About eight years ago, my daily commute between midtown Manhattan and the suburbs took me through Harlem and the South Bronx. Looking out the window and seeing the deplorable conditions in which children were being raised, I began to feel that we, and our democratic society, were failing them. My wife and I knew about Gene Lang, a New York businessman who returned to his school in Harlem to give a graduation speech before the all black or Hispanic sixth graders. He began, "Your future is limitless, the skies are bright," but he knew that this wasn't true. Tearing up the rest of his speech, he said, "The only way you can experience your dream is to graduate from high school and then from college. The odds are you won't do that, but I'll tell you what: If any of you graduate from high school and can get into college, I will see to it that your tuition is paid." Thus began the "I Have a Dream" Foundation. We joined Lang's efforts. That spring, I spoke to a graduating class of fifty sixth graders in the South Bronx and made them the same promise: "You graduate from high school, and I'll see that you can go to college." The class was excited--for about two weeks, then interest waned. We hired a social worker, arranged for tutoring, and worked for six years with the fifty students we "adopted." When the class finished the twelfth grade in June 1992, only seven enrolled in college. Five or six more may decide to enroll. Considering all the time and resources that we dedicated to this project, getting only twelve or thirteen out of fifty students into college seems a waste.
Why weren't we making a dent in these kids' attitudes? Why weren't we able to improve their grades? Why weren't we getting more of them to stay in school?
If we are trying to save kids who need an education and they are in a system that does not educate, our efforts will fail. The answer: Take students out of the schools that don't teach and put them into the schools that do teach.
There are two parallel school systems in New York City. The public school system enrolls 960,000 students and involves a huge bureaucracy, with some five thousand administrators outside the schools themselves. In the early 1990s, it was costing $6,000 yearly to put a student through grammar school and $7,600 to put him through high school.
The public system does have some very good schools, even a few of national renown. But most students have no freedom of choice; they must go to their assigned "zoned schools." Despite the millions of dollars poured into them, zoned schools have a dismal record of performance. Only 25 percent of all students in zoned New York inner-city schools graduate. Four years after entering high school, about 15
...
