Students in Union City, N.J., get twice the funding of students in California. They attend two years of full-day kindergarten. Recent immigrants to this country are taught initially in their native language.
For all their differences, though, there are also some core similarities with California districts like Sanger, Garden Grove and Long Beach, which author David Kirp identifies in his latest book, among the beat-the-odds districts. Chief among them: a focus on the long view, with a steadfast purpose and longevity in leadership.
Kirp, a professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy at University of California, Berkeley, spent a year observing a third-grade class and other schools in Union City, an impoverished town across the Hudson River from New York City. What caught his attention was a patient, systemic approach to improvement that contrasts with the red-hot turnarounds that often scorch teachers and eventually the superintendents who set them in motion. It’s the difference between flash and substance, soufflé and sourdough.
“This is a tale of evolution, not revolution,” Kirp writes in “Improbable Scholars.” “The bottom line is simple enough – running an exemplary school system doesn’t demand heroes or heroics, just hard and steady work. Stick to your knitting, as the saying goes, stay with what’s been proven to make a
