No excuses

Education | Three schools prove that urban minority students can overcome obstacles | Alisa Harris

Melanie Einzig/Museum of Jewish Heritage/AP

NEW YORK—When Floyd Flake, a politician and a pastor, talks about school reform, he likes to tell the story of Jesus touching a bent-over woman and making her stand up straight.

"I think the business of Jesus, which animates my actions, is to try to straighten up bent-over situations," Flake says. "Right now, the most bent-over situation I see is public schooling in our inner cities. It's part of our job to straighten it up."

Minorities in urban public schools face gaping achievement gaps. In the New York City Public Schools in 2007, black students scored an average of 30 points lower than white students in math and reading. The majority (55 percent) of black eighth-graders in New York City and 48 percent of Hispanic eighth-graders haven't reached basic proficiency in math, and about half haven't achieved basic proficiency in reading. But Flake and other reformers have shown that it's possible for edu­cators to battle bureaucracy and low expectations for urban minority students, while building community and religious unity.