were poor. Then Morales heard about the early-childhood program’s parenting workshops and began attending sessions. Now instead of hitting, she disciplines by grounding her children. Jeannette’s grades have improved markedly.
In exchange for enrolling her youngest daughter in the preschool and kindergarten programs, Morales agreed to attend adult education classes. After she passes the GED exam, she plans to apply for a job as a preschool teacher’s aide through the program’s job-training and placement service. Pat Noonan, who supervises the Jersey City early-childhood program, says that she recruits children from impoverished families by sending social workers to the mail rooms at housing projects on the day that welfare checks arrive. The classes are now so popular that school officials have started to reserve a few spots to meet the demand of middle-class parents who want to enroll their children.
For all the optimism, many educators caution that four years isn’t long enough for any experiment. “We don’t have enough experience to know if takeovers work yet,” says Thomas A. Shannon, executive director of the National School Boards Association. But New Jersey is undeterred; the state is in the final legislative step of seizing Newark’s troubled 50,000-student system. “State takeover is a way of grasping a school system, bringing it back and then restoring local control,” says Elena J. Scambio, an assistant state education commissioner. It may not be a complete answer, but it’s a big help to children who never did anything to deserve an educationally bankrupt system,
