Class Struggle

The Honor Society slight was "just one of many," Ackerman recalls, and those slights left her with a worldview that has shaped her attitude as a school administrator and her philosophy as an educator. It is an attitude that can be encapsulated in two words: no excuses. Specifically, it is an attitude that does not allow school officials to use low socioeconomic status to explain away poor school performance. "Failure has never been an option for me," she says. "And I think that's why, you know, instead of making excuses about family and test scores, I'm like, "Whatever!' Would you stay with a doctor who complained about how you hadn't done this, or how you should have come to him earlier? No. So why would you want to educate children with that attitude?"

Her no-nonsense approach seems to have worked. She taught elementary school for 12 years in Missouri and eventually was promoted into the St. Louis and University City, Mo., school district administrations. By the early 1990s, she was running two neighboring schools at once. But her reputation for directness and action cut both ways. When she was named principal of one of those schools, 15 of the 55 teachers quit on the spot. (One teacher likened the atmosphere in her schools to a "military encampment.") Reminded of this, Ackerman laughs gently. "They needed to go," she says. "Change isn't always bad. Sometimes people will stay around and sabotage what you're trying to do."

Everywhere Ackerman has gone as a school administrator -- from University City to Seattle, where she was the chief academic officer, to Washington, D.C., and now San Francisco -- she has been charged with "closing the gap" in student achievement between poor and affluent students. At Brittany Woods Middle School in University City, where 80 percent of the students were black, and most of the black students were poor, Ackerman eliminated some advanced classes, which were attended mostly by white students, and used the money to shore up more basic offerings. Months later, she was quoted in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch referring to her "black agenda" -- a statement she says was taken out of context -- and the effect was polarizing. Many white parents felt she was "closing the gap" by lowering the educational ceiling, not raising the floor. Despite the controversy, the test scores at Brittany Woods were rising. Ackerman says she figured that was all that mattered.

She figured wrong.

In January of 1992, Ackerman was told that she was being fired due to budget cuts, reasoning that didn't exactly jive with the $3 million surplus the district reported only a few months later. She sued for her job back, and got what she wanted in a settlement. "At that point, I wasn't political at all," she says. "I was purely principled. And I think being principled is OK, but you have to understand the politics and make it a win-win for everybody. So when it happened, I was confused. I mean, I'd done everything I was asked. I'd turned test scores. I just didn't understand politics. And that's what this was; they admitted as much when they offered me my job back."

Ackerman didn't accept the offer. Instead, she took an 18-month academic hiatus in Harvard University's renowned Urban Superintendency Program, which all but assured her a position at or near the helm of one of the nation's largest urban school districts. (Her admissions essay dealt with her dismissal in University City.) During her time at Harvard, she studied student equity issues -- and was able to think about the politics of selling those issues to school boards and all the different interest groups in major urban school districts.

"[In University City], it all sort of snowballed," she says. "So I learned that, whatever we do to raise the floor, we have to be very cognizant of the politics of that. You have to be sensitive to how you discuss it, so that it doesn't polarize people."

Because today is Friday, Arlene Ackerman is complaining -- with a smile. She is in the middle of one of her weekly surprise drop-ins on San Francisco schools -- this week she is visiting the particularly troubled McAteer High School -- and, in her sweet-voiced, always-polite way, she is gently spouting a list of grievances to herself and the assistant principal who is showing her around.

"It's so cold in here," she says.

"The contractor left that mess lying around?"

"So we have this great facility, and the kids here don't get to use it?"

This is how the tour goes: Ackerman is dropped off -- unannounced -- by her chauffeur-driven Lincoln, finds the principal, and sits down for a discussion of school issues, before taking a guided tour of the school. Among this school's biggest problems, the assistant principal says, is attendance: Most of the students come from Bayview and Hunters Point, and it takes many of them two hours to commute via school bus. As a result, 10 to 15 percent of students are absent on any given day, and tutoring before or after school is virtually impossible.