Graduation Rates Transcript
November 20, 2003

Participants:
Barbara Byrd-Bennett
CEO, Cleveland Municipal School District
Juan Molina Crespo
Executive Director, Lorain County Children & Families Council
Dr. E. Jean Harper
Superintendent, Elyria City Schools District
Eric Hutchinson
Assistant Principal, Shaker Heights High School
Greg Sanders
Director, Family Resource Center, University Settlement
Moderator: Joe Frolik, Associate Editor, The Plain Dealer

MR. FROLIK: Welcome, first to the roundtable in our Tomorrow's Promise series of discussions. Today's topic is about high school drop-outs, or more, high school graduation rates and how to get them to the level we all want to see the State graduation rates as a priority. It's part of the report card on which districts are judged from, are they so important, and if I came to you, if I say a high school junior told you, I'm thinking about dropping out, I'm not sure I want to be here, why would you tell me it's important to stay the course?

MS. BYRD-BENNETT: I think there are two very, very important reasons, two reasons that very often school systems don't get the message to kids that the economy has handed out that the way in which prior generations where young people did drop out and could go directly into a work market doesn't exist any longer. The stats that show us the difference between earning power of a high school drop-out and a non high school drop-out and certainly somebody who goes on to higher education or trade school.

Then, thirdly, I'd really ask you the question, why? What's leading you to have this thought dancing in your head that school is not important or that there's something better on the other side? So those are the pieces of the conversation I would have with you.

MR. FROLIK: Okay. Juan Molina Crespo, what would you do?

MR. CRESPO: Well, I think I would tell that young person a couple of things. Number one, it's the ticket. You know, everybody thinks there's a quick fix. Our young folks, nowadays, they want all the flash and dash. The real deal is that it's very, very few of them that get that without an education. So I always propose that it's the ticket out and it's the one that no one can ever take away from you. And that's how I respond to that.

MR. FROLIK: Eric Hutchinson.

MR. HUTCHINSON: As we all know, in any educational system, teaching and learning have to go on, but the ultimate prize is graduation. So, ultimately, you want every student to graduate. And I guess, as we all know, that each and every situation with a student is unique and important to that particular student at the time. However, it's my job as an educator to understand it's temporary, it's a temporary crisis. And ultimately, I have to believe and I want to make that young person believe it's a decision they will regret in the end.

MR. FROLIK: Jean Harper.

MS. HARPER: Well, I would like to tell them that it's one of the most important decisions that they will ever make in life. It is the foundation of what they're able to do in the future and that they deserve the very best. It's one way that they can insure their dreams can come true.

MR. FROLIK: Greg Sanders.

MR. SANDERS: One, the things that I know about kids is that they like to make choices. So if you came to me and told me you were ready to drop out of school, I would try and instill in you that what the decision you are making right now is going to limit the choices that you have in your future. By you coming to me, that would indicate to me that you have some sort of trust in me. And so, I would have an open dialogue with you and ask you, what is it you really want to be? What choices do you have to make now that will allow to you become later. Because so many of the kids that I work with don't consider their future as much as they consider the present. And the choices that they make now are so vital to what their future holds.

MR. FROLIK: Let's build upon that and also, what Barbara said about how do you get kids? It's very -- all of us may be concerned about our future. We ought to be, especially when you're young, you're not thinking too far down the road, that where you want to be in 20 years doesn't make much sense when you're 15 or 16. How do you get them to think that way and how do you get them to see what I think a person at one of our Town Hall meetings called the end of the rainbow, the payoff to go through education.

MS. BYRD-BENNETT: I think that's incredibly difficult. I don't think it starts with the youngster in high school who comes to say I'm prepared to drop out, I'm prepared to make that choice. It has to start far earlier. And I do believe that our children are so much the Pepsi generation, the right now generation. To think of next year, to think of next month, much less 10 years from now is something that is reasonable to all of us sitting here as adults. I just, my experience hasn't led me to the conclusion that our kids really understand the long range, and that it is an incredibly difficult job because it's not just the schools job or the systems job, it's an external piece of the faith based leaders giving the same message that we give about the long range, our parents, other social agencies giving the same message. So it's a real tough sell to say to a young person, you would be better off in the future, wait on this choice down the future. I just think that we kid ourselves to say that we can teach our children the end of the rainbow is good.

MR. HUTCHINSON: I just want to say, we are competing for their attention. We are vying for their acceptance and their trust. And young people don't see the future as we do. Young people believe that they can talk it. We try and get them to understand that you are what you do. And so again, with all the distractions and all the options that young people have, especially in mid-size and large metropolitan cities, we are vying for their attention. We are trying to get them to believe in themselves and also what we're trying to give them is an educational conditioning.

MR. FROLIK: Greg, you work in a very high poverty neighborhood, a lot of kids who, frankly, may have not seen what life could be for them. How do you, at Settlement, what are some of the things you do to try and expand their horizons?

MR. SANDERS: One of the things we try to do, we don't necessarily start with these kids once they reach the junior and high school level where they're ready to drop out, I believe if you get these kids engaged in positive activities, whether they be at our agencies or somewhere else down the street, and expose them, not just to, in our case, the North Broadway neighborhood, but expose them to opportunities that exist outside where their bike takes them or outside the world they live in. Show them, whether they like to draw cartoons or they like to play on computers, there's a wonderful world out there for them to achieve in. But it all comes back to them getting their education, because without that foundation of education, they're limited.

MS. BYRD-BENNETT: Just to jump in here, I think Greg is absolutely correct. I think there has got to be that connection between what the education is and the long range goals. And I think, very often, at least in our case, in Cleveland, we really try to start very early to make that real world connect, to make the school to career, the school to work connect tangible for our young people. And I think you're so right, they have got to see that connect. Our curriculum and all of our teaching methodologies have to be reflective of that goal.

MR. SANDERS: Like you said, make it tangible. Make it something that these kids know that they can do, something that isn't, that peeks their interest, that involves their talents.

MS. BYRD-BENNETT: Not the traditional career day. I really have this major opposition to career day. It's wonderful as a piece, but, you know, everybody comes in with their suit and tie and says, I have made it. Look at me and you, too, can make it. There's no connect to that. I think we have got a lot of deep work to do to make that career day culminating rather than the hit and miss.

MS. HARPER: I think that's true, too, but I'm not really sure how many adults really can think about their future 10 to 20 years from now. So you know, the world is changing and the world is changing very rapidly. And, in actuality, we're trying to prepare students for a world that we really don't know what it's going to bring. We're preparing them for the unknown. So were preparing them for not only some of the hard skills, in terms of, you know, skill level, but soft skills as well, in terms of getting along, in terms of interacting, in terms of communication and all of that. And so going back to the choice portion of it, the more you prepare yourself and those kinds of skills, then probably the greater their opportunity. So I would think, too, in terms of relevance, I think that's really key. But I also think that we have to engage kids all the time about what's happening next month, what's happening next year, what's going to happen two years from now, five years from now. And then, maybe, we start there and then begin to look further out to the future. But, I know, even to think about what I'm going to be doing at 72, I'm not really quite sure right now.

MR. HUTCHINSON: We don't know what the world is going to be like 20 years from now. There lies the art of teaching. To try to get young people to trust in what I'm trying to teach you and where I'm trying to take you, you have to form relationships. We have no idea where we're going to be 20 years from now. As adults we can say that, so our teenagers in our lessons we know they are confused and have no idea so that's why we have to form relationships and try to get them to believe in the concept of education and where we're trying to take them.

MR. FROLIK: There's a number of studies that have looked at things that correlate to whether or not kids finish high school and stuff. Some have said that one of the best predictions is that kids who believe that their teachers care about them are likely to stay in school. I think the Federal Department of Education did a survey of kids who had dropped and the number one thing they said was that they thought nobody cared whether they dropped out or not. Now Eric, at Shaker Heights they call you the motivator, what is that? What does that tell you about the environment that you, as a teacher and administrator, that you have to create in the school.

MR. HUTCHINSON: Well, it goes back to attacking the situation. I think teaching starts with self. How do you leave your home without making sure that you are ready to go into battle when you are trying to touch lives. Anytime I speak, anytime I walk down the hall, I notice students are looking at me. I except the fact that I'm a role model, I embrace it. This is my calling. I thank God this is what I do. Anytime I speak to young people it's all about what I'm trying give to them. It's not about me standing up there trying to grandstand. It's about everything I say is trying to get them to understand where they can go academically in their lives, how they can achieve, how they can believe in themselves.

MR. FROLIK: How do you communicate that message throughout? It's very tough to be a teacher, particularly in this day and age, particularly with, in some of the schools where kids bring a lot of baggage, a lot of issues that have to be dealt with everyday. And at the best of jobs, some days there are times you don't want to do it, how do you keep your teaching staff having that kind of motivation?

MS. BYRD-BENNETT: I think there's several kinds of creative ways and none of them are guarantees but you keep pushing. I think you find people like Eric, you find people like Greg, you bring them into the fold and you make sure that you expand their resource base so that they can do the work at the school, at least from my level or the work outside of the school. I think that a part of what we'll be engaged in in many systems across the nation are beginning to become engaged in is a smaller high school. There's just -- these large comprehensives are just a knockout.

I have got schools with 2,300 kids. How can anybody in that building really know me? How can somebody in that building really care about me? And it's not just the teacher as we know, it's any single significant adult in that child's life has a long lasting impact. So some of our kids are not as lucky to have you there. If there's one other adult that can motivate that kid to say it's important that you stay, it's important to stay the course, here are the choices. And I think some of the ways we are trying to reform our schools so that it makes a better need of teachers as well. So the students, by extension, are touched.

MR. SANDERS: The neighborhood I work in, the average level of achievement of education for the adults in North Broadway is 8th grade. So the motivation, at times, does not come from home. And I think that puts an awful lot of stress on the fact that the schools have to be a place that includes the parents, begins to have them understand the importance of their childs education, but also, that motivates the child to come everyday. Because if that foundation is not being laid as strongly as you would like for it to be laid at home, then the school and the community are the next catches for these kids to rely on in order to get them through, is the process.

MR. FROLIK: Greg mentioned schools and that touches on something that came up at the forum that we had out at Admiral King High School recently. And I would like to show you a bit of tape. This is Gloria Noland who is State President of the Ohio Alliance of Black School Educators.

MS. NOLAND: Many of the parents that we are talking about, that do not visit the schools, are those parents who had negative experiences in school. So why, again, why would I want to go back to something that beat up on me? And I'm still having that feeling that you do not want me in these schools.

MR. FROLIK: That's a point I have heard a number of times over the years on various stories. That a lot of parents, like Greg said, they did not achieve well in school. To them, it's not the -- it doesn't bring up those warm and fuzzy memories that it does for those of us around the table who can look back and say, we had a lot of positive feedback when we were in school. Juan, you work a lot with parents. Can you talk a little bit about the issue that Miss Nolan brought up. How do we work with parents to better involve them in helping their children become more successful than they were?

MR. CRESPO: I think one of the criticisms that I often hear is that schools, for the most part, require or request parent involvement. And I think in reading the kit, that the federation put out, the citizen's kit, I noticed in there that the very first item they talk about is parent involvement in the school or school involvement by parents. The reality is that as long as, to a large degree, in that involvement, the criteria for that involvement is dictated by the school.

Unfortunately, in many cases, it's not even a policy criteria, it's based on the individual teacher or administrator that that parent is interacting with. So what happens is that you have a relationship, one on one, where that person, that teacher, administrator may be having a bad day that day, and that child may not be their favorite child. So that's reflected on how it is that that interaction and that dialogue exists between parents and school personnel. So what we hear often is, yeah, they want us involved, but they have to dictate when, how and what is addressed.

So I guess I would say that that's got to be more fluid because those lines, you know, those clearly delineated lines between community and school, and parents, and home life and the faith community, they're not as delineated as they were when we were coming up. They are very, very fluid these days. So I think that the schools are currently saying, we want the parents, but the parents have to also have a say in terms of what their involvement is going to be in the system. I think that that's not often the case.

MR. FROLIK: How would you go about doing that? How can we change that dynamic?

MR. CRESPO: I remember a hundred years ago --.

MR. FROLIK: You're not that old.

MR. CRESPO: -- when a school, a particular school in the Lorain District that I happened to go to, would be open in the evening. And the premise was, if you open the gym in the evening until 7 or 8 o'clock, you will have the kids off the street, and parents can come and you have a couple teachers there, and you have an open gym, and that sort of like real good feeling stuff, right? But what has happened is that now we have issues of collective bargaining agreements. We have issues of increased costs in utilities. We have issues of security. So it's not -- .

MS. HARPER: School funding.

MR. CRESPO: -- school funding. So there's a lot of other factors that dictate, today, how it is that that community is involved as opposed to how it was back then.

MS. BYRD-BENNETT: And I argue, Juan, that those variables that dictate how community is involved are very often out of the control, as you have just tipped off a number of them, of those people who run schools. And yet the perception is, from the community, that schools don't want you there. I'd love to keep the doors open. And you know, the beacon concept that lighted schoolhouses the Mayor and I have been working toward is, I believe, the way in which we do open and embrace and we do get better involvement and we do say to the children that we do care. But those constraints are real constraints. And how you get around those or how you deal with those, I haven't found the solution. I really have not.

And clearly, when in my day, the older days as my daughter would say, when schools were open, it was clearly, a different political party was in power, finances in the economic systems were very different and the way in which social needs were addressed, were incredibly different than they are now. So I think that there's some bigger political as well as economic issues that we're facing, and impact on that education issue.

MR. SANDERS: I remember when I first, my background was in daycare when I first got out of school, and my first idea when I first started working at a daycare in Cleveland was, you know, we have great after school program but I can only serve 18 kids a day and there's hundreds of kids, hundreds of kids in all our schools. I thought to myself, boy, it would be great if we could have after school daycare programs in the Cleveland schools. It makes sense. I know, they do it in other city school districts around.

So I started to ask around if this was even a possibility. Actually, I wrote letters to Cleveland Municipal School District asking if I could explore the opportunity and we ran into the same problems. It wasn't a matter of the schools not wanting to have wonderful after school programs for the kids to attend. It was a matter of, there was a janitorial contract that we have to be out of the school by a certain time or the janitorial rates go crazy. And you know, all these different things that, to me, seemed just so, it seemed so possible with these things taken out of way, that would benefit so some of the kids. When you look at the statistics you see, these kids who go to after school programs achieve much better than kids who don't. But there's just all that bureaucracy that's in place that won't allow that to be set in motion. We can take our 18 kids, but for every one of those 18 kids, there's probably 15 or 20 that would love to be involved.

MS. BYRD-BENNETT: Greg, isn't that the bureaucratic maze? We're eliminated. There are still very real dollar issues associated, as you well know. I think there are opportunities to go to extended community pool resources foundations, et cetera, but as the pool begins to be even more dry, fewer children are served and what happens is the divide between the haves and have nots just grows exponentially. I have seen it since I have been in Cleveland. It's just been five years. Where we had an after school program in all of ours , it's dwindling. Even the use of the title No Child Left Behind dollars, it's more restricted. I can't provide the same service that we could provide to our children. So I absolutely agree with you.

MR. FROLIK: You had to cut out most of your summer school programs.

MS. BYRD-BENNETT: That's right. We started, five years ago, serving every young person who want and who need, and my high school children were the largest percentage of kids who came everyday in the summer. We thought all the little people would come. It was the high school kids who came and stayed with an 84 percent attendance rate. The high school level during the summer when kids have jobs and lots of other competing issues. And as the funds begin to dry, this year we could only service those children who are missing one or two high school credits or one part or a part of the proficiency. That's not a real extended year program or real summer school program.

MR. SANDERS: There's kids who fall by the wayside because of the systems not being in place. If you look at it longitudinally, these kids economic impact on the City of Cleveland isn't going to be as great as those who do. If you look as, I have a high school graduate who is going to produce and who is going to become versus I have got a child who just didn't have anything, no support, any support in place for them, you know, it seems to make so sense to give these kids as much support as they need to succeed.

MS. HARPER: In terms of a parent involvement, I think the school certainly has a role in inviting parents, and being an inviting place to be and trying be as flexible as we possibly can to get parents to come in. But, and it's probably not a but, it's an and, and we need parents regardless of whether they have an 8th grade education or not, because I don't know that that's actually the criteria either. Because neither of my parents were high school graduates but we had a value for education in our house, and that reading was fundamental, and you have reading as a part of your family on a daily basis, and that you do homework, you know, that there are homework assignments and you have checked that homework at night.

You don't have to know all the answers to the homework, you just have to know that homework is done, that they spent the time, that they have some of the resources there, you know, well-lighted space, that they were going to bed on time, that you are getting up on time, that you are going to school on time, that, you know, any number of those kinds of things are also just as important too. It's not only the school that can help parents to realize how fundamental all those things on television, what people are watching on television, specifically, in terms of monitoring what that is. You know, in terms of exploring dreams and opportunities and encouraging. Just say you can be anything you want to be. You need an education in order to do that.

So I think we need all of our institutions to participate in that. It's part of the faith community, I mean, it's part of the Y, it's part of the Settlement. We do it informally. We do it formally. And then together, I think that's how it works. It's not just any one institution.

MR. FROLIK: How do we -- you know, I kind of joke sometimes, even to get married you need a license. To be a parent, there's no licensing, there's no training process. How do we get that kind of message out to parents, what they need to do to have their kids be ready for school and then to progress up through the system.

MR. CRESPO: Parent training programs are, I think, fundamental to some of the parents, particularly some of the ones that Jean had mentioned. Parents -- kids don't come with instructions; right? And so, I think, unfortunately a lot of our parents, a lot of our younger parents didn't have that kind of support, didn't have that kind of direction. So how do we pass that on? How do we help them develop those set of skills, develope the parenting skills so they can, indeed, know that it's critically important to be able to sit down with their child in the afternoon or the evening to see if that homework is checked?

There's a disconnect there because there's, the priority for the most part is, you know, am I going to be able to have enough food to make a dinner, and then do I have the energy to make the dinner, and is the electricity on so that the stove will work? Those are real fundamental, very real issues that a lot of our parents still address. So for them to say, you know, Johnny, did you do your homework? That's a distant third or fourth. And not that they may, I think, intrinsically know that that clearly is the way to go, that they should be monitoring that but the energy is not there, you know. There's a lot of other things that they're addressing on a day-to-day basis that are still basic survival in many cases. Those have to be addressed.

How do we give them the tools so they have the fortitude to address that before we can expect them to address how to talk with an administrator, how to address a school levy issue, how are they informed about new curriculum or new concepts, in terms of, maybe the small learning community concept. Our parents don't know about that. And so, that learning curve is greater. I propose that there's got to be a standardized parent training skill development mode that could be incorporated into some of the schools so that the schools offer that as resource to the parents because it will be a win win --.

MS. HARPER: All I'm saying is that it's not just the school. The school can't education children alone. The school can't education parents alone. It takes an entire community to do that. So we have to be on one accord as a community. Do we see it as being important? And if we see it as being important, are we going to put time energy and resources towards that?

MS. BYRD-BENNETT: I would say you have to define the role. I do believe it's incredibly fluid. I don't believe we can say, okay, we want all parents to come in learn about small learning communities, curriculum, extended day, help with social service issues. If I'm a parent, you know what, I'm not coming. That's too much. So I think we need to start with, and what we say is, we need to start with the first steps.

And the first steps are very minimum for me. Just get your kid there. I feed them breakfast, lunch. Get them there for me. Attendance is incredibly important to me. No excuses. He's tired? Excuse me? He should have gone to bed earlier. Get to school and get to school prepared. I simply mean wash yourself up, put your clothes on and get there. Get me the kid and let me work with them. And those are the first steps. Then, whatever the medical issue is, I have got to have a healthy kid. And it's -- that can't be, solely, the schools responsibility. Get that kid that checkup. If you can't navigate the system, we'll navigate for you. We have to get healthy kids and the youngster there. And then, thirdly, I would say, and you know, these incremental steps then we now begin to address, what are the necessary areas of curriculum standards that children are going to need for the 21st century?

We did a survey about 7 years ago in this Cleveland area, maybe you're familiar with it Greg, that said, what is it that parents value in the academic arena? The three that were at the bottom were algebra, technology and foreign language. When we came back four years later it ratcheted off in terms of level of importance, but foreign language was still one on the very bottom, technology then ranked next and algebra got a bigger sense of importance.

Our parents, at least in the generation, like you Jean, my parents didn't graduate from high school because they could leave high school and go into civil service, they could go into the steel industry. Those jobs don't exist so we have to educate our parents in terms of what's the next step for their children.

MR. SANDERS: I would even take that a step further and say that when we have these kids, we need to educate them about what their role is going to be when they become an a parent. When I talked to kids who are involved with the juvenile court system and ask them what they think of in relationship, when they think of a relationship, what they would do in terms of becoming a responsible father or mother, the answers I get are scary, to be honest.

So what I would like, and most of these kids aren't parents yet, but if and when they become parents, they have expressed to me that they're not ready. So if I can somehow talk to these kids, educate them about what a parent, what being a parent is, what the roles and responsibilities, what the difficulties are, how they need to provide for the child that they're, they'll eventually have, then I think that you are going to be raising a better future parent than if you just don't do that.

MR. HUTCHINSON: Going back to what Juan stated earlier, I think ultimately, a parent just wants to be heard, wants to be serviced. I'm fortunately working in Shaker Heights where parental involvement, it is expected and we do receive it. And ultimately, I think the Shaker parent knows he or she is going to, at least be heard and given an opportunity to express his or her thoughts as far as what they believe is not going on or how they think people were involved and what have you. I think any educated or educational personnel person needs to also empathize with those homes in those communities, that education is not thought of as premium. And you have to empathize and understand that that is real. The tape that you showed earlier where the parent was voicing her displeasure, I do believe, in terms of what education has not done or what she had experienced in her educational career.

And again, that's real. We have to understand that we have to work with that parent to get that parent to believe that it's going to be different for your child. And where are you now? Do you like where you are right now? And if not, let's start with your child and try to make sure that your child has additional opportunities and doesn't have the same feelings that you have once that child is an adult.

MS. BYRD-BENNETT: Eric, I wouldn't minimize that at all. Our experience in Cleveland is even deeper than that. The current parents that are in my school and some grandparents, are the products of a desegregation case. They're the products of being bussed and shipped and never having a voice. They are the products of a system that said, you are the failure not the system. They're the products of people never listening. So for us to reverse that trend, to say, we are at least attempting to be responsive, is real tough work because it's their children. And they believe, and we're trying to have them suspend that disbelief, that the system is going to be exactly the same. Because we all know school as we know it, whatever our experience was as we know school.

So I think you have hit, you and Juan have hit to the real core of what the work is, a part of the work. Yet, the major part of my work is reading, writing, arithmetic, technological skills. I have got to graduate children who are able to go on, children who are able to see the rainbow, children who are able to compete with kids in Shaker, or kids wherever. But we have got that job as well.

MR. FROLIK: Juan, you have done some things with, I believe, parent resource centers in the schools or just establish a place where the parents can go to the school and be their place. Can you talk a little bit about that?

MR. CRESPO: Sure. Sure. The Lorain County Children and Families Counsel actually funded the original Family Resource Centers that were located in Dr. Harper's district as well as Dr. Morgans's district.

MS. HARPER: We still have it.

MR. CRESPO: Yes. Although that funding has dried up, those were state dollars at the time, they were -- the evaluations and the review, and the stats that we received, not just from the program people and the staff that were at the resource centers, but also from the young moms, I say moms because primarily moms, was just overwhelming. It was just overwhelming. And we knew that that sort of drop-in center, probably in the old days would call it a drop-in center, that drop-in center was working because it was a friendly space that parents felt they were actively engaged, not just in their particular child's day, but in the other children's day as well. It was a place where parents were able to communicate with each other, talk and share in what the victories were and what the barriers were in that particular school.

So those family resource centers were very productive. They were very important in terms of, I'm speaking in past tense because of the funding issue, and I'm glad to hear that Elyria had continued to fund them. But, clearly, the small steps, you know, very incremental step, but you talk about that a parent feeling a part of that school and, you know what, I'm here and I am going to find out what is going on with this child of mine or whatever going well with this child of mine. Crucial, minor in terms of wasn't all that much money. Not a lot of problems in terms of staffing and monitoring. A lot of the supplies were donated. So not a lot of work to put it together. And very effective, I think, in the long run in terms of making sure that that parent stays involved in the children and in that school district.

MS. HARPER: And I think we need to try and clarify one thing too, in the Cleveland system as well as in Elyria system and I'm sure systems across, we have parent involvement like do you in Shaker Heights with some of our parents. We have parent involvement like you are talking about in the Settlement House in some of our schools, too. So we have a whole range and I just don't want to be very stereotypical about all parent involvement either in the public schools.

MR. SANDERS: One of the things that was done at University Settlement, one of the things that was done by trial and error was, I wanted to get my kids dad's or the male role model in their lives to be involved with their kids. So 8 years ago when I first started, I said, I'm going to start a fathering program and get my dad's going. So I said, I'm going to have some discussion groups. Well, no one showed up. It wasn't something that was an interesting topic to talk about. Saving for your kids education or brushing your kids teeth, those weren't things that dad's wanted to come to.

So I said, I have to change the way I do things, and what I did, which has been very successful is, we started to make it a fun place for them to come, someplace they would enjoy. So now what we do is, we'll have our dad's learning about brushing their kids teeth every day. Then, after that, we're going to go to see the Cleveland Cavaliers play. So any way that we can engage the dad's and have them spend time with their kids in a fun and exciting way, that's been my carrot that I've been able to dangle.

MS. BYRD-BENNETT: Our father's program has just been blossoming. We probably started with a movie that looks much like yours, two father's, three father's as we began to put the carrot out there. It's incredible. They call now and say when is the next session, you know. The family literacy centers have blossomed. We believe that contributes to our own literacy and how our children are fairing much better. And the opportunities for another program that we have for parents to partner around the literacy but take it beyond the school wall. Can we get you to the museum. Museums cost a lot. Rock Hall costs a lot. But can I get you there to have the experience so that there's and important dialogue between you and your youngster.

I don't think I ever went to the theater as a young person growing up in New York. I couldn't go to the theatre, you could barely get to the movies. If we could sneak in maybe, because it was too expensive. It's a matter of, no matter how we want to tap dance around an issue. It's a matter of economics. It's also a matter of race. I mean, race and culture, because the ways in which many of the predominant population that I have in my system right now, the way in which school is seen and the way in which parents involvement is defined is very often defined differently than the people who are the professionals in the school. So although we have it, it's a blending of these two different levels of expectation. And I think that that's something that we have to think about and we have to address as well.

MR. HUTCHINSON: The programs that Barbara just spoke of, are wonderful, especially designed to enrich our young people and to expose them to opportunities and things that they in everyday lives are not exposed to. But I'm going to return to a basic premise. Whatever happened to simply, that young person coming home and looking to you. Looking into that young person's eyes -- the mother and father -- saying today I learned this, today we did this, today we did that, achievement.

Having your child come home and walk through that door and speak of what they learned, what they were taught that day, what they did, interacting with other students, what the teacher said and how the teacher encouraged them. See, that's a real important key there. That's a very important moment, that child coming home and you look at your child and know that your child had a good day at school. That is going to increase the parental spirit and enthusiasm in whatever school district that they are in. In other words, if my child is coming -- my child is learning. My child is excited about going to school. My child comes home all the time and speaks about what he or she is doing. And when you get that, you are going to get more and more parental involvement and confidence in the school system.

MR. FROLIK: You talked about -- earlier, you mentioned your early literacy program. We had a story in the Plain Dealer a few weeks back that was very interesting. It looked at 4th grade achievement and that Cleveland Schools, the 4th, your 4th graders measured up pretty well. And yet, people say that over time there seems to be , we seem to have lose a lot of kids as they go along through the system. In my discussion, I think with all of you before we got here, we talked about sort of those transition points. Eric talked, I think, about and Jean also spoke about 9th grade a lot. We'll get to that when we move into high school. What do you think is going on? And how do we, where or how do we lose kids? And how do we change that dynamic?

MS. BYRD-BENNETT: I think we made lots of mistakes in the 60s and 70s with the whole notion of middle school being this great place to discipline their education, advisor and advisee. What I have learned in my experience is that putting all those people in one place with those hormones does not work. And so we've moved very directly and very deliberately towards K-8 system. And the results of our 4th grade are really being like a race horse with blinders. And saying kindergarten, we're going to follow those kids and our fourth grade, we're going to follow them.

So fourth and sixth now, we have seen incredible results. It's about the expectations, whether or not you are a second language learner. Whether or not your case is brown or black or white, that we do expect that you are going to do well. And if the parental piece comes along, good. But I have to continue to just forge deep to what we can deliver. And then, lastly, the trend, the K-8 transition reformation of our schools has made an incredible difference. Our kids stay in school. Suspensions, expulsions are down. It goes back to building a larger community of family and teachers. So the teacher I had in kindergarten and second grade, I know that 8th grade kid. I know the parents. If they are not here, I know it's not a lack of interest. And so you get these communities that are growing. And I think that's terribly important.

And then, lastly, over the past five years, we currently have more kids enrolled in the secondary level than we have had in the last decade because the kids are staying. I think it has to do with the results of the K-8 curriculum. It's more linked to what children need to know and be able to do to be successful. And so our graduation rates are going up, our drop-out rates are diminishing, not at rapidly as I would like. But looking around this table, I'm probably older than all of you and you get the sense of urgency when you don't have much time left to do the work. I think those are the three things that have helped us to move this piece along a little more rapidly and more systematically.

MR. CRESPO: That's good, Barbara, because one of the thing we also hear is that there's not a sort of a seamless transition between, for example, seventh and eighth grade. You know, is what the child is, what the student is getting that first day of eighth grade what they expected based on what they had in seventh grade because these are real issues for parents and for students, particularly in that age group. I have a daughter in eighth grade, you know, and I had parent/teacher conference last night, as a matter of fact, and she's doing great, but those are the kinds of, sort of intangibles that it's hard to put your arms around and say, we're going to do this with this transition, you know, to try to enhance that kind of seventh to eighth grade transition for these students. We're not seeing a lot of that. At least I don't think we're seeing a lot of that.

MS. HARPER: We're doing a lot with transition, right, and what we have done from eighth grade to ninth grade is we have summer camps for parents and for students, and one of the things I'm really pleased about is that we get as many parents as we do students coming to the camps which is just an in-depth orientation, but what we did this year and we have been working on this over time is to have teams of teachers at the ninth grade level working with a group of 120 students, and we started out with one team several years ago, then we went to two teams, three teams and now the whole ninth grade is teamed, but it gives that sense of smallness rather than coming to a school of 2,000 kids where you are leaving one of 300, now you still have a base. You have 4 people who know you very well and know all the people in the group well and they also know your strengths, your weaknesses. They're there to assist. They are there to help. They're there to say why did you miss this class, why did you miss that assignment. I will call your mom or your dad and they do, and it has made a tremendous difference and I think the research locally and nationally will tell you if we can get kids past the ninth grade, we can get them to graduation.

MR. FROLIK: Ninth is the big hump?

MS. HARPER: Ninth is the big, big hump. If you can get them through with all their credits, then they will go on.

MR. SANDERS: If I could just mention, one of the things that we have in our neighborhood is a lot of services, whether it be day care, after-school programs for kids until they hit that critical age of K through 6, state-funded child care that can be supervised by an adult while their single-parent mom is out working until six o'clock in the afternoon. Once these kids hit twelve, they don't have day care anymore.

We're fortunate to have a boys and girls club up the street. We have after-school programming, but a lot of our kids, when they hit thirteen and when peer pressure becomes extremely great, at 2:30 when they walk out of that school, they're not going to do their homework at times. They are going out to hang out and they're going to have peer pressure and they're going to watch television shows that may be inappropriate for them to watch. And what positive activities do they have available to them once they get out of school or can we develop programs within the school?

I know it's a money situation. I understand that. But are there things that our community can provide for these kids to support them and to let them -- encourage them to take the right steps along the way so once the school day ends, the continuation of positiveness continues at least until their parent can get home. And right now in our neighborhood, that's something that we desperately, desperately need.

MS. BYRD-BENNETT: Greg, we have been working really hard on that because I do believe that a part of our school to career, school to work, school to apprenticeship, school to something is what we have been working on so that when those young people leave, if there's not a rec center, if there's not a day care, if there's not an after-school program, what can we link that child to, that young person to that, in fact, is going to help him see what's at the end of the rainbow that is meaningful that is supervised, that is caring and that provides, you know, this caring, this one significant adult in this child's life who can look that kid in the eye and say, you are going to, I believe you can and I am going to be there to support you. We think that's critically very, very important.

And I would add that when children come to us from the eighth grade into the ninth grade, as Jean said, you can't just drop them into the school system. It's got to be smaller, better, carefully microscopic kind of watch and you have got to make sure, also, that you have things in that school for children who are on the accelerated end. How boring to have all your credits and have to come for six hours a day or be short three credits and I'm in the twelfth grade and I have to come all day. We have to be able to make better use of that young person's time and mind. So that's another piece we are working on and are very proud of, that our young people have all of the Carnegie credits, who have passed all parts of the proficiency, my question then is, well, why are you here. Let us figure out how we can get you into a productive work experience or onto the community college or onto Cleveland State University campus, so those partnerships and collaborations we think are critical.

MR. CRESPO: How do you get buy-in from your support staff and your teachers and counsellors and, I mean, I want to talk about that. I want to talk about knowing what we know, knowing that drop-out rates are what they are, that the data is what it is, how is it that we not repeat those mistakes? What's it going to take to move systems to the point where the drop-out rate or the graduation rate is -- I think in Lorain the other night, they said 100 percent. That's what the expectation was from the people in the audience. 100 percent. How do we get there knowing what we know?

MR. HUTCHINSON: Teachers have to go back to re-evaluating why they became teachers. Again, we as educators, we have our concerns and we have things that are going on that affect us as educators, as classrooms teachers, as administrators, counsellors and whatever, but the basic premise is what is best for that young person. And again, why are you in the game of teaching. So we have to look for ways to and strategies to make sure we are meeting the needs of that young person.

And when we return to those roots of why teaching was what we got into, I think we will deflect all the in-fighting and the bickering about issues that have -- that are important but the bottom line is what you are transmitting to that child. The object is to teach.

MS. BYRD-BENNETT: Eric, I think that is incredibly important. I also think we need to confront the data. At least in my system, we have been incredibly sloppy about reporting the data. And as everybody at this table know, the way in which the drop-out -- there are two difference things, first of all, drop-out and attendance. They're two very different things and we speak as if they are one. And the formula that the State uses to do the calculations are mind boggling, if they ever tell you what the real formula is. The fact of the matter is a child who starts in ninth grade in my system leaves and goes to Kentucky, stays for a year, he's in the Kentucky school system. Comes back to me, re-registers at a different school, that kid is a part of my drop-out rate and he is counted for three subsequent years until his twelfth grade cohort graduates. So he's a multiplier exponentially every year but he might graduate.

MR. SANDERS: He's a three drop-out.

MS. BYRD-BENNETT: Three-time drop-out. You've got it. So that's the formula that the calculation drives. So I submit to you that we, school folk, need to pay attention to the data and the way in which it's reported. The people at the schools need to be careful about if Barbara left, she's still the same person when she came back from East High to South High. We need to track that kid with careful numbers, you know, like a Social Security number. We have to track that youngster carefully.

And then lastly, if 71 percent of my twelfth graders graduated last year, 84 percent of them went on to two and four-year colleges. The year before, 64 percent of my kids graduated. You can't tell me that if I have got 64 percent of those kids graduating, that the drop-out rate as reported is accurate. It's a misfortune. I'm not going to whine about it. I have to live with it for four years until that cohort disappears, but the data has to be carefully inputted so that we don't do a disservice to our young people by portraying districts that are more abysmal, at least the portrait is more abysmal than the reality.

Ten percent increase in graduation rate, is that where we ought to be? Absolutely not. But once you clear up the data, you ought to be able to accelerate it into real beings that are graduating.

MS. HARPER: I think the other thing that is an issue is time, as well, and, you know, it's okay to take five years to graduate from college or ten years or twenty years, but -- and then, of course, that's not the expectation for students, but if a student did need an additional year, then why would the student not be granted an additional year without that being termed as a drop-out. Or if a student, of course, wanted to accelerate, then why either. So I think that is incredibly important in terms of how we look at it in such a narrow little box.

And I think if we even look at some of the other ways, as well, if, in fact, a student leaves school, leaves public school, and gets a GED, an equivalency, he's still a drop-out.

MS. BYRD-BENNETT: I get so excited about this. Even if he's in my GED program, even if he comes to my evening school and gets the diploma.

MS. HARPER: That's right. So we really need to have, just as we need everywhere else, multiple ways of getting it done.

MR. FROLIK: I talked about this the other day that in this day of information technology, that it shouldn't be that hard, even on a statewide basis, to figure out if a child who enters school in the fall of 2003, to follow him through the system, whatever the system happens to be and perhaps even into a GED program like Jean suggested.

MS. BYRD -BENNETT: Well, Jean, the State is a now coding all of our youngsters. Everybody is getting a number?

MS. HARPER: Everyone is getting a number. Supposedly if they go any place in the state system, then we should be able to track them.

MS. BYRD-BENNETT: Correct. But the complication will be is what is the interface between the State's new system and already existing systems.

MS. HARPER: I understand.

MS. BYRD-BENNETT: So I think there will be a lot more cloudy, muddy water before it gets cleared. But at least it's a step in the right direction to tracking our youngsters.

MR. HUTCHINSON: I thought I read the State said that in order to be considered a drop-out, you had to fall under one of the four categories, either being withdrawn due to truancy, attendance, the student has gotten a work permit and that permit is on file with the superintendent's office, also being 18 years or older or can't find where you live, in other words, residency issues and everything, so one of those four issues, I thought.

MS. HARPER: But remember, we are not tracking the drop-out rate. We're tracking the graduation rate, so they aren't graduating, so therefore --.

MR. FROLIK: I want to go back a little bit because I'm just very intrigued, maybe it's because of the age of my own children, about this ninth grade issue. Talk a little bit about what the ninth grader is going through and the kind of things that the schools can do to ease that transition or to stay with them to help them get over that hump, if that is, indeed, maybe the big speed bump getting out of high school.

MR. HUTCHINSON: Like with any student, any person who takes on a new job, even as an adult, you are confused, you want to be popular, you want to fit in. Ninth graders seem to have the most problems and struggle the most when making that transition to the high school level.

Last year at Shaker Heights High School, we had 95 repeat freshman, 95 repeat freshman or students who were likely to be repeaters, and I'll come back to that in a second, but the point is of the 95, 54 were repeat freshman and 25 of them, 25 of them were promoted and the other was held back. In other words, in order to help ninth graders, we have to do much more monitoring. There has to be much more interface in terms of meetings with that particular student. We have to come up with intervention strategies trying to convince that student to interact more with their teachers, seek out tutoring. It's a constant battle.

We have what is called Task Force 9 at Shaker and we have a group of mentoring teachers who work with those ninth graders who are likely to be repeaters due to the fact that they have not achieved at the middle school level. Now what's interesting about that group is they have high stay nine scores. They tested wonderfully. But at the middle school level and in their past due to all types of situations, they have not achieved. They've had Ds and Fs, and so we try to do is increase their study skills and also enhance their school culture skills.

So again, the issue of ninth graders is an interesting dynamic. I like to think that as the younger the student is, the more attention and the more encouragement they need. The older they get, obviously they are looking for you to be more trusting in their abilities and to lend an ear. But again, as long as they are of the seventh, eighth and ninth grade level, we need to encourage and look for ways to meet their needs and make them feel connected to the school and they have to achieve early. That's a big part of it.

MS. HARPER: And constantly. You need a series of successes to be able to withstand failure of any kind. We all do.

MS. BYRD-BENNETT: There's also the whole notion of economics. A ninth grade youngster who is 15 will get the work permit, who can get a job, whether it's at McDonald's or Kentucky Fried Chicken, it's a fast food, it's quick, I'm making money, I need to leave back to the opening with the drop-out. I'm going to go to work because I can make a few extra dollars, family situation is tight, et cetera. My response to that would be, that's not the long range goal. If that's an immediate for the reality that we talk about that so many of our families face, how do we, as the system, collaborate with the family to say, that's the short term, but what do we do for the long term.

What does the quality of the night school program look like? Is it rigorous? Are we just going to give them a piece of paper that really means nothing and now he's worked for four years at McDonald's and can't do anything? Is that the short term that will lead to, okay, we're going to do McDonald's now. You are going to school at night. He still counts as our graduation and not a drop-out and we figure those intricacies out but the young person is prepared and we simultaneously meet his need to be able to buy a pair of sneakers to come to school. There's so many of the realities that I think that I know I didn't know.

I didn't grow up with a silver spoon in my mouth, but poverty is very different now than it was in the '60s, incredibly different. So I think, as Juan said, we can't even imagine what our families are dealing with every day just to survive. And if that person by 15 in ninth grade is a part of the support of that family for the survival, the schools have got to be more receptive to figuring out how we do it differently. And so what if it takes five years. We applaud the kid who graduates from college in five years. Why not?

MR. SANDERS: You said something about instilling some school spirit with the kids who are entering ninth grade. I talk to parents who have not graduated from, in this case, South High School and I talk to parents who did graduate from South High School in the neighborhood. Parents who graduated, they are South Flyers. They know what football team they are playing on Friday. They know what is going on with their school, that their band is doing this or that they're doing that. They obviously have that school spirit behind them.

And then you talk to the parents who didn't make it through and they don't know a thing about South High School other than they don't really like it. So somehow South High School connected with the parents who really did well and bought into the school spirit thing and then the parents who didn't just didn't connect to the school, so I agree with you. I think there's got to be some way to increase that connectivity between South High School and the kids who go there. Make them feel a part of what South High School is and that they're a Flyer and that they belong and they are a member of something good.

MR. HUTCHINSON: Think about it. When you are a freshman and not achieving. For instance, in Shaker, in October, I do believe that there were 537 freshman, 469 sophomores and only 369 seniors. Now think of that. Usually in most school districts your freshman class is your largest class. So when you have almost, in some large cities, almost 50 percent of their freshman are not making it to their sophomore year, that's a staggering number, and that's why it's important that the freshman encounter success, consistent achievement and success and they're spirited about what school is offering them and their moral is high. Because, again, as that continues to get larger in terms of the feeling of I'm not succeeding and as they continue to stay in the high school, that really affects others and becomes cancerous.

MR. FROLIK: You mentioned the cancerous effect. It gets us to the issue -- I think it's very important to teens -- of peers and their peers. I would like to maybe go to another piece of tape that came from the Lorain Town Hall meeting. And this is Doug Grayson, who is president of the Lorain County Alliance of Black School Educators with some thoughts about how peers fit in this puzzle.

MR. GRAYSON: What about peer influence, what part that might play as far as I know we have seen increases in the districts, to what extent do the, quote, good kids that are trying to stay focused to graduation influence and bring the students that are negative. Maybe there's some activities that can be involved in regards to that, as well.

MR. FROLIK: Where do peers fit in in all of this in terms of the kids who are doing well, how do we figure out how to replicate the factors that have enabled them to do it and maybe to bring their peer group, the others in the cohort along.

MS. HARPER: How about your MAC Scholars? Because we copied the program we like it so much?

MR. HUTCHINSON: At Shaker we have what is called the MAC Scholars program. It's a minority achievement committee program. It's been in effect for quite some time now. We're also happy to have that in our middle school and our elementary schools now. The point is, it is a program that is designed to get our classroom leaders, in this case or African American young males and young females to be role models for those students who are not achieving up to their potential and everything.

So again, as I said earlier, seniors and juniors, well I didn't say this really. Let me just say this. Seniors and juniors I do believe have the right to be heard and I think that they should be given the opportunity to impact and to suggest strategies and share their stories with those freshman or sophomores who have struggled. Again, we, as adults, I think we have a lot to say and at times we say it as effectively as it can be said, but to hear it from your own peer that, hey, I was there, I struggled. I know when I was a freshman I did this and I got behind and all this, so they hear someone that you look up to, that's someone popular, someone respected in the building offering tips and strategies of how to succeed academically and how to, again, deflect and stay away from the negativity and the distractions that oftentimes get you off track and limit you from ultimately getting to the prize which is graduation day. We all want to make it to the show.

MS. BYRD-BENNETT: I think two of the pieces, lessons learned, never having been -- having had any athletic talent and really not caring about the football field but now that I'm a Cleveland person, I'm very much interested in sports is that I have learned that there's an incredible amount to learn from teams and it has nothing to do with whether you are getting an A or you are getting an F. It has to do with that collective, and so I think what we have done is to really increase the number of kinds of extracurricular and athletic opportunities for children, particularly for the ones who are coming in but the ones who are already there and getting that -- it drags them along and almost by, you know, osmosis, the academic, because you have to have a 2.0 and no Fs as a freshman in order to play.

And I'm not just talking about the football. Everybody is not going to play football or basketball well or softball or wrestle, but we have got fencing and chess and -- they have got a fancy name for it. It used to be called rowing. I think it's called something else now, but those kinds of activities that bring the freshman in as well as the arts. You know, the kid who is just coming in from the middle school who may have played an instrument, now he does it in a more formal way and he can be a part of the all city band or the all city theater production unites that child with students in his school but students from other schools, as well, because our children travel all over the City. So, you know, I got a kid who could live on the East Side and go to South High and so they are not a fabric of the community because they travel back elsewhere, but how do you keep those kids connected anyway in the activities of the school. So I absolutely agree with Eric that it's incredibly important that the kids hear it and do it with and from each other.

MR. HUTCHINSON: I'm also proud to be part of a program called Reach which is a program funded by University Schools. It's a program that's been in effect for about ten years and hundreds of their African-American males have gone off to college and everything. It's a program that basically provides academic enrichment for sixth graders through eighth graders and this is the third summer I've come out, the third summer of being the sixth grade English teacher.

I know that Miss Bennett, Barbara, has a partnership involved with Baldwin Wallace College. 34 eighth graders were given the opportunity to enhance their writing or English and math skills. Again, these type of programs make learning cool and say it's okay that you need help and we're trying to alter your skills using the type of programs that we need.

MS. BYRD-BENNETT: I would add, Eric, it's just anecdotal, I was actually near Martin Luther King High School where these 34 young men, African-American young men, have this opportunity at Baldwin Wallace. And I'm getting ready to visit the school and one of the kids who was really behaving in a naughty way and knew it, as soon as I got out, he was, I'm a Barbara Byrd-Bennett fellow. I'm not going to do that. I want to talk to you. Let me tell you what's going on.

It was the opportunity to be identified with something that was academic and positive that was motivating, and we have got to get many, many more such opportunities for our kids, many, many more. My point is that he really knew what he was engaging in was wrong behavior and that there was a positive influence somewhere else.

MR. FROLIK: You have talked a lot about academic rigor. What is the tight rope you walk? A lot of times kids who, perhaps, are in danger, again, the research shows they haven't achieved along the way so I think sometimes there's this tendency to put them in the easy classes. On the other hand, there is also research which shows if you put them around high achievers, they want to achieve high. You know, maybe the great anecdotal thing would be the Hymie Escalante example. You can't teach calculus to these kids. Oh, yes, I can. They'll succeed because of it.

How do you balance those things out and where does rigor fit in in terms of trying to keep kids motivated in school?

MS. BYRD-BENNETT: I guess, Joe, I don't. There's no balance for me. If a young person comes to our high school or middle schools who doesn't know that 7 times 7 is 49, it's like, okay, but you are not going to spend ninth grade in the Cleveland School District learning your multiplication tables, I believe that the kid who is dumped into rigor will need all the support, study tables, tutoring, mentoring, etc. but will be able to rise to a level that is far more acceptable than if I had placed him into remediation.

There's no reason why you can't do calculous if you don't know geometry and algebra. It's not a prerequisite, not from the disciplines point of view. So our whole push, push, push, and all of our in-serve and professional development for teachers and principals has been to get the mind-set changed that if he was failing and he has got a basic gray matter to do the work, get him in there.

And there's too much research and too many anecdotals that we all could share where a young person somebody thought was going to be a failure and just didn't have it, put him in the environment where everybody is saying you can and the support systems that Eric talked to are there to pull you along, a kid will do well. And where is the exception? You provide him the support he needs.

MR. FROLIK: You mentioned that person will tell him, you can do well. It can come in a lot of different places. I think one you mentioned was a speech teacher for you that said you can do it.

MR. CRESPO: Yeah. And I think those small victories need to be recognized. Oftentimes we don't sort of salute our students when they do something very minor and very positive and they are looking for that stroke and oftentimes it doesn't come, so then they start to internalize the fact, well, I did this right and there was no acknowledgment, so what if I don't do it the second time because I'm not being recognized for what I did achieve.

Again, anecdotal but very real in terms of the day-to-day existence that goes on with our kids. Joe, I wanted just a little bit to be -- in terms of retention, in terms of, you know, how do we keep these kids here and some of the things that we're seeing in terms of the teenage pregnancy rates, the pregnancy among our young girls in terms of the schools because when you look at that, and although clearly the rates are dropping, which is a good thing, I guess what we're experiencing is that there really hasn't been the kind of energy, the kind of excitement behind trying to reduce sexual activity among our young people in our schools and what kind of tools and what kind of methods can the school districts do and support to make sure that we're doing all we can with respect to that.
You know, there's materials that are available, the Baby-Think-It-Over dolls are available, materials for abstinence, materials regarding prevention and so that continues to be probably one of the biggest hurdles where districts can sort of step up to the plate and say, we're going to take a position on this. And it hasn't happened I think to the degree that it ought to.

I think the data now, people are looking at the data and saying, boy, I'm glad I don't have to address that now because the pregnancy rates are down. And so I guess I would challenge and say, let's not become complacent on that. It's very real, and when you look at that in terms of stopping kids from graduating, that will make it happen.

MR. FROLIK: I think there's also a lot of correlation between other risky behaviors, drugs and alcohol, kids who get into trouble that lands them into the justice system, whether or not they drop out, what are the kinds of things that we can do, both you, as educators, but then the broader community to steer kids away from those kinds of behaviors and do what Juan is talking about?

MR. SANDERS: Most of those types of crimes that you are talking about or most crimes that are committed actually occur between the hours of three o'clock and eight o'clock in the evening during school days. So what does that tell you? My guess is that a kid doing algebra isn't out shoplifting, but a kid who is unsupervised and just walked out of school and doesn't have anything else to do, they're going to be prone to engage in those types of behaviors.

So I get back to that point that I keep drawing home is I want my kids in the north Broadway neighborhood to have something going on. These kids aren't committing crimes while they're in school. They are being educated. When they get out of school, their mom's are working. What can we do to support these kids during that time when they don't have a day care to go to because they're 13, that we can keep the foundation going and keep that positive movement going for our guys so that they're safe, that they are taken care of and that they're engaged in positive activities.

MS. BYRD-BENNETT: I think, Greg, you are absolutely correct. The whole notion of when those activities take place, it's a critical time. It's telling us where we need to put our resources or a great portion of our resources.

I would add that we, as educators, to your point, Joe, need to take a look at, again, it's curriculum. Health has to be taught in a very different way than it was taught in my day. I think it has to be very direct. I think that it's not only the young women who get pregnant but the young men who make them pregnant or get them pregnant, but how do we get that whole comprehensive piece that again ties into choices, choices. I'm not sure if even to talk about abstinence could sound corny. You get into all the religious -- I don't want to get into all of that.

I want to do it from purely an educational standpoint and from here are the health issues, here are the risk factors associated with drugs, alcoholism, early teenagers pregnancy. More importantly, here is the impact of that choice. It's not only on you but on that little creature who is going to come into the world. How do we get that to be real. I mean, I like the carrying that little baby around but our kids our smart. They know that that little baby, you don't really have to get up for it and I'm going to give it back.

Well, there's no giving that back, and I think probably what Greg said and what Eric has been saying in terms of having the real children talk to the real children about that experience and when you hear the young women who have had a child at 14 or 15 and who are back at high school now and they're up all night with the baby and the health issues and the frustration, that's probably a greater teaching tool than Juan and I sitting up there as a Frick and Frack kind of teaching a group. That's not going to work.

MS. HARPER: I was just going to say it's another and. I think we need to do that, but I also think that its real important for kids to know where there options are. I'm not sure they know that there's a whole world out there and that there's a whole world of opportunity and choices that you can make and you really don't have to just settle for this.

And, you know, oftentimes we do sort of have kids talk to other kids who have had difficulty and they sort of relate to that, but what are the other choices. I think it was James Comer said once that, you know, we give kids scared straight kinds of opportunities. Everybody knows how to get into jail. Everybody knows how to get pregnant, but do we know how to get into Harvard and Yale and Ohio State and Case and those other places.

So how much time do we really spend on that end of it? How often do they have an opportunity to interact with other kids who are going on to college and who are still cool. And they look good and they sound good, but they are making good grades and they are doing something with their lives. I don't know how often we provide those kinds of experiences. And again, in every forum. It's not just in the school, but it's absolutely in the school we should do that. It's also in the faith community. It's also in these settlement homes and other kinds of places. We need to provide the same kinds of opportunities for kids to experience.

MR. FROLIK: How do we build the linkage? We talked a lot about the role of schools here. Where do other people fit in? Where does the maybe even things like the police commanders in the neighborhoods around your schools because they know where a lot of the problems are, the elected officials, the media. Where does the broader community, where do we fit in in helping you and the schools do what needs to be done and helping all of us as parents do what needs to be done?

MS. HARPER: You know what I would like to see the media do? When something happens, something negative happens, it gets front page press in every community. When something positive happens which happens every single day in a school, it never gets first class coverage and it's not follow-up stories and we don't hear about kids who have to struggle but they make it through. Those aren't front page stories. Those aren't human interest stories for the most part, and I really think that's part of it.

We don't hear about teachers who are, you know, giving the 110 percent every single day and who have been in the business for 30 years and still have the fire in the belly, you know. We are not really giving those people -- and that's 85 to 90 percent of the people who are in education, but I don't think we give them the kind of positive press that they absolutely deserve, and so we get a very skewed picture of what public education is all about.

So could you do that for us?

MR. SANDERS: I know one thing that University has always been fortunate enough to do is work with Barbara Bennett in opening a 21st century learning center. I mentioned earlier that it's difficult at times to work after school with these kids because of all the things that go on, but we're able to bring 35 of our kids in our community to our learning center at University Settlement and work with them on these tutoring issues, on these self-esteem issues, on the social recreational things.

So I think that 35 kids is just the tip of the iceberg, but if we collaborate in that way and open our minds and open our doors and share resources, then progress is going to be made because those 35 kids are benefiting and we're thankful for that working relationship that we have.

MS. BYRD-BENNETT: And I would respond to that, the major work of schooling, the major work of people like Jean and I who head systems is not just the academic end, is not just teacher preparation, teacher in-service. A major part of the work is civic engagement, motivating the masses and helping folks to understand that at the heart of whatever community, whatever city, whatever state you are in, if the education system, if our kids are not going to be successful, if we can't make this kind of improvement that we're all talking about, if we can't stay focused on it, we can forget about economic development, housing, health care. The rest falls apart, and so the civic engagement and the building of civic capacity and the motivation of the masses is critical to the work.

I can't do this work without you. I can't do it without the ministers and the rabbis. I can't do it without the foundations and the press. And if I call The Plain Dealer and say, guess what's going on, and they don't print it, they don't print it, but I feel good that I have told the story and they know it. I think we use more dollars than we should on attempting to communicate in our newsletters and any spot we can get on free television to highlight the positive work that our children are doing. But it also means that everybody has to be on the same page and on the same message and with the same goal, and that's hard work, so every forum we get to talk about the work --.

MR. FROLIK: That's a good place to go to the last segment from -- this was actually from the town hall meeting that was at John F. Kennedy High School last month and this is Bill McKersie. He's project director of Cleveland Heights High School Small Schools Initiative.

MR. MCKERSIE: But I'm wondering what might be a regional strategy for linking those districts high schools typically working alone on the same issues, what might be the role not for profits, teacher unions, faith-based organizations.

MR. FROLIK: How do we develop that single message that needs to go from Mentor to Medina to Lorain and all places in between