Md. School Tries an About-Face
Ohanian Comment: The question here is not: Is this good for those kids? The question should be: Is this what I'd want for my kids?
Nancy Trejos
There are times when Christopher Woody surprises even himself.
On Wednesdays, he's now the one who inspects his classmates to make sure every shoe is polished and every shirt tucked. At lunchtime, he stands silently at attention until his instructors grant permission to talk. And during military drills, he admonishes other students who don't pivot fast enough to an "about face" command.
Last year, Christopher was a lanky, stoop-shouldered ninth-grader whose voice rarely rose above a whisper. Against his wishes, his mother enrolled him in Forestville Military Academy as it began a dramatic experiment -- to see whether a low-performing, chaotic high school in Prince George's County could become one of the nation's few coeducational public military schools.
He hated it. His goal became to tune out his Army Junior ROTC instructors and to resist the rituals they imposed on all 353 freshmen, the academy's first class. He so wanted to be invisible that he got into the habit of writing so small that teachers strained to read his work.
But he didn't go unnoticed to his instructors, who gave him the "Most Improved Cadet" award at the end of the school year. Now 15 years old and 10 pounds heavier -- bulky enough to play varsity football -- Christopher has agreed, reluctantly, to be a cadet corporal, the highest rank given to sophomores. His grade-point average isn't stellar -- a bit over 2.0 (a C) out of a possible 4.0 -- but an improvement from his 1.29 at the end of last year's first quarter and dramatically better than the 0.5 average he carried for a time in middle school.
"They seem to have something invested in Christopher," said his mother, Linda Spriggs.
In its second year, Forestville has changed, too. One-third of the freshmen in the program last fall did not come back for the sophomore year. Like Christopher, many complained that their parents forced them into the school, and they could not see how being yelled at or forced to do push-ups would make them better students . The older students, not required to be in the military program, ridiculed the cadets' green uniforms by calling them pickles and cucumbers. Some cadets wore jeans under their uniform pants. When they marched, they hardly lifted their legs.
The cadets are more polished and orderly now -- their black Nikes replaced by Army-regulation leather shoes or combat boots, the girls' faux Louis Vuitton purses traded in for simple black bags. The stairwells no longer have the feel of illicit lounges, unlike last year when clusters of students ditched classes to hang out there and snack on Mountain Dew and Twix bars.
"In any organization, change is hard. It really is," said retired Army Command Sgt. Maj. Sheila Williams, 54, one of the JROTC instructors. "But we know on a positive level, behavior is changeable."
Progress at Forestville has come slowly, in moderation, and school officials know there are big challenges ahead. Called Forestville High School until last year, the campus is surrounded by tough neighborhoods near Southeast Washington, and half its students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, a measure of poverty. The average SAT score this year was 790 out of a possible 1600 points.
Retired Maj. Gen. Warren L. Freeman, the former commanding general of the D.C. National Guard, joined Forestville as its top military officer this year. He and new Prince George's schools chief Andre J. Hornsby -- whose predecessor, Iris T. Metts, was the driving force behind creating the academy -- said it will take years before they can judge whether that potential has blossomed into a school where most students do well on standardized tests and advance to college.
The goal, they said, is to produce scholars, not soldiers.
"I don't envy them, because it's going to take them a four-year or five-year cycle before they can have impact," said Phyllis Goodson, principal of the Chicago Military Academy-Bronzeville, the most publicized of the small number of public military schools that have opened in recent years.
Goodson's academy, in a tough Southside Chicago neighborhood, celebrated its first graduating class in June. Of the 98 seniors who received diplomas, 85 were accepted into college, she said, and they received more than $1 million in grants and scholarships. The academy placed in the top 10 among Chicago public high schools on recent state standardized tests.
Goodson said it wasn't easy. Four years ago, her first freshman class had 156 students. About one-third ended up leaving, many transferring to more traditional schools. "Military school is not for everybody," Goodson said.
Forestville has seen similar turnover. Of last fall's 353 freshmen, 231 returned as sophomores. Enrollment drops between ninth and 10th grades are not unusual in a mobile society, though. Nearby Crossland High School has a sophomore class of 405, down from last fall's 512 freshmen.
Ohanian note: This casual dismissal of lowering numbers should be challenged. We've seen in Houston that claiming students transferred to other schools doesn't mean that's what happened.
Wendy Payne struck a deal with her son, Barry: He would spend a year at Forestville, then she would let him leave if he desired. Barry ended up deciding he didn't like wearing a uniform. Payne said she loved Forestville but reluctantly let her son transfer, a choice made easier when the family moved farther away.
Robert Tibbs sent his daughter, Marguerita, to the military academy last year and drew a far less favorable impression. He felt the JROTC instructors suspended students too often. He felt that they yelled too much at the teenagers. "Negativity breeds negativity," Tibbs said. "So a lot of times, [students] put a defense up."
Marguerita, 15, now attends Potomac High School in Oxon Hill. She said she is much happier. "Parents would bring the kids to the school for discipline, but they couldn't do anything but suspend you, and it's worse because you don't learn," she said.
A Different Look
Wave after wave of teenagers wearing Army green sweep through Forestville's hallways every 45 minutes when the bell rings, a recurring symbol of change.
A year ago, only the ninth-graders wore uniforms, and they were clearly outnumbered, the odd ones. Christopher Woody and his friends watched with envy as the sophomores, juniors and seniors showed off the latest fashions -- hip-hugging jeans and form-fitting T-shirts with labels like "Babygirl '85" for the girls, baggy pants and Allen Iverson jerseys for the guys.
Now, when classes change, the NBA gear is lost in a sea of green.
More than 500 of Forestville's 960 students -- every freshman and sophomore -- are in the military program, which is run by the Prince George's school system with financial assistance from the Army. An additional 70 juniors and seniors, while formally in the regular high school program, participate in JROTC activities and wear uniforms part of the time.
Ohanian Comment: Wouldn't you like to know more about this financial assistance from the army?
"With more students doing it, the children feel less like outcasts," Williams said.
It's another story in the faculty lounge. All but a dozen of the teachers have no Army affiliation. And early on, some nonmilitary teachers were openly skeptical of the idea that forcing teenagers to march and drop to the floor for push-ups would mold better students.
"Can you, in fact, take a neighborhood school that had problems and turn it into a school that is disciplined and goal-oriented?" asked Gwen Quarles, a social studies teacher at Forestville for four years. "That was a big question. The parents didn't know. The teachers didn't know."
Quarles is more optimistic now, so much so that she has worked some military rituals into her classroom. "It's not my thing," she said, "but it's the school's thing."
With his ponytail and earring, Geoffrey Waltz, 28, looks nothing like the JROTC instructors he works with, who entered public education after retiring from long Army careers. But in his second year as a social studies teacher at Forestville, he marvels at how many of his students have benefited from discipline. "The kids did a 180-degree turn this year," he said. "You can actually see them grow."
The students have also warmed up to Waltz, an outsider of sorts who left his home town of Williamsport, Pa., for a Prince George's teaching job. Lectures are rare in Waltz's class. He favors having students play "Jeopardy!"-style games or undertake fun projects to help them "discover the answers."
Christopher Woody shines in Waltz's room. Without even waiting to raise his hand, he jumps in to answer questions such as "Where did Judaism come from?"
Still, Waltz gets frustrated with his students at times, and he's not afraid to get tough. In one recent class, no one turned in homework, so as punishment he gave the students two assignments that night. Everyone groaned. "It is not my responsibility if you didn't get it done," he told them. "It's yours."
Christopher's mother, Linda Spriggs, who thought about sending her son to a private military boarding school before she heard about Forestville, said she wants the teachers to take drastic measures. Spriggs raised Christopher as a single mother and took her own steps to keep him in check, including asking the phone company to block friends' numbers that he called too often and barring his access to the Internet.
Her advice: "Treat some of these kids like soldiers."
Christopher doesn't always agree. Ask him if he enjoys the disciplined environment, day in and day out, and he will shake his head no. He admits that one of his motivations for getting promoted to a higher rank is that he would rather give the orders than receive them. "I don't want anyone telling me what to do," he said.
Still, after receiving his first-quarter report card, he felt pride in his success and even spoke of trying to get mostly A's next quarter. "I'm doing all my work now," he said. "I'm organized. I understand my teachers now."
Taking Responsibility
Freeman, the school's commandant, knows how to lead soldiers. He has been in the military for almost four decades, his entire adult life. He knows much less about how to teach and motivate high school students.
"The challenge is always remembering you're not dealing with adults. . . . There are approaches and actions and reactions that you can't take with young students [that] you can take with soldiers," said Freeman, 56. As Forestville's first commandant, he shares responsibility for running the school with Principal Eric Lyles.
Freeman, a native of Northeast Washington, developed an interest in the military while at Eastern High School. He received a bachelor's degree from Pacific Western University and a master's from National-Louis University and studied for two years at the U.S. Army War College as he began his active-duty military career.
After spending the last seven years in charge of the D.C. National Guard, he decided that the organization needed fresh leadership. Metts persuaded him to take the Forestville job. "I'm happy to be in a position where I'm looking forward and helping a young generation," he said.
Forestville certainly needed him. For the first half of the last school year, Lyles ran both the military part of the school and the regular academic program. "It's tough to do that because you have competing interests," said Hornsby, who replaced Metts in June.
Freeman exudes calm. He speaks in forceful tones but does not yell, not even when he sees a student breaking the rules -- though he has been known to playfully poke one with the antenna of his walkie-talkie. In between classes, he is on the lookout for uniform infractions or rowdy behavior, listening skeptically to all the excuses.
"Hey, Curtis, come here," he said to a student one morning. "You need a belt?"
Someone had taken his belt, the student said, his eyes avoiding the commandant's.
"I know, I know," Freeman said. "You see me at lunch."
Freeman is not the only new leader. This year, the military instructors are stepping back and letting a few sophomores, juniors and seniors -- those who hold ranks in the JROTC program -- oversee some military science classes and ceremonies. It's an unusual strategy: using peer pressure to help run a high school and encouraging teenagers to preach personal responsibility as they are learning it themselves.
As a freshman last year, Donte Thomas envied the upperclassmen who wore stripes and pins on their collars and barked orders. "It made me want to get up there," he said.
So he obeyed every command. Now he is a corporal.
At lunch one day this fall, Donte sucked on a green lollipop as he sat at the end of a long table, jotting down the names of students he spotted with uniform violations. He ordered Christopher Wormley, a freshman, to track down the offending students.
Wormley returned with Ricardo Graham, another ninth-grader.
Why didn't he have his tie on, Donte asked Ricardo, in between bites of a rib sandwich and french fries smothered in ketchup and mayonnaise.
"My tie is choking me," Ricardo said, his forehead wrinkled with worry.
"My tie chokes me, too," Donte replied. "That's no excuse."
A half-hour later, Spanish teacher Rene Cadogan walked from desk to desk in his classroom, checking on homework. Donte, 16, went up to the instructor and whispered that he had left his in his locker.
"That's no excuse, Donte," Cadogan said. "That's no excuse."
— Nancy Trejos
Washington Post
2003-11-29
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21929-2003Nov29.html
INDEX OF MILITARIZATION OF OUR SCHOOLS
