It's no small encouragement when the U.S. secretary of education strides into your school library and calls the place "a school that's getting better and better."

Secretary Arne Duncan ad-libbed that remark when he and President Barack Obama visited Wright Middle School in a stop Wednesday in Madison.

For one notable day, Wright and its "Panther Pride" symbolized a school that, while not an academic standout, seems to be trying hard to overcome some of public education's most vexing problems.

With its district-high percentages of low-income and non-white students, the charter school could become a bellwether for whether the city - and the state and nation - can get a grip on a pronounced achievement gap that persistently finds minority students scoring lower on standardized tests than their white peers and low-income children playing catch-up academically with their wealthier classmates.

So far, the results have been mixed at Wright, a school that, in some ways, is still trying to overcome its rocky start 16 years ago.

"Some people still very much think of us in a negative way," said Principal Nancy Evans, now in her sixth year. "To them I say, 'Don't judge us on our past. We have grown. We have matured.'"

A 'grand' experiment

Founded in 1993 as Madison Middle School 2000, the school alleviated crowding in the West High School attendance area and served as a hopeful sign to the ethnically diverse South Side, which lacked a middle school. The school moved to its building at 1717 Fish Hatchery Road in 1997 and was renamed for the late Rev. James C. Wright, a prominent local black pastor and civil rights leader.

The school's early years were marred by lax discipline, high staff turnover, the resignation of the original principal and clashes among parents and teachers over governance. Stability arrived in 1998 with Ed Holmes, whose six-year tenure as principal earned praise from many parents and students.

"I would characterize (Wright) as one of the district's grand experiments," said Holmes, now West High principal.

As a charter school, students choose it; no one is assigned there. Enrollment is capped at 255, and classes rarely exceed 20 students. The school's mission stresses civic engagement, social action and multicultural pride.

Parents seem to like it. They gush about Wright's family feel, and there is a waiting list every year for the lottery to get into sixth grade.

Wright parent Stephanie Bernard, a teacher at the district's Midvale Elementary School, wanted her son Gabriel to enroll in sixth grade this year at Wright because the boy "is a little more quiet" than your average middle school student.

"I wanted him to be in gentler hands," said Bernard, whose daughter also attended Wright. The staff there, she said, "has just a different way of looking at kids."

Examining the data

Initially, test scores were "horrible," Holmes said. Today at Wright, "the staff is engaged, the kids are engaged. It's part of the school culture," he said.

Those test scores, while improved, remain disappointing in some ways but promising in others

The school's overall scores on the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Exam, a statewide test used to rate schools under the No Child Left Behind law, lag behind the Madison district and the state as a whole. In 2008, for example, only 47.3 percent of eighth-graders at Wright scored proficient or advanced in math on the exam, compared to 73.8 percent of all Madison eighth-graders and 78.4 percent of eighth-graders across the state.

Yet black students at Wright, on average, scored higher in reading on the exam than black students across the district and state. That news is "heartening," said Superintendent Dan Nerad.

Wright fares well on other measures, too. It has a low mobility rate among Madison's 11 middle schools, meaning students who start there tend to stay there. During the 2008-09 school year, 9.4 percent of Wright students left or entered the school. Only Spring Harbor and Hamilton middle schools had lower rates.

In the 2007-08 school year, the latest data available, 11.7 percent of Wright students were suspended for discipline problems. That's a higher rate than Hamilton, Jefferson or Spring Harbor middle schools but lower than seven others.

In two areas, Wright indisputably leads. Eighty-six percent of its students come from low-income families, compared to 47 percent districtwide. Eighty-seven percent of its students are non-white, compared to 50 percent districtwide. If trends hold, the district as a whole will look more like Wright in the years ahead.

'High expectations'

Evans, the principal, said she sometimes gets frustrated by community members who don't seem to want to allow Wright students "to be adolescents and unpredictable." While fights are rare, they get magnified and used as an indictment of the school's demographics, she said. Conversely, some visitors seem a little too surprised if the hallways are quiet, she said.

"Allow us to be a middle school like any other middle school, and have high expectations for us always," Evans said.

Those high expectations were in evidence Thursday in an eighth-grade class co-led by teachers Lori Nelson and Rebecca Peterson. They had students write their impressions of Obama's visit, pressing hard for something beyond "It was fun."

Most students met the challenge. "He inspired me to go get it, to not wait for someone to pass it to me," wrote one student. Nelson read the responses to the class without names attached.

After class, Nelson and Peterson said the staff tries to connect individually with each student and engage each family. They think small classes and the school's overall smallish size should be replicated where possible. Asked what they need to succeed more often, Nelson mentioned basic human needs for her students that fall outside the classroom - food, shelter, health care, dental care.

There is a mantra at Wright that many students wore on T-shirts for Obama's visit - "Doing things the Wright way."

Social worker Marques Flowers said it means respecting yourself, your classmates and your education. Eighth-grader Luis Garduno, 13, put it this way: "Do things correctly. Nothing bad."

Nerad, the superintendent, has high hopes for Wright. The primary foundation for success - a staff that believes wholeheartedly in the students' ability to meet state and national academic standards - already is there, he said.

"They offer no excuses," he said. "So I think if you look at the elements that need to be in place to have more kids meeting standards, I see many of those elements at Wright Middle School. It's all about sustained focus over time."

Add or View Comment

Login to post your comment. If you don't have an account, you may register for one.