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KLMNO EDUCATION


“I asked her how does she overcome all that she’d been through. She was speechless for a minute . . . then she said, ‘Courage.’ ” —James Grier, Charles Carroll Middle School student, describing Sonia Sotomayor’s visit.


JAY MATHEWS


It’s what you do, not where you go


T


his time of year,withhigh school seniors slogging throughone college


applicationafter another andparents jittery about their children’s futures, I oftenwrite columns explainingwhy it doesn’tmatterwhere they go to school. The invariable reactionfrommany


readers, andsome ofmy friends, is that Iwent toHarvard, sowhatdo I knowabout theirproblem? It is true that I amaHarvardgrad.


Iwrote a book titled“Harvard Schmarvard” that argues that the Ivy League andother top-rankedcolleges addnodiscernible value to the lives of their graduates.They are goodat attracting studentswithcharacter strengths, suchaspersistence and humor, that leadto success.But applicantswithsuchqualitieswho attendplaces suchasBoise Statedo as well inlife as thosewho attend colleges older thanthe country. There is researchonthis by


economistAlanB.Krueger (Cornell grad) andStacyBergDale (Michigan).Theproblemis that it requireshigher-levelmathto understandcompletely andis boring. I amhappy to report Idon’tneedit anymore to fendoff the teasing I get eachautumn.There isnowa Hollywoodmovie, a box-office smash, makingmypoint indramatic terms that cannot be ignored. The filmis “The SocialNetwork.” It


waswrittenbyAaronSorkin.He is a Syracuse grad, buthe grewupin Scarsdale,N.Y., sohe knowsmany Ivy Leaguers.The firstpart of the film, in whichundergraduateMark Zuckerberg createsFacebook, is supposedto takeplace atHarvard. The buildingsdidnot look familiar to me.Wikipedia says the sceneswere shot atWheelockCollege, Johns Hopkins,Cal State-DominguezHills andtwoprepschools,Andover and Milton. The ambiancemay bewrong, but


they got the lifestyle right. Have youseenthemovie?Didyou


notice thatnone of the student characters ever study, or eventalk about their courses?The conversations aremostly about sex andparties andbecomingwealthy andimportant,not summa cum laude.Zuckerberg andhispeers live ontheWeb. Theywant touse the Internet to


change theworld.ThatGov 10paper dueFriday is ignored. That is anexaggerationofwhat


goes oninselective schools, butnot much.The atmosphere is similar to what youfindatmostuniversities. In our culture, the four college years are for trying outnewstuff.Undergrads knowthey are supposedto be studying, butmost of the ones Ihave knowndevote little time to absorbing their school’s academic riches. Thatwas theway itwas forme and


my friends.We spentmost of ourdays andnights at the studentnewspaper. Ihave aDinChinese to showfor it. ZacBissonnette, a senior at the


University ofMassachusetts- Amherst, recentlypublisheda book, “Debt-FreeU,” that argues convincingly thatnearly every state university canprovide asdeepan academic andextracurricular experience asHarvardif students seek out the bestprofessors and activities andapply their energies there.Mostundergradsdon’t, whether at a famous school ornot. What about those great Ivy alumni


contacts?The truthis that every collegehas influential alums, if you bother to call them. TheZuckerberg character inthe


movie,whomaynot be like the real Facebook founder, becomes a billionairenot becausehewent to Harvardbut becausehewas a computer genius, a talenthe developedbeforehe got to college. Zuckerberg seems tohave figured


out thatHarvardwasn’tdoingmuch forhim.Hedroppedout, like fellow billionaireBillGates, andneither of themhas re-enrolled.This year’s crop of applicantswill findthat if they embrace all that their collegehas to offer,nomatterwhere it ranks onthe U.S.News list, theywill get farmore out of it thanthey ever expected. mathewsj@washpost.com


Formore Jay, go to washingtonpost.com/class-struggle.


THE DAILY QUIZ


PostPoints members can earn points by shopping with their membership cards at which


local retailer? (Hint: Check the Earn Points section of the PostPoints website.)


EARN 5 POINTS: Find the answer, then go to washingtonpost.com/postpoints and click on “Quizzes” to enter the correct response.


T


MONDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2010


PHOTOS BY MARK GAIL/THE WASHINGTON POST


Agroup of students at Charles CarrollMiddle School inNewCarrollton have made music videos about current events, including Sonia Sotomayor’s selection to the Supreme Court and passage of health-care reform legislation. The Sotomayor video got the justice’s attention, and she visited the school in the spring.


Pr. George’s middle-schoolers sing what they see video from B1


divided between African Americans and Hispanics, both videos spoke to personal experiences. “I have asthma, and six years ago I had


a major attack that almost killed me,” saidGerardoHerrera, 13, an eighth-grad- er at the school in New Carrollton. His family didn’t have health insurance. “It took a long time to pay off the bill,” he said, and he is in favor of anything that makes it easier to obtain coverage. Now Gerardo wants to do a music


video about immigration reform. Students said that Sotomayor, who


grewupin a housing project in the Bronx, N.Y., and made it to Princeton and Yale, was an inspiring example for them. In the music video about her ascent to


the Supreme Court, students sang, “I told the worldmy story,Puerto Rican, poor, in the Bronx . . . now every time you see me vote, say what’s up.” Before the Supreme Court justice visit-


ed the school, students researched her life and prepared questions. “I asked herhowdoes she overcome all


that she’d been through,” said James Grier, 13. “She was speechless for a minute . . . then she said, ‘Courage. Some people might try to knock you down, but you have to get back up.’ ” The students were brought together by


a school counselor, William Clay, who produced the video and wrote lyrics with the students’ input. Clay, who arrived at the school last


year, said that he had worried that stu- dents didn’t have enough opportunities to mix and get to know each other. “I wanted to help bridge the gap between African American and Latino kids, as far as getting along together,” he said. Each three-minute video took about a


William Clay, a counselor at Charles Carroll Middle, came up with the idea of making the videos. He says he was looking for ways “to help bridge the gap between African American and Latino kids as far as getting along together.”Now the students are planning a video about Oprah Winfrey.


month of planning and 20 hours of shooting, he said. The program is another attempt to


helpCharles CarrollMiddle School break from years of poor academic perfor- mance. State Superintendent of Schools Nancy S. Grasmick talked about taking over the school in 1998andagain in 2006, although she decided against it both times. The school’s principal, Eric Wood, ar- rived in 2005 and pushed hard to remake


The Answer Sheet VALERIE STRAUSS


Excerpt from voices.washingtonpost.com/answersheet The reform world is dripping


wice in the same week, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert had a chance to


skewer the wacky world of edu- cation reform and blew their opportunities. Both Lewis Black’s piece on


“the public school crisis” that aired on Stewart’s “The Daily Show” last Tuesday and Col- bert’s Thursday night interview with “Waiting for ‘Superman’ ” director Davis Guggenheim left me wondering why education reform hasn’t been more of a high-value target for these two funny men.


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with hilarious promise. There are characters to lam-


poon: School superintendents who are education’s fundamen- talists, believing that only they know the way to reform heaven. There are issues to rip open:


The standardized testing obses- sion; the charter school obses- sion; the insistence of first the Bush administration, and now the Obama administration, to turn the nation’s leading civic institution, the public school system, into a market-driven industry.


Referring to “Waiting for ‘Superman,’ ” which paints a false picture of the education reform scene, Black spoke about public charter schools and said, “Charter schools are better,” and then, after showing a clip of kids, continued, “but those kids are in public schools. What ideas do we have for fixing them?” Charter schools, as Black ap-


parently doesn’t know, ARE public schools, and, incidental- ly, educate fewer than 5 percent of the country’s kids. As for being “better,” the big-


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the school’s culture. He instituted uni- forms, addressed disciplinary issues and brightened the school by fixing lights. Test scores have risen every year since, although just half the students were proficient this year in math. In reading, 71 percent were proficient. Because the scores fell below state standards and Charles Carroll Middle receives federal money earmarked for high concentra- tions of poverty, Prince George’s was required to allow students to transfer to


better-performing middle schools.Wood said that adding sixth grade—previously the school was seventh and eighth — more than made up the difference. En- rollment is up to 850 students, from about 740 last year. The students’ wish for the health-care


video? Sonia Sotomayor created high expectations: Charles Carroll Middle hopes for a visit from a certain resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. birnbaumm@washpost.com


gest research study on them, conducted by Stanford Univer- sity researchers, showed that only 17 percent produce better test scores than their local tradi- tional public schools, and the rest were either worse or the same. Colbert allowed Guggen-


heim to present himself as more even-handed in assessing blame for public school woes than he does in his movie, which bashes teachers and blames teachers unions. Stewart and Colbert had the


perfect chance to wade into this wacky world this year when Diane Ravitch’s book, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System,” was published and became a best- seller on the New York Times list.


Ravitch, the country’s lead-


ing education historian, tells of how she once supported No Child Left Behind but looked at the evidence of its effects on schools and came to realize it was terrible policy. Now, the Obama administra-


tion is taking some of the worst aspects of No Child Left Behind to newlevels of awfulness. Stewart has become more


than just a funny guy on televi- sion. He has become a cultural force who routinely attacks hy- pocrisy and stupidity in all kinds of arenas. Colbert is, too. If these guys can’t find fun in


the hypocrisy of public school reform, they are losing their touch.


straussv@washpost.com


A complete list of PostPoints Spots can be found at washingtonpost.com/postpoints.


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