BIN CHE
Chinese language teacher
Belpre, Ohio

“I really worry about…some students in our school…I think they need to work hard…They need to catch up with other generations in the world – like Asia.”

Hailing from a town of more than 3 million people outside Beijing, Chinese teacher Bin Che came to the United States on a foreign language teaching program. At first, he says Belpre, Ohio – a small town on the border of West Virginia – was not what he expected. Having watched many movies featuring American cities like New York and Las Vegas, Belpre – which sits on the banks of the Ohio River – seemed sleepy. But Bin says he made a lot of friends in his year teaching in Ohio, and learned a lot about American schools. Despite the energy of his students, Bin says he thinks they need to study harder to keep up with students in the rest of the world.

ROGER LEMLEY
Graduate of Belpre High School
Belpre, Ohio

“I’m hoping to be a Chinese interpreter… that’ll be kind of cool. And then I can work down in Washington with the Chinese Ambassadors, or I can go to China and be an American Ambassador. All kinds of stuff like that.”

A recent graduate of Belpre High School, Roger was a star student in Bin Che’s Chinese class. He loved the language so much, he says, that he hoped to study it in college. But even if he attended a state school, Roger says the cost was prohibitive. So, the 18-year-old decided to join the Marines. Just two weeks after graduation, he shipped off to boot camp in Paris Island, South Carolina. After that, he’ll attend the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, where he hopes to earn a degree in Chinese. Then what? Roger says he loves life in Belpre, and might return. But career opportunities in the town, which is feeling the pinch of globalization, are scarce. Even Roger’s mother, Lisa Fought, says her son would have a better chance at success elsewhere. “The way the economy is now – if you don’t have an education, you have nothing,” she says. “You have to have a high school diploma to even work at McDonald’s nowadays. And working at McDonald’s is not going to pay rent. It’s not going to pay your utilities.”

CHERESE CLARK
Principal, Pleasant Hill Academy
Cincinnati, Ohio

“Every child deserves the opportunity to come to school and learn, and to be in an environment where they can learn. And, I think that is my biggest role here as the administrator.”

It’s been nearly two decades since Cherese began her career in the Cincinnati public school system – first as a teacher, then as an academic coach, and – finally – as Principal. When she took over Pleasant Hill Academy two years ago, the school had been labeled as an “academic emergency.” In her short tenure, Cherese has helped the school climb to “academic watch,” and hopes for even more improvement in the years to come.

ANNE KUITTINEN
Finnish exchange student, junior year
Lewis Center, Ohio

“I’ve had pretty much straight A’s since I came here, except for the first quarter I had one B, a B+. But that was just because I was just getting used to the language and speaking it.”

How did Anne Kuittinen, a student from the small town of Espoo, Finland, end up in Ohio? Call it curiosity, and a desire to learn English – which the 16-year-old calls the “language of the world.” Although she already speaks some English – in addition to Spanish, Swedish and German – Kuittinen says she loves languages and hopes to use them in her career. Living in the United States, she says, proved to be a memorable experience. Anne became close with her host family, the Kiplingers, and continues to speak with them regularly. As for her school experience, Kuittinen says it was also an easy adjustment – perhaps a little too easy. Although she earned straight A’s at Olentangy High School, which is rated as excellent, Anne is now redoing her junior year at home in Finland. Why? Because the Finnish school system, which consistently ranks at the top of international tests of math and science, doesn’t accept credits from America.

NANCY JOHNSON
Fourth-grade language arts teacher, Pleasant Hill Academy
College Hill, Cincinnati

“Right now you’re up all night thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, what did I not cover?’ So the closer it gets to testing the pressure is tough.”

A teacher for 13 years in the Cincinnati Public School System, last year marked Johnson’s first at Pleasant Hill. Although the job is challenging at times, Johnson says she loves to teach and most nights, she goes home happy. The mother of one says she applied to Pleasant Hill because of its new teacher training program – called TAP – which allows her to spend 90 minutes a week with mentors reviewing lesson plans and strategizing. Last year, her hard work paid off – with nearly all her students passing the writing portion of Ohio’s standardized test, called the OAT.

GUADALUPE MEDINA
Second-year student, Metro High School
Columbus, Ohio

“(In) most schools you just sit down and read a book, but here you’re like actually hands-on, making videos, and actually doing like real-live stuff.”

She’s only 16 years old, and Lupe Medina is already taking college-level classes at Metro, a unique public school outside Columbus. The daughter of Mexican immigrants, Lupe hasn’t yet decided on a career path, but is considering biomedical engineering. Next year, she’ll be enrolled in courses at Ohio State University.

DeJANE DANIEL
First-year student, Metro High School
Columbus, Ohio

“It’s hard sometimes, though, because in a normal school you have a C, you can pass, but here you have to have an A. Sometimes that gets annoying, but at certain times, you know, you want to brag. You’re like, “I got an A in everything,” and you can literally say that because you have to.”

At Metro, she’s studying Chinese, American literature and algebra II/trigonometry. To get to and from Metro, she takes two public buses – a commute that consumes four hours of her day. DeJane says she’s not sure what career she will pursue, but that taking college classes before she finishes high school will help her to decide what’s right for her. And the earlier she decides, she says, the brighter her future looks.

SCHOOLS:

Pleasant Hill Academy
In the diverse College Hill area outside Cincinnati, Pleasant Hill Elementary is part of a federally funded pilot program to improve teacher quality, called TAP. At this high poverty school, each teacher spends 90 minutes a week with a “master teacher” to help improve his or her lesson plan. “I have seen some of my veteran teachers blossom,” says Principal Cherese Clark. Teachers are also eligible for a bonus for improving students’ outcomes. Part of the evaluation is based on test scores on the all-important yearly state test, the OAT, used for NCLB reporting. To help improve student success, Pleasant Hill also offers on-site mental health services through a program called Ready To Learn. Principal Clark says these services are important in low-income schools.

“A number of them are in foster care,” says Clark. “We have some children that are from homes where they’ve suffered abuse. There may be drug abuse going on in the home. They need assistance and guidance and support here at school.”

Belpre
Belpre High School sits in Ohio’s rural Appalachian region on the border of West Virginia. About 40 percent of the kids in the Belpre School District are economically disadvantaged, and only a quarter of its high school students go on to study at four-year colleges. Belpre has experienced the transition of globalization firsthand with factories closing and jobs moving overseas. The town faces serious financial strains because of a change in the tax structure. Remaining factories, such as two plastics manufacturers, were granted tax breaks by the state legislature, resulting in a serious shortfall for the school district. The district’s superintendent, Harry Fleming, applied for a state grant to bring in a Chinese language teacher to the school, hoping that he could give the students something that would help them get jobs. “Mandarin is the one of the most widely spoken languages in the world,” says Fleming. “We know the growing economy in China is probably going to play more and more of a role in our society. It seemed like a good thing to pursue.”

Metro
Metro High School is an alternative public high school focusing on STEM (science, technology, engineering and math). It was founded by the Ohio State University, a research and development company, Batelle, and several Columbus area school districts. Interested students apply and enter a lottery from 16 school districts. The school is diverse and about 40 percent of its students are low-income. There are no bells, lockers, or blackboards at the school, which started three years ago. Each grade has about 100 students. The curriculum favors hands-on learning in all disciplines. Each student is expected to master a subject before he or she moves on, allowing the student to take as long as is needed until he or she learns the material. Students can finish their requirements and begin taking college classes while still in high school. Principal Marcy Raymond says being different, flexible and fostering collaboration is imperative to helping students learn. “Every kid can learn,” says Raymond. “I don’t think there’s anyone here that can’t do that if given the right strategies and the right amount of time. We say we are a small school with a big footprint.”

Metro has run into opposition from officials in surrounding districts who argue it should be considered a charter school, and that students who want to attend it should pay tuition. This conflict is an example of just how tough it is to innovate within the existing school system.

Olentangy
Olentangy is the fastest growing school district in the fastest growing region in the state of Ohio. It is an affluent school district whose schools are consistently rated excellent. Olentangy High School offers 15 Advanced Placement classes and many electives. More than 90 percent of its students go on to higher education. And the district has just opened a new high school, it’s third. Principal Mindy Farry is proud of the school and its students’ success. “We’ve got just a bevy of academic courses, as well as other things students can dabble in, whether it’s fine arts or performing arts, or industrial technology,” says Farry. “We have mentorship programs. We also have a special needs department and intervention specialists working with some of our special needs students. There’s a little bit of a spot for everyone here, so they can get whatever they need to get them prepared for college.”

“The first natural resource in any society are the minds of its people.”
- Wendy Puriefoy, Public Education Network

In 1995, America’s college graduation rate was first in the world. Ten years later, it ranked 15th. As so many nations around the world continue to improve their systems of education, America can no longer afford to maintain the status quo. In an ever-changing, increasingly competitive global economy, is the U.S. doing all it can to prepare its students to win jobs and maintain a robust economy?

WHERE WE STAND: America’s Schools in the 21st Century presents a frank evaluation of our educational system’s strengths and weaknesses. Hosted by Judy Woodruff, Senior Correspondent for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, the documentary visits schools throughout Ohio, an important swing state that represents a range of socioeconomic and geographic school districts. The program features schools in urban Cincinnati, suburban Columbus, and rural Belpre.

WHERE WE STAND introduces students, parents, teachers and administrators whose stories illustrate the overwhelming odds and shining successes of education in America. They include Bin Che, an educator from mainland China who teaches Mandarin in rural Ohio; Cherese Clark, principal of a high-poverty school struggling under the pressure of low test scores; Guadalupe Medina, a student at a STEM school (which focuses on Science, Technology, Engineering and Math), who, at age 16, has completed all of her high school requirements; and Anne Kuittinen, a Finnish exchange student who earned straight A’s but is now redoing her junior year at home in Finland because the Finnish school system doesn’t accept credits from America.

Making a documentary on education is a huge, unwieldy task, and sometimes we felt like the blind man describing the elephant. Every topic we looked at – teaching, testing, globalization, equity and money – seemed worthy of a series in and of itself. Yet in the end, we were convinced that because these issues in education are inextricably linked, they were all worthy of coverage – even in an hour-long program..

Throughout the production of this documentary, we met so many great, committed educators, with so many inspiring ideas. At Pleasant Hill Academy, a public urban grade school in Cincinnati, Ohio, we experienced the school’s warm, and energizing atmosphere first-hand. The teacher we profiled, Nancy Johnson, regularly takes students to McDonald’s for lunch – a highlight for them – and talks to several of them on the phone regularly. The principal of the school, Cherese Clark, also pours her heart and soul into her job. She greets children by name -often with a hug – at the beginning and end of each day, dressed in impeccable suits and carrying a megaphone.

On the first day we filmed at Pleasant Hill, the school was deep in the throes of preparation for the Ohio Achievement test. Signs exhorting students to do their best on the exam lined the hallways. Students in an after-school club composed chants to pump students up for the test. That relentless focus reflects the practical reality of public schools. Pleasant Hill’s official ranking, based on how many kids are reaching proficiency on state tests, sits just one category above the absolute worst. Ramifications can be severe. If you’re the principal of a under-performing school, failure on the test can put your job on the line.

For Cherese Clark, the goal of bringing all the students at Pleasant Hill up to their grade level is particularly daunting – because they are starting so far below it to begin with.. To keep her expectations in check, Clark says she reminds herself that building a culture of change takes several years. But she also admits that if the school manages to improve significantly, her whoops of delight may reach me on the East Coast.

From the beginning, we were determined to include voices from across the political spectrum in the program, to encourage viewers to think about the different approaches to school reform. Smart, reasonable people can disagree passionately about the best direction for education. Should reform focus only on schools, or should it take into context larger forces, like the situation of a student at home? Do kids need more social services, or more structure? Can our culture place a higher priority on learning, and what’s the best way to facilitate that kind of societal shift? As one of our interview subjects, Professor Sharon Lynn Kagan, noted reforming education is a battle with many fronts. If the debate over education becomes so polarized that it shuts out effective solutions in favor of a rigid adherence to ideology, clearly everyone loses – most of all, students.

Part of that debate concerns the changing global economy. In the piece, we tried to walk the line between overplaying the threat from other countries and recognizing that the world has changed in a way that will have a serious impact on kids in schools today. And while globalization may seem a handy buzzword for bi-coastal sophisticates in the media, we found plenty of people in the small city of Belpre, Ohio, who think and talk about it too. It was in Belpre that we met Bin Che, a young teacher from China, who told me that in China teachers have an easier life but students work much harder. We also traveled to the Northern European country of Finland, where students routinely top international tests of math and science.

In Finland, talk of their educational success sometimes sounded like an overly cheery Christmas card: Our kids are number one in math and science! They think independently! They don’t even start school until they’re almost seven years old! The capital, Helsinki, can feel the same way. The streets are clean. There are no homeless people. The taxi drivers are so courteous they refuse to take a fare unless it’s their turn in the line.

Describing a national culture can be a tricky thing, teetering on the edge of offensive stereotype and meaningless generalities. Still, when you’re talking international comparisons, the specifics of place matter. Finland is a country that prides itself on consensus. When I went to an upper secondary school outside of Helsinki, I was introduced to a representative from the teacher’s union. He reminded me of a Finnish Gerard Depardieu, thoughtfully playing with his long hair during our conversation. I asked him about what the teachers union agitated for. He frowned thoughtfully, then paused. After some internal discussion with his colleagues, he offered, rather tentatively, the issue of class size. For example, he explained, classes with forty students would be far too large. When I asked if he had any such classes, he replied that – Well, he didn’t – but in theory that would be bad.

That element of stoicism extended to salaries as well. Finnish teachers professed to be happy with their compensation. “It’s quite enough,” said English teacher Jaana Bjorklund Vjoulla firmly. One of her young colleagues, who teaches a summer math course, happens to also be a dentist. He stays with teaching because he loves it, and notes that at this stage of his career, his salary as a teacher is just about equal to that of a starting dentist.

Of course, Finland couldn’t be more different than the United States. It’s tiny, has a much smaller gap between rich and poor, and a homogeneous population. Yet it would be silly to overlook some of the reasons for Finland’s success in both schools and society. Better teacher training crosses borders. As for the level of inequity in society, it may be worth remembering that the growing gap between wealthy and working-class Americans has ripple effects that extend into the classroom.

In the end, there are few easy answers to the questions we raised, and we saw that first-hand. While Pleasant Hill Elementary did improve test scores, they fell short of the ambitious targets they set for themselves. At the alternative Metro School in Columbus, Ohio, first-year student DeJane Daniels didn’t return for her second year, despite the fact that she had been thriving there. And Belpre Schools won’t have their Chinese program this year, because they didn’t get another grant. Yet, there are also reasons to hope – and perhaps more importantly, to debate, discuss, and get involved, in these issues in your community.

Television Credits

Narrated By
JUDY WOODRUFF

Produced and Directed by
REBECCA HAGGERTY

Written by
REBECCA HAGGERTY
MOLLY KNIGHT RASKIN

Editors
KERRY SOLOWAY
PAUL ORTIZ

Associate Producers
MOLLY KNIGHT RASKIN
LISA GRAY

Cinematography
MICHAEL SIMON
SAM SHINN
ROB VAN PRAAG
PAUL DOUGHERTY
SEAN HEALEY
SCOTT WINTERS
JONATHAN YOUNG

Music Supervisor
PAUL ORTIZ

Graphics and Title design
LIZ DE LUNA

Additional Editing
LISA GRAY

Additional Cinematography
SCOTT SINKLER

Additional Field Production
LI JIE

Sound Recording
ERIC FARNBAUCH
CARL FRANSEN
JOE MAGGIO
STEVE MICALLEF
ANTHONY PASFIELD
KEN PEXTON
STEVE POHLMAN
ERIC VUCELICH

Project Management
BETSY O’CONNOR
JANET MUENTES

Executive Assistants
EVA GLASER
ZOE POLLOCK

Sound Post-Production
JONATHAN BERMAN

On-line Editor
KERRY SOLOWAY

Prompter
CAPITOL PROMPTER

Makeup Artist
PATTY MCFARLAND

Additional Gaffer
LUKE DEIKIS

Additional Location Media Manager
DAMON BUNDSCHUH

Board of Advisors
GENE CARTER
JOE COLETTI
MARGARET HONEY
SHIRLEY MALCOM
SCOTT MONTGOMERY
PEDRO NOGUERA
WENDY PURIEFOY
CLAUS VON ZASTROW

Archival Footage Provided By
PRELINGER ARCHIVES
ODDBALL FILM + VIDEO

Props
LEARNING RESOURCES
INTERNATIONAL PLAYTHINGS, INC
SMALL WORLD TOYS
RAND MCNALLY

Thanks
SAINT MICHAEL ACADEMY
GEORGETOWN VISITATION PREPARATORY SCHOOL
WETA
DIANE SILVER
POLARIS FASHION PLACE

Executive Producer
RONALD THORPE

Executive in Charge
NEAL SHAPIRO

This program was produced by WLIW, which is solely responsible for its content.

© 2008 by WLIW NEW YORK. All Rights Reserved.

Web Credits

Producer
CHIE WITT
MOLLY KNIGHT RASKIN
LISA GRAY

Writing
MOLLY KNIGHT RASKIN
LISA GRAY

Designer
GABRIEL TORRES

Production Assistants
DIANA COFRESI-TERRERO
LENNY DROZNER

Pagebuilding
BRIAN SANTALONE

Technical Director
BRIAN LEE

Creative Director
NICK MILLER

Director of Production
DANIEL B. GREENBERG

Thirteen Online is a production of Thirteen/WNET New York’s Kravis
Multimedia Education Center in New York City. Dan Goldman, Executive
Director, thirteen.org. Bob Adleman, Business Manager.

© 2008 The Educational Broadcasting Corporation. All rights reserved.