Education: Getting Tough

New Jersey Principal Joe Clark kicks up a storm about discipline in city schools

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Clark's way of sparing no rod nor spoiling any child has touched many other hearts. Supportive letters have poured into his office. A professor's wife from Erie, Pa., tells Clark his philosophy and style are just right; a mother of two from Queens, N.Y., approves of his tough line; and a senior citizen from Olympia, Wash., writes simply, "I wish we had a few more like you." Many of the letters contain money -- in amounts from $2 to $100 -- for Clark's defense fund. This past week brought some big bucks. Jack Berdy, chairman and CEO of On-Line Software, a computer company in Fort Lee, N.J., pledged $1 million in scholarships to Eastside over the next ten years, on the condition that the board resolve its conflict with the principal. "I think dismissal is inappropriate for a man who has brought so much to that school," says Berdy.

Clearly, discussions of Clark's approach to taming the blackboard jungle run high with emotion. Cooler-headed critics -- and fans -- suggest that the best ( method of evaluating what he or any other educator has done is to look at the achievements of his students. In Clark's case the record is mixed. No question that he cleaned up the graffiti, kicked out the pushers, restored order. But academic triumphs have been more elusive. While math scores are up 6% during Clark's reign, reading scores have barely budged: they remain in the bottom third of the nation's high school seniors. While a few more students are going to college -- 211, up from 182 in 1982 -- Clark has lost considerable ground in the battle against dropouts: when he arrived, Eastside's rate was 13%; now it is 21%.

Moreover, as his critics point out, any principal can raise test scores and cut disciplinary problems by tossing out the troublesome low achievers. But this hardly represents a solution to a community's problems. Rather, it just moves those problems from the classroom onto the street, where the dropouts drift into trouble or plain despair. "In many cases the school was the most stabilizing factor in their lives," says Alcena Boozer, head of an outreach program for dropouts in Portland, Ore. "Then that's gone, and nothing's there."

Paterson, like too many other school districts, has no alternative programs for the losers, most of whom simply vanish into a festering underclass of unemployables. Nationally the dropout rate for the past three years has hovered around 1 million -- the equivalent of dumping the entire pupil population of New York City, biggest in the U.S., onto the nation's trash heap every year. Very few ever drop back in. Most of the others are lost forever, not only to the school system but to society at large. The battle to prevent those losses has never been more difficult. Old-style pedagogy simply does not work when the climate both inside and outside the schoolhouse is one of paralyzing despair. Inner-city educators speak of a "ghetto mentality," in which very little is expected of students -- by parents, teachers and others. Students quickly learn to match those expectations. "Schools knew how to succeed with kids who wanted to succeed," observes President Timpane of Teachers College. "It's only in the past generation that we've had the challenge of trying to succeed with individuals who didn't want to succeed or didn't even want to be in the classroom."

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