There’s an interesting press release emanating from Newport News today on PR Newswire. Superintendent Marcus Newsome is understandably proud that his urban school system had four of its five high schools listed in Newsweek Magazine’s list of 1,000 top performing high schools in the country.
Newsom has succeeded in the face of conditions typically cited as reasons for failure. Newport News is a working class town with its fair share of poverty. Approximately 45 percent of the city’s 33,000 students are eligible for free or reduced lunch; 55 percent are African-American and 1o percent are Hispanic.
Newsome credits a systemic approach coupled with “research-based means of changing school cultures” and building strong leadership teams. In partnership with the HOPE Foundation (Harnessing Optimism and Potential through Education), based in Bloomington, Ind., the school system has worked intensively with low-performing schools to train leadership teams of teachers and administrators.
Notes Jay Mathews, creator of the Newsweek list: “The more schools I have examined, the more I have come to believe in the power of high school cultures, which are different in different parts of the country for reasons that often have little to do with the usual keys to high school performance — the incomes and educations of the parents.”
Would somebody please convey this message to our lawmakers? We’ve tried pouring money into schools. Maybe it’s time to try a little HOPE.