Role Models in the Public Schools

During the past year or so there has been much hand-wringing over the results of recent international testing that consistently shows the United States to be trailing other advanced countries in measures of educational achievement. Many have noted the exceptional performance of the public schools in Finland, raising the question of why we can't be more like the Finns. The answer, it seems, has more than a little to do with the fact that ours is a far more heterogeneous society, one that tolerates a yawning chasm between rich and poor (as Finland does not), a chasm that reflects extreme inequalities by ethnicity and race. In today's Washington Post, for example, columnist Courtland Milloy reports on the dearth of African-American male teachers and administrators in DC-area public schools. Milloy's profile of Silver Spring's Bakari Ali Haynes (see photo above), is suggestive of all the reasons that African-American students find themselves "at risk" in American public schools. Haynes fils is the son of Leonard L. Haynes III, a U.S. Department of Education official, Ohio State Ph.D., and past recipient of the Glenn School's Excellence in Public Service award. Like father, like son, it would seem.