Amid a sea of teenagers in baggy pants, denim jackets, and white T-shirts, it鈥檚 easy to pick out the students from Baltimore Talent Development High School. They鈥檙e the ones in the intense yellow T-shirts emblazoned with the name of their school.
What really sets them apart, though, are the words underneath the school name. They read: 鈥淎 Partnership with Johns Hopkins University.鈥�
That鈥檚 because this public high school, which opened in September, is the product of an unusual collaboration between the city鈥檚 school system and its premier private university.
For most universities, running a public school is as foreign an enterprise as operating a gas station. Yet it鈥檚 happening in a growing number of cities鈥攊ncluding Philadelphia; Chicago; New York City; Worcester, Mass.; and East Palo Alto, Calif.鈥攚here universities are venturing out of their ivory towers and into the messy real world of public schools.
鈥淔or some period of time鈥攁t least since the 1960s鈥攇etting involved in K-12 schools was not at the forefront of universities鈥� missions,鈥� said Nancy W. Streim, the associate dean for educational practice at the University of Pennsylvania鈥檚 graduate school of education. 鈥淚t鈥檚 still not, but I think that began to break down when universities began to find students not coming to them as prepared as they would like them to be.鈥�
The private University of Pennsylvania, which runs the Penn Alexander School, a public pre-K-8 school in its own back yard in Philadelphia, last year hosted what is widely considered to be the first national conference on these new school-university partnerships that run precollegiate schools. It drew 150 participants from 35 universities and school districts.
Shaping a School
For Johns Hopkins, the attraction in getting more deeply involved in school operations was a chance to help shape a school from scratch and use it to try out its own nationally known program for educational improvement. Hopkins researchers developed the program, known as the Talent Development model, more than a decade ago. They had tried it out in Baltimore-area public high schools, but never before in a brand-new school and never with the kind of control they have now over school operations.
Baltimore Talent Development High, one of four schools that the 88,400-student district has opened up to outside operators over the past two years, is not a charter school in the sense that it operates free of city school rules. But the university still has considerable leeway under the terms of its four-year contract with the school system.
鈥淲e use Baltimore city public school teachers, but we get to select them,鈥� said Robert Balfanz, the Hopkins education researcher who is co-leading the project. 鈥淲e use Baltimore principals, but we select them; we can have our own curriculum, and we don鈥檛 have to use district professional development. This gives us a chance to marry a whole-school reform model with being able to get a highly motivated faculty.鈥�
The school opened with 150 9th graders. Taking all comers on a first-come, first-served basis, the school will add a grade a year for the next three years, ending up with a small school of no more than 600 students in grades 9-12. The school is housed in a wing of Harlem Park Middle School, a sprawling building constructed in the 1960s that is on the city鈥檚 west side, and has seen steadily declining enrollments.
Neighborhood Connections
Colleges and universities elsewhere give different reasons for entering the K-12 arena. The University of Pennsylvania and Clark University in Worcester, Mass., for example, figured that establishing outstanding public schools could revitalize the deteriorating urban neighborhoods that surround them.
As Thomas Del Prete, the director of the Hiatt Center for Urban Education at Clark, put it: 鈥淭he university recognized some 12 to 15 years ago that its vitality and possibly its future depended on the vitality of the surrounding neighborhood.鈥�
According to Mr. Del Prete, the Main South neighborhood, near where Clark sits, was one of the city鈥檚 most impoverished communities, a place plagued by absentee landlords, drug problems, prostitution, and severe housing shortages for families.
Clark began its campaign to improve the area by first promising free tuition to attend Clark for residents who had lived there at least five years. Then, in 1996, it launched a partnership with the Worcester city schools to establish the University Park Campus School, a grade 7-12 public school that now enrolls 215 students.
Across the country at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., Linda Darling-Hammond said university educators had two reasons for applying for a charter to open East Palo Alto High School. First, the university felt a moral obligation to replace a public high school that the East Palo Alto community lost when the school system became desegregated 25 years ago. And second, the university was seeking a 鈥渢eaching hospital鈥� environment where student teachers could observe best practices while getting exposure to the real-world problems of urban schools serving ethnically diverse, mostly poor students.
鈥淯nless you want to prepare students to, in many cases, teach in ways that are less effective than what we know how to do, there aren鈥檛 a lot of schools you can turn to,鈥� said Ms. Darling-Hammond, a Stanford education professor.
The growth of opportunities for charter schooling has also fueled some of the universities鈥� interest, observers say, as has increasing public pressure on urban higher education institutions to show they are good neighbors.
The University Cachet
For public school systems, university involvement offers a way to tap into desperately needed resources and expertise.
鈥淲hen I went for the interview, they told me I would have supplies, so that was exciting,鈥� said Edward Bryant Jr. a mathematics teacher at Baltimore Talent Development High School. Mr. Bryant, who is working toward a doctoral degree in math education, also said he believed the new administrators selected by Johns Hopkins 鈥渨ould allow me to be the expert in my subject that I am,鈥� rather than prescribe lessons for him.
Hopkins also pays for facilitators to work at the school and provides professional development that teachers receive in the summer and during the school year. As in many such efforts across the country, the school also gets start-up funds. In the case of Talent Development High, the additional infusion amounts to $400,000 over four years that comes from local and national foundations.
Students say the university鈥檚 presence also lends a certain cachet that other public schools lack. Some of the 9th graders travel as much as 1陆 hours by city bus to attend the school, which is in a very poor part of Baltimore.
鈥淭he kids understand there鈥檚 a certain expectation when a college is involved,鈥� said Cheree Davis, a social studies teacher at the school. 鈥淭hey came in with huge expectations of us which we just have to keep up.鈥�
鈥淲e already feel like we are in college, anyway,鈥� echoed 9th grader Aleah Stinson, who is hoping the school will give her a foot in the door toward earning a scholarship to attend Hopkins.
But students also pay a price for the choice they make in coming to Talent Development High. With their vivid yellow shirts, they sometimes get singled out for harassment by the regular middle school students who share the building with them.
Still, said Ms. Stinson, 鈥淚 tell them, getting an education in a uniform is better than getting no education at all in your regular clothes.鈥�
鈥楢 Frightening Thing鈥�
Universities, for their part, are putting their reputations on the line in taking on the responsibility of operating public schools.
鈥淚t鈥檚 a frightening thing for a university to find itself running schools,鈥� said C. Kent McGuire, the dean of Temple University鈥檚 education school and a former assistant U.S. secretary of education in the Clinton administration. 鈥淎nd I can鈥檛 suggest that an education school has all the knowledge and skills it needs to pull that off.鈥�
Temple University is providing support to six public schools in its Philadelphia neighborhood. Two years into a contract between the university and the city school district, the Temple-managed public schools are so far keeping pace with the district at large in students鈥� achievement growth.
And Clark University鈥檚 8-year-old University Park Campus School in 2003 was ranked as the only high-performing urban high school in Massachusetts.
Yet for many such efforts, including Baltimore鈥檚, it may be too soon to tell whether universities can do any better job managing public schools than local districts can.
In Philadelphia, district officials said Temple and the University of Pennsylvania have already shown that 鈥渢hey can do this at the same level we are doing,鈥� said Ellen K. Savitz, the district鈥檚 chief development officer. But the next question, she said, is 鈥淐an they, in fact, do better on the same amount of money we get?鈥�
鈥淚f not,鈥� Ms. Savitz said, 鈥渨hy not give the additional money to our own schools?鈥�
