M-A High reacts to story in Wall Street Journal M-A High reacts to story in Wall Street Journal (April 05, 2000)

By Marjorie Mader

Almanac Staff Writer

Menlo-Atherton High School landed on the front page of the Wall Street Journal last Friday after its Pulitzer Prize-winning writer published his report, headlined:

"A Silicon Valley school is integrated, except where it counts. Its advanced programs get few minorities; whites shun the 'ghetto' courses. Stanford yanks its teachers."

The reaction to the report from M-A Principal Eric Hartwig, teachers, students and parents was pretty much the same: "He (writer Jonathan Kaufman) just didn't get it." They were disappointed, disheartened by the lack of balance in the article and felt betrayed.

"I was surprised it was only half the story after he spent so much time at the school," said Principal Hartwig. Mr. Kaufman focused on an issue that people at M-A are acutely aware of, said the principal: too few minority students are taking honors courses, and according to the writer, Mr. Kaufman, academic tracking and parent lobbying are the culprits.

"The other half he doesn't tell," said Principal Hartwig. The article, he said, didn't touch on what M-A is doing to provide support and programs for its students who come from a variety of economic, social and ethnic backgrounds and with a wide disparity in academic skills. Some students enter the high school being unable to read and write in their native language and with reading skills as low as third-grade level and as high as 12th-grade plus, he said. Mr Kaufman "didn't have a concept of how great the gulf in preparation is," said the principal.

Reporter Kaufman spent nine days at M-A, beginning in December, visiting classes, talking with teachers, parents and students, and then following up his conversations during the past four months with E-mails and phone calls. The school community opened its classrooms to the writer who lives in a suburb of Boston where schools are segregated. "I thought we had a writer who could tell the M-A story and had the time, about four months, to write it," a disappointed Mr. Hartwig said Monday.

News to the principal was Mr. Kaufman's statement that Stanford University was no longer sending its intern teachers in the Stanford Teacher Education Program, called STEP, to Menlo-Atherton for training. He quoted Professor Linda Darling-Hammond, who oversees the program, as saying "M-A doesn't provide a good model for beginning teachers" and "the tracking system there is substantially used to keep affluent kids protected from other kids."

Professor Darling-Hammond was on vacation last week and did not return phone calls to Mr. Hartwig and the Almanac by press time on Monday. Mr. Hartwig said he was told earlier that Stanford was trying to cluster its schools where interns are assigned for ease of supervision. M-A teachers have been mentors to STEP interns in the past.

"I felt kicked in the teeth," said English teacher Bonnie Hansen, referring to the negative tone of the article, which she described as "just hurtful" to the people who work hard and really care about M-A students.

Reporter Kaufman spent a period visiting her advanced standing English class in which about half of the 20 freshmen are students of color. "It's a very successful class," she said. Students get independent tutoring to ensure they succeed, through an M-A Foundation-funded grant. A new course has been approved for next fall that would give each student of color a computer for home and a support class for advanced standing English and social studies, she said.

"No one at M-A would say that we have arrived at the answer for keeping a substantial number of students of color in advanced placement classes," said Mrs. Hansen. "But to say we're not trying very hard is simply untrue."

Mrs. Hansen taught in the first Compass summer program, launched several years ago, that brought incoming eighth-graders, primarily from the neighboring Redwood City and Ravenswood elementary school districts, to the M-A campus to improve their academic skills. This program continues to work during the school year with students of color and move them up, she said.

Missing from the Wall Street Journal article, said Mrs. Hansen, was any mention of the lengthy self-study, called "Focus on Learning," that M-A administrators, teachers, students and parents developed in preparation for the accreditation team visit last month from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. The WASC team applauded the school for its honest appraisal of M-A's strengths and also pointed out areas that needed improvement. Providing better support for middle-level students was one of the areas targeted for improvement.

Teacher Jim MacKenzie was upset that Mr. Kaufman's article wasn't more balanced and accurate. He found the writer's description of non-tracked classes as "ghetto classes," as offensive and derisive. "I don't teach tracked classes," said the M-A graduate and veteran social studies teacher. "Basically, in effect, he (Mr. Kaufman) negated my career by saying those classes were a waste of time."

"To call M-A a racist school is unjustifiable," said Mr. MacKenzie. "The author whitewashed the many efforts M-A has taken to encourage all students to succeed and didn't even mention the 13 support programs in place at M-A." Mr. MacKenzie said he was appalled at what he called "glaring errors" in the article. First off, Menlo-Atherton is located in Atherton, not Menlo Park as the dateline states. There isn't an Alice Cox on the staff. Mary Cox is M-A's head guidance adviser; Alice Kleeman runs the College/Career Center. To refer to parent Susan Camarillo, wife of Stanford Hispanic history scholar Al Camarillo and mother of the student body president, as "Susan Camario, a white parent," was a major mistake, said Mr. MacKenzie.

"In the last two weeks, Mr. Kaufman called on separate occasions to verify the answer to the same question: "Are you sure Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks actually went to M-A?"' He wanted to get it right, said Mr. MacKenzie, because his copy editor is a Fleetwood Mac fan, and yes, the two M-A musicians went on to play with that rock band.

He and other teachers used the article in class as a vehicle for discussion and an opportunity for students to go through "an essential debriefing" because, he said, students also were disheartened and offended by the article.

Teacher Liane Strub said the students in her senior Advanced Placement English class were so distressed by the article because "they were the kids who put together the ropes challenge course and diversity training sessions" to help build community at M-A.

"Mostly these kids are from affluent families, but about 10 percent of my students are so poor they can't afford to pay the $76 fee for the AP test application, said Ms. Strub. The school stepped in and along with state funding paid the test fees for a total of nine of her students.

"Students of color have told me they feel isolated in an AP class, but certainly no one is stopping them from taking the advanced courses," said Ms. Strub.

She felt Mr. Kaufman came on campus with what seemed to be a preconceived idea about equity issues and didn't seem interested in hearing about what M-A is doing to fix its problems. She also questioned the accuracy of statistics cited by the author about the number of students from M-A who go on to the University of California campuses. He didn't even consider that kids go on to community college as a way of saving money and gaining entrance two years later to UC, she said.

"What bothers me is the local impact of the article because some parents already are turned off to the area public high schools, and this reinforces their perceptions," said Ms. Strub.

"I felt the writer left out so many pieces that would have balanced the story," said Dorthy Burnside, an M-A parent and the district's parent involvement coordinator. "There are things in progress to equalize the playing field for students of color."

Mr. Kaufman interviewed Mrs. Burnside, but, she said, "He didn't use any of the information about how the district has implemented and hired a parent coordinator to help parents of color learn how to navigate the school system.

"Parents of color want the same things for their children as all parents do," said Mrs. Burnside, regardless of their social and economic status.

Karen Canty, past president of the M-A PTA, said there's no news in the story because what was reported is what those who have been involved with the school have known for a long time. "M-A is a complex school," she said.

"I thought the article would be more balanced," said Mrs. Canty. "It didn't give the whole picture." She said there was little attention paid to the many support programs that have been put in place over the years to support students. They include academic coaching, an academic explorers' program for ninth-graders, SAT preparation courses, the Computer Academy, lunchtime tutoring, MESA for students interested in math and engineering, and the RISE program, open to African Americans, that offers mentoring, tutoring, college counseling and community service opportunities.

Gordon Lewin, president of the Menlo Park district school board, a parent of an M-A freshman and former Boston-area resident, told Mr. Kaufman after meeting him at a parents meeting: "You're from Boston. You're approaching M-A with Boston blinders on. M-A is a multi-cultural school. It's not black and white."

Mr. Lewin said: "The advanced track classes at M-A are so demanding. It's not an issue of race but of a students preparation."