08:43 AM EST on Monday, February 13, 2006

PRESCRIPTIONS for fixing Rhode Island's public schools seem to come and go like the seasons.

Governor Carcieri proposed in his recent State of the State address that Providence, Central Falls, and Pawtucket be merged into a single metropolitan school district. He also called for a longer school day, more charter schools, and a reconsideration of the middle-school model.

Those are reasonable steps, and they might produce some positive results. But we shouldn't, as they say, hold our breath.

What is so baffling is that in our quest for improvement, we ignore schools that are succeeding virtually under our noses. Just up the road in Worcester, for example, University Park Campus School is a stunner.

University Park was named the top-performing urban high school in Massachusetts, and 68th among Newsweek's top 1,000 high schools in the country. The grade-7-through-12 school has ranked first on state-mandated exams among urban schools serving low-income students, and in the top 10 percent of all Massachusetts high schools.

No University Park student has ever failed the state's tough MCAS exam, and more than 85 percent of the students score "proficient" or "advanced," compared with an average of 62 percent statewide.

In its eight years of operation, University Park has had only one student drop out, and every member of its first two graduating classes went on to college -- to places like Brown, Georgetown, Tufts, Trinity and, naturally, Clark (in Worcester).

So who are these wunderkinder who do so well? They are from the poorest section of Worcester. Chosen by lottery, 78 percent are from non-English-speaking homes; 72 percent are poor enough to qualify for free lunch; 64 percent are minority students -- a third Latino, a fifth Asian-Americans, and 7 percent African-American. Many of the white students are recent immigrants from Eastern Europe who don't speak English.

Typically, educators dismiss the idea of emulating schools like University Park by insisting that they have this or that unique quality, and "we could never do that here in our school."

The special quality that University Park has is good leadership and committed staff, who look for ideas that work -- a common formula for success in any organization. It also has some distinct advantages. It is small, 220 students, and has a close partnership with Clark University, a block away.

Beginning in the ninth grade, all students take a college-prep core curriculum. There are few electives, but juniors and seniors can take courses at Clark. In an atmosphere of small classes and personalized education, teacher-student relationships flourish. Teachers work together, and have time for planning and personal development. Older students tutor younger ones.

There are other good ideas at work at University Park, but one of the really great ones is using the seventh and eighth grades to bring students up to grade level. Entering students are often reading at fourth- or fifth-grade levels. Data show that students who are not proficient readers almost inevitably struggle in all their courses, and many eventually fail or drop out. To counter that, University Park immerses its seventh and eighth graders in reading and writing skills, and learning mathematics. They read across the curriculum, and are engaged in disciplinary projects in which they learn to think like historians and scientists. This intense focus on literacy gets the students ready for the rigorous program they enter in the ninth grade.

The partnership with Clark is enormously important. Students can use the college facilities, attend courses and, upon graduation, attend Clark tuition-free, if they are admitted. From the outset, students can take mini-seminars with university faculty. The school's teachers and the university's faculty work together to train new teachers, collect and analyze data, and generally create a culture of excellence.

It is not reasonable to think that University Park could be cloned in Providence, Pawtucket, Central Falls and other Rhode Island communities. But all of the elements that make University Park successful exist in this state.

Rhode Island colleges and universities should, as a matter of enlightened self-interest, be doing everything possible to help disadvantaged students succeed. District and state leaders can do much more to enlist the aid of higher education, and to expose teachers, principals, students and parents to the ideas, policies and practices of successful schools like University Park.

There are hundreds of other successful schools out there that are very different from University Park, and they, too, are ignored by schools that perform poorly. How can that be explained or justified?

Well-meaning people cite obstacles that they insist make it impossible for them to do what is being done in these successful schools. "What about our buildings?" they ask, suggesting we must remain chained to the past by those gigantic archaic temples built to house thousands of kids. "We'd have to reorganize all the schools," they note, making elementary schools K-6 and high schools 7-12. "What a logistical challenge that would be!" "Do you know how hard it is to change the schedule? The teachers would revolt."

We don't shy away from moving rivers or big digs beneath harbors, but the prospect of big changes in education paralyzes us.

It's an old story: We want our schools to be better; we just don't want to change them. Put another way, we seem to care more about our schools than we do about our kids. And that's a prescription for disaster.

Ronald A. Wolk is chairman of the Big Picture Company, in Providence, and founding editor of Education Week.