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Tostado remains in awe of her fiery star, to whom she credits much of the school's renaissance: "He calls parents every time someone doesn't show up in class," she says. "He visits parents when they get home from work to get them to sign his contracts pledging hours of extra homework. He spends summers poring over the school records to find recruits for his classes like he was a coach." As a result of such dedication, 70% of last year's graduating class was accepted by colleges -- a stunning score for a former gangland satrapy.
At Suitland High in downtrodden Suitland, Md., Principal Joseph Hairston also prizes his teachers, recruited from schools all over the country. He treats them with respect as part of what he calls the "corporate style" and says he wants to "professionalize the workplace." Lately he has been lobbying for across-the-board raises. Hairston believes in discipline (which he prefers to call "reality therapy") and has greatly diversified the curriculum -- "from dance to drafting," even to Russian. Under such policies reading scores have soared into the 87th percentile nationally from a dismal 28th. Math scores are up from 60% to 85%. This miracle has been pulled off in a mere year and a half, which, Hairston claims, is plenty of time "if you have an organizational structure, economy and support; if you know what you want to do and how to do it." Last week President Reagan saluted the school's success by paying a visit.
Talented administrators and teachers elsewhere often create special incentives to motivate students. At Eastern High in Washington, Ralph Neal, who was named one of the top ten U.S. principals by the National School Safety Center, rewards good grades and attendance records by publishing the information in the Washington Post and taking an oustanding youngster to lunch each month at a good Capitol Hill restaurant -- where he also fetes his teacher of the month.
At Lewenberg in Boston, Principal O'Neill has designed, as a colorful celebration of reading achievements, a twin-tailed Chinese dragon stretching across the entrance to the school's two wings. Students begin each day of the year by reading aloud. And every afternoon, everyone in the school -- including secretaries, administrators, security aides and teachers -- ends the day by reading silently. Anyone who finishes a novel gets to add a piece of paper to the dragon's tail, with the title of the book and the reader's name. With five months left in the school year, the dragon already stretches about three-quarters of the way down the corridors.
Parent participation is another priority for these bellwether principals. Rubye McClendon, who heads the dazzling, $20 million, virtually all-black magnet school, Benjamin E. Mays High in middle-class southwest Atlanta, put on a special celebration two weeks ago for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, attended by, among others, Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, whose son goes to the school. Around McClendon, however, Young is just another father who is aware that the principal expects his participation at the school. "Parents are the key to discipline," says McClendon, "and they must know what's going on. We send the syllabus home, and the parents must initial it."