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And critics. Some charge that Jackson's grandstanding is all that EXCEL has, at least as a "program." In Chicago, EXCEL's national headquarters, the program employs only two staffers and several secretaries. There are four staffers in Kansas City and two in Los Angeles, where EXCEL faces extinction as a result of Proposition 13. Many black community leaders feel that Jackson is making things too easy for whites by putting unfair responsibility on the deprived for their deprivation. Jackson's response: "Slave masters never freely give up their power. The slaves have to rise up and cast off their oppressors." In fact, when asked a question Jackson nearly always responds with a well-rehearsed slogan or a ministerial platitude. Debate with him is difficult. Says Alice Blair, superintendent of Chicago's District 13: "You can't knock gimmickry because it does work with kids. But you can't do anything without good principals who are motivated to change things."
Blair should know. Three years ago, before Jackson began his ministry to education, she was already requiring the teacher-parent cooperation that has been espoused by EXCEL. In other Chicago schools, principals have simply folded Jackson into their own plans, and he serves as a willing catalyst. Without the help of EXCEL, a teacher at all-black Marshall High School started an interschool academic Olympics on a small basis a year ago. This spring, 20,000 students from eight high schools competed. In Detroit, ten students at Pelham Junior High, once considered a problem school, went to Louisville to win a national math olympiad. Among the reasons for their victory: individualized student instruction and parental supervision.
If teachers and school administrators do not see Jackson as a messiah, they nonetheless praise him for his role as a kind of Moses. Away from crowds the fiery phrasemaker admits, "I think that all you can do is light a fire for change and then hope that it will keep burning."
Says Ken Van Spankeren, principal of Chicago's Orr High School: "When I speak to the students about being great, about excelling, I can refer to Jesse's speeches, to his inspiration, and that means a lot to the students."
Even better, Jackson and Project EXCEL have drawn national attention to the fact that reform of inner-city schools, often regarded as hopeless, actually can be achieved. HEW has awarded EXCEL $400,000 next year to expand into four more cities, and the National Institute of Education is funding a study to determine EXCEL'S effectiveness. Indeed students everywhere can learn a lesson from Jesse Jackson: "When the doors of opportunity swing open, we must make sure that we are not too drunk or too indifferent to walk through."