Kristina Rizga’s piece in the September/October issue of Mother Jones, culminating two years she spent embedded at San Francisco’s Mission High School, offers a view of American public education that few reporters ever get to see (whether that’s because an institution under fire fears the consequences of too much reportage, or because of certain formidable public relations people perhaps depends on the school district).
It’s good to hear something positive about public education, which has taken a beating in recent years at the hands of so-called reformers who would like to see schools run more like businesses. High-stakes, federally mandated testing took the joy from education over the past 10 years, and by most measures No Child Left Behind has been a clear failure. But I can’t help but think that Rizga missed something important.
I spent a year covering the San Francisco Unified School District, and I’ve been to Mission High and interviewed its impressive principal, Eric Guthertz. While I can only envy Rizga’s access, I did come to know the school district fairly well. San Francisco Unified places a great emphasis on college attendance or post-graduate training, which is a laudable goal on its face. And the district seems to be succeeding– its college attendance rates are higher than nationwide averages, including for Mission High, as Rizga found:
One of the most diverse high schools in the country, Mission has 925 students holding 47 different passports. The majority are Latino, African American, and Asian American, and 72 percent are poor. Yet even as the school was being placed on the list of lowest-performing schools, 84 percent of the graduating class went on to college, higher than the district average; this year, 88 percent were accepted. (Nationally, 32 percent of Latino and 38 percent of African American students go to college.)
But what happens when they get to college? It’s one thing to hold a pizza party at which seniors can register for community college (as at least one San Francisco high school did last year), and another to ensure that those students earn their associate’s degrees or vocational certificates, or go on to four-year colleges.
In California, according to the non-profit Complete College America, only 14 percent of students at four-year colleges graduate in four years, and after eight years only 59 percent have their degrees. At City College of San Francisco, just one in four students graduates with an associate’s degree after three years. At San Francisco State, fewer than half graduate after six years. While the colleges are partly to blame for their awful retention rates, high schools must ensure that their graduates are prepared for higher education.
It makes sense that the students Rizga talked to were truly happy at Mission. While the school’s campus– a lovely, historic building across the street from Dolores Park– is large, the student body is small, and despite the old-fashioned, echoing halls it has the homey atmosphere that teenagers love in a school. The teachers reflect the students’ diversity more than at some other urban schools, and they seem to really care about their charges. It’s the kind of atmosphere that can help students imagine a future beyond the poverty that surrounds them at home, and the constant refrain that they can and will go to college has got to be a self esteem boost for anyone. But while it’s great that Mission’s teachers and principal are encouraging students to apply to and enroll in college, the truth is, that accomplishment is meaningless unless these young people are prepared to succeed once they get there.
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