Clark, Worcester, and Carnegie: A Partnership in Education

Given at Case Western Reserve University Inauguration Colloquium, Breakout Session on K-12 and Continuing Ed: Clark University and the Worcester Public Schools, January 30, 2003

In October of 2001 the Carnegie Corporation named the City of Worcester, Massachusetts, in its partnership with Clark University, one of only seven recipients nationwide of an $8 million grant to reconceptualize urban high school education in the United States. The project is under way, but is best understood as the next phase of a long-term partnership between Clark and the Worcester schools. To appreciate that, however, one must also understand the commitment made by Clark University over the last seventeen years to partner with her neighbors in rebuilding a depressed area of a New England industrial city. The educational partnership exemplifies the potential that universities and public schools working together have to address some critical challenges facing American education. The neighborhood partnership exemplifies the potential for cities and universities to collaborate for the enhancement of both.

I will in turn therefore review an $80 million partnership to rebuild the Main South area of Worcester, then explain the importance of the Jacob Hiatt Center for Urban Education to the city, and then explore the primary initiatives in the Carnegie-funded grant for educational reform. James Caradonio, Superintendent of Schools, is providing a much sharper sense of how this all plays out in the trenches, again in the context of understanding better the challenges, barriers, and land mines one finds whenever and wherever the agenda is education reform.

Worcester is a city 40 miles west of Boston that, like Lowell and Providence, was at the heart of the Industrial Revolution in America. Its manufacturing emphasis was in metal products and armaments, and it thrived until after World War II, reaching a peak in population of over 220,000. In the 1950s and 1960s it began a decline that culminated in the larger companies closing, moving, or selling out to firms located elsewhere, even abroad. The Main South neighborhood, where Clark is located, was a stable and prosperous middle class and blue-collar part of town located two miles southwest of City Hall. During the fifties and sixties families, as in other cities, began to move to the suburbs, and, of course, with jobs leaving town urban flight accelerated. The Main South neighborhood currently is about 41% white, with some of that coming from Central or Eastern European countries such as Albania and Greece; about 35% is Hispanic or Latino, about 9% African American, and about 11% Asian including many from Vietnam and China. About 31% of families are below the federal poverty line, and many are single-parent households. Clark is a relatively small school, founded in 1887 as a graduate-research university and now teaching about 2000 undergraduates and 500 graduate students each year. Its endowment is about $150,000,000.

By the 1980s University Park, the neighborhood immediately around Clark, had decayed. Far too many housing units-including those "triple-deckers" unique to the region, where three parts of an extended family might live on three different floors-were owned by absentee landlords, who badly neglected their properties. The area became a center of the drug trade and prostitution. Clark, like so many of its peers nationally, built bigger fences to keep the problem outside. Only in the last two decades has the truth come home to any of us-Yale, Penn, Trinity, Clark, CWRU, Southern Cal-that decaying surroundings reduce market share by making a college less attractive to tuition-paying parents and students. Recent university initiatives nationwide have been accompanied by ethical justifications for an increased role for community engagement, service learning, and volunteerism in undergraduate education. That the initial thrust by Universities grew out of enlightened self-interest, not altruism, does not diminish at all what was a long-overdue appreciation of an institution's interdependence with its community.

Change in Main South came in 1985 shortly after Richard Traina arrived as the seventh president of Clark. With encouragement and funding from SEEDCO, an arm of the Ford Foundation, Clark brought vision and leadership to a partnership that established a Community Development Corporation, a CDC. The University did not adopt a top-down philanthropic model but has held only one seat on the board of the CDC and only gradually built trust among often suspicious neighbors. In the 1990s the CDC, the University, and other area institutions created the University Park Partnership, which helped the initiative move to a higher and more ambitious level. Clark early on did provide leadership, as well as unsecured loans for renovations, and helped to leverage millions of federal, state, and private dollars. Under an outstanding Executive Director, Steve Teasdale, the CDC has renovated and either sold or rented 220 housing units, helped establish 20 new store fronts, and improved lighting, paving, and policing. It provides advice for new home buyers, help with budgeting for maintenance costs, and arrangements for elderly home owners to live out their life in their home if they wish.

None of this has been as easy as it may sound in retrospect. First, the neighborhood-as I have said-did not trust Clark. The University had fenced out the neighbors; it had bought up residential land for expansion; students could be noisy and careless; their cars were being parked in places neighbors had been using; and Clark had a reputation for far-left leaning that did not sell well in blue-collar areas. Trustees of the University, moreover, had talked about deserting Main South for more rural surroundings. Relationships gradually turned around because of mutual self-interest as residents realized how important Clark's political know-how and financial support could be to rebuilding in the neighborhood, and trustees recognized that Clark's future depended on having healthy surroundings that would not discourage students from applying. Of course, after the project began the neighbors also needed to realize that Clark could not be simply a "cash cow" for them.

University Park has been a $40 million project. It has four emphases: housing and physical rehabilitation, education, economic development, and recreational opportunities. Clark itself has invested approximately $7million already. Clark provides a full scholarship to any child who grows up in the neighborhood and qualifies for admission. Currently eleven such students are enrolled. It provides a summer camp, use of campus facilities, music lessons, and other advantages to neighborhood children. It subsidizes faculty and staff who purchase homes there. Twenty-two have done so. Dick Traina also made a substantive but highly symbolic decision to move the president's home back to the campus in Main South and out of one of the most affluent west-side neighborhoods. The move was important to Clark but also built further trust among those neighbors who had been very suspicious of the University, neighbors such as activist Billy Breault, a custodian at Holy Cross who will gladly charge into a trustees' or city council meeting and let you know just how he and his neighbors feel about something.

This year the Main South initiative took off in a new direction while the earlier work continued. The new dimension is a neighborhood just north of University Park that is called "Kilby-Gardner" after two local streets. It is a troubled area, with dilapidated houses and widespread drug trade, as well as old industrial brownfields. The properties and the necessary funding have now been secured, so that in three years there should be at least sixty new housing units for first-time home buyers and renters. Clark will put a new athletic field there, and the Worcester Boys and Girls Club will build its new home adjacent to the field. The project will cost over $35 million, again a combination of federal, state, local, and private dollars including the pieces from the Boys and Girls Club and Clark. So overall these two initiatives to rebuild Main South will cost around $80 million, with at least $10-12 million coming from Clark. While there are a few differences of opinion on the project within the faculty and among trustees, the overwhelming majority of both have been very supportive, and that is important. At a meeting (NAICU) of college presidents in January 2001, Senator Ted Kennedy said that Clark University had set a national standard for how a university should relate to its neighborhood. The two key components to success have been first that the project has been a real partnership with the neighbors, not top-down charity, and second that the University had the political and economic experience and connections to help leverage public and private funding.

Central to Clark's larger commitment to its community and city for over a decade has been the goal of improving the education of Worcester's students. Worcester schools are really rather good. One measure of their recognized quality is the fact that 85% of young persons eligible to attend them do so, a very high urban figure for a region of the country known for sending its children to private and parochial schools. Clark's Education program has been granting graduate degrees and preparing teachers since 1937. In the 1980s, however, like several other universities, Clark dedicated itself to a more engaged interaction with the city's schools. Before long as school teachers had opportunities to keep abreast of advances in their teaching fields and pedagogy research, college faculty realized how much they could also learn about learning from teachers who are in the classroom five days a week. All of America's schools and colleges have much to gain from such collaborations, although the nature of the collaboration may vary depending on expertise in a college and the nature of its partner schools.

In 1991 a Clark trustee, Jacob Hiatt, a local philanthropist and successful businessman, indeed also an immigrant, made possible-through a large gift- a University dream, the Jacob Hiatt Center for Urban Education. The Center's first two initiatives were to promote "teacher research" and to assess "best practices" that could be brought to the education of all students, in particular those from low-income families. The Center actively involved Worcester teachers in research about teaching practices, and this involvement created a more engaged community of teachers sharing questions and answers about their profession. Within three years, then, the Center established its Professional Development School collaborative, a partnership of several schools in Main South with a focus on teacher preparation, education reform, and professional development. Clark faculty in Education and in the arts and sciences are involved and learn as much from their K-12 partners as they impart. Coordinators assigned in the various schools are key players in facilitating change and preparing new teachers, some of whom of course are Clark graduates. Over the past eight years hundreds of teachers and future teachers have benefited from what is really a K-16 program. Clark meanwhile has provided over $2M in free graduate tuition for Worcester teachers.

Two big problems face collaborations of this kind. First is the disdain arts and science teachers have for too many of their colleagues in Education. It not only paralyzes productive synergies on the college campus but also impedes healthy interaction between secondary and university faculties. During five years on a national oversight committee for an NSF funded initiative to improve science and math education in the Los Angeles area, I frequently saw the deleterious effects of such snobbery. In Worcester Clark has benefited perhaps from not having a separate School of Education but a department and center connected closely to other units. The second problem can be a similar superiority assumed by college faculty toward high school teachers, but I have invariably found that can be corrected by regular interaction. Or at least the college faculty willing to work with their high school colleagues soon learn that there is the same range of excellent to weak teachers in both institutions. The cultures of high schools and universities are different, but the individuals in both who are committed to improving learning find that they have a lot of mutual interests and shared goals and that they do learn from each other.

Three years ago the Hiatt Center co-founded the Massachusetts Coalition for Teacher Quality and Student Achievement. It collaborates with colleges and schools in the Boston, Worcester, and Springfield areas, focuses on preparation of excellent teachers, and emphasizes partnerships among schools. It has benefited from a five-year Title II grant, and it is widely recognized as a model teacher-preparation program. Just as individual colleges and schools can mutually benefit from collaboration, so can partnering cities and colleges within a region benefit, particularly in fields like teacher training and professional development.

Much of the work of the Hiatt Center has revolved around a Main South high school, a middle school, and two elementary schools, one of which-the Jacob Hiatt Magnet School-has been recognized by the United States Department of Education as a "Model Professional Development School" and also as a "Blue Ribbon School." The newest component, however, is a remarkable six-year-old 7th-to-12th grade school, the University Park Campus School, preparing to graduate its first senior class next June. Created by Clark and the Worcester Public Schools, it is overseen by an outstanding principal, Donna Rodrigues, who by the way has lived in the neighborhood for more than 30 years. It is a model of small-school success and urban-school success.

UPCS is a neighborhood school, not a charter or exam school. It requires applications but really to ensure parental or family commitment behind each student. Some 70 per cent of the students at UPCS come from homes where English is not the language spoken, and 78 per cent qualify for free lunch or reduced-cost lunch. Many students enter 7th grade at a 3rd-grade reading level. Nonetheless, no UPCS student has ever failed the English part of the rigorous Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System test (MCAS). Of last year's tenth graders no one failed or even finished in the next or "needs improvement" category of the English exam, and no one failed the math exam. The school had the 8th highest average overall MCAS score among all public schools in the state, including those in wealthy suburbs.

Entering and walking through the school, located in a very old and unimposing former elementary school building, a visitor soon is infected by the positive learning atmosphere and leaves saying, "Yes, this is what education is all about." The teachers are almost all involved with Hiatt Center programs. The students are ambitious, and they are courteous. A year ago eleven juniors were taking courses at Clark, and not one of them received less than a B minus. Twelve more students are taking courses this year. The program was established with an extended academic day and with after-school tutoring available. Clark professors and students are engaged in tutoring and providing program enhancements. Parents are there in the evening for adult education courses. Behind it all stand a creative principal, who builds a great team, and a supportive superintendent and system.

Education reform in Worcester has not proceeded without hurdles, glitches, and even land mines. Some are endemic to education reform, some are peculiar to place and time. Ed reform always struggles against teachers and principals unwilling to change their ways, including those playing out the string to retirement and lacking the will or interest to rethink how young people learn. Putting one or two change-minded teachers in a school with no critical mass or administration committed to reform is a recipe for failure. I certainly learned that from my Los Angeles experience. Worcester has faced such problems, but has had a lot to offer on the other side-free graduate tuition, programs of the Hiatt Center, constructive ways to address perceived threats of charter-school initiatives, and open lines of communication that build trust. There remains some jealousy of UPCS on the part of Worcester teachers who complain that it gets too many favors, too much publicity, and is spoiled by its Clark-related resources. The new Carnegie grant has aimed at expanding some of the UPCS benefits more widely. But no one believed it would have to succeed in the face of a multi-million dollar deficit in the city and its school system. When budget cuts first loomed, some school committee members asked to have Carnegie funds cover the deficit. Fortunately the grant is funded through Clark not the city, and the funds are restricted to reform initiatives. But in tough times it will take more than the wisdom of Solomon to balance those initiatives with maintenance of infrastructure and mainstream strengths. Because the size of high school classes involved in Carnegie, for example, is limited, elementary teachers in Worcester are worried that to make budget the city might greatly increase the size of their classes. The teachers' union hints it may hold Carnegie hostage to its demands in the next contract negotiations. This, too, will pass, and ed reform will lead to many improvements, but the battle will have to be fought on the public relations-media side as well as on the academic side.

Now, not all high school students in the United States can be at such a small school as UPCS with its own fine university across the street to give support. But the school and the Hiatt Center are learning things that can change teaching and learning for the better around the cities of America. Thus the desire for Worcester and Clark to be partners with the Carnegie Corporation in its "Schools for a New Society" initiative. Carnegie, as you know, like other foundations, was distressed at the state of schooling in America's large cities and at the failure of earlier reform efforts. I can remember visiting 4th grade classes in Cleveland and being told that only 1/3 of those then bright-eyed children would ever graduate from high school. Even in some reasonably good middle class districts, as Tom Van der Ark of the Gates Foundation recently told me, you will find that of a class of 8th graders perhaps no more than1/3 will graduate ready for college, another 1/3 will muddle through, and 1/3 will drop out before graduation. The Carnegie Corporation decided to commit some $40 million to a grant program in a limited number of pilot cities whose initiatives showed promise of being successful and of being transportable and replicable elsewhere. The Worcester-Clark partnership was one of twenty invited applicants. In 2000 it was awarded one of ten planning grants made to finalists, and in October 2001 was named one of the recipients of an $8 million grant, which was a challenge grant requiring a commitment by the University and the school system to raise a matching $8 million.

The planning year was completed last spring, and the partnership is now in the first full year of the grant. To some extent the plan is to involve Worcester schools more generally in what have been successful initiatives in Clark's Main South area. The initiative has also benefited from the sponsorship of the Worcester Education Partnership, made up of leaders from the community, business, labor, and service agencies. Chaired by Paul Reville, one of the two fathers of education reform in Massachusetts, it helped define commitments and collaborations, best practices, and needs as the Carnegie grant was prepared, and it has continued its effective leadership.

There are five central proposals in the Clark-Worcester project. First, it proposes that "small learning communities" with personalized support for students are a major asset in educating students. Implementation involves breaking down some very large schools into manageable, less impersonal, and programmatically integrated communities. The strategy fits well with the "Small Schools" initiative of the Gates Foundation, which is partnering with Carnegie in education reform. Second, the project proposes to establish a "professional learning culture" in the schools, modeled on the Hiatt Center's Professional Development School program. In such a culture teachers are directly involved in researching and defining best practices and making informed decisions about curriculum and pedagogy for their own school. Third, the project proposes to strengthen curriculum in core areas. It particularly emphasizes improving literacy and numeracy, fundamental skills on which the rest depends. Fourth, it proposes a model of "Youth Development" in which students participate in all parts of school life in an integrated way. The schools are concerned with the growth and counseling of the entire person. Fifth, it emphasizes the involvement of family and community in the education of students and the maintenance of a home environment supportive of the student's education and success.

In the last ten years I have spoken with many superintendents and principals who say that if they could have one wish it would be for parents at home to be supportive of and engaged with their children's education and personal-development goals. Every time I see a young person from a troubled neighborhood and poverty who has done well, I find someone at home, a parent or grandparent usually, who values education and keeps the young person on track to his or her success. If that support can be combined with a sense of a learning community in the schools, with a teaching staff committed to knowing the best ways to learn, with a strong curriculum, and with an appreciation of the whole child-if that can be done, and it can be, then America can begin to stop wasting generations of urban children, to stop the gap between our best and worst educated children from expanding every year, and, yes, to face up to our other crisis in K-12 education: How will we once again attract enough of our best and brightest into teaching in order to replace the thousands of educators-teachers, principals, and superintendents due to retire from America's schools in the next decade?