Customer Reviews

School of Dreams: Making the Grade at a Top American High School

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If you're interested in this book, you are, like me, probably an alumnus of WHS. Who else would want to read this book anyhow? It's not like the success of WHS can be easily duplicated in other places. There's not many places where you can have a small public school in a highly Asian demographic community with a restrictive admissions test that almost certainly guarantees a self-selecting and self-motivated student body that will excel academically. And for this reason, it's no surprise that WHS crushes all other public schools as far as standardized testing goes.

And for this same reason, it's silly of the author, Edward Humes, to posit that the critics of public schools have it all wrong because WHS is proof of a public school that succeeds. You see, underlying his narrative is his thesis that WHS is proof that an under-funded, under-staffed public school with lousy facilities can nevertheless succeed. His proofs, of course, are the dazzling statistics WHS produces in terms of SAT scores, standardized tests, etc.

This is rather simplistic because anyone with common sense would attribute the school's academic prowess to its self-selective and highly unusual demographic composition. I would give Humes more credit if he had the guts to admit the following: that the teachers don't really matter at WHS. Indeed, some of us would even assert that WHS students excel in spite of poor teachers. But this is a harsh thing to say and Humes has neither the insight nor the guts (nor the ability) to present it.

As WHS alumni know, the self-motivated kids at WHS exceed not because of standards imposed by their teachers, but because of standards imposed by their peers/predecessors/parents. Of course, there are notable exceptions. But Humes (largely) ignores the most exceptional WHS teachers (and there are only a handful). Instead, he wastes time describing the current principal as being a huge factor of WHS's success. Really? The truth is, any WHS principal has the easiest public school job in America. Just sit back, ride the students' coattails and take credit for their achievements. This is what all the previous principals did, all of whom enjoyed terms where WHS was the #1 school in CA, and none of whom were responsible for it.

To Mr. Humes credit, he does devote some attention to Mr. B, the U.S. history teacher, who is indeed one of WHS's few faculty gems. But this kind of treatment is sparse. How could there be no mention of the fabulous Mr. S, another history teacher and one of WHS's noteworthy faculty members?

If Mr. Humes were intellectually critical and honest, he would also give us vignettes of some of the really lousy faculty members at WHS. It seemed like as a courtesy he just ignored those facets of the faculty completely.

Another weakness of his book is that he focuses on one school year: 2001-02. I understand why he does that in terms of having a coherent narrative, but by focusing on just one year, and skipping over WHS's history (he devotes a few superficial pages to it but nothing substantive), he fails to raise and explore these issues:

How has the parental/peer pressure to succeed academically affected alumni later on in their lives?

How do WHS students perform in college, where success comes more from creative and original thought as opposed to rote memorization?

Have WHS alumni over the past 20 or 30 years done anything remarkable or exceptional? Or have we just churned out a number of doctors, lawyers, and businessmen who have taken a safe, pre-packaged road to success?

These are difficult questions, and Humes has no position, no ability, no insight, and no way to answer these. So he eschewed the more complex issues and wrote an easy book filled with easy answers. I don't blame him for this. Neither do I commend him for it.

Finally, Humes has this obsession with taking cheap shots at the Bush family that manifests itself throughout the book. It's seriously annoying and his obsessiveness makes him an even less credible author.

It was a special opportunity to read a book about something so close to my heart. It's been more than a decade since I wandered sleepily through the halls of Whitney High School, but through Hume's honest portrayal it's as though I never left. Memories of feeling "never good enough" came hurtling back only to be replaced with the gratifying realization that like me, the kids in the book will soon find it's what they learn in the proverbial classroom of life that truly matters. Whitney gets you to college, you get you through life. I urge parents who view Whitney as the Holy Grail to read this book carefully and then read everything in quotation marks again. These are the voices of your children. These were the words in my head that never found a voice...until now.

Not far into David Hume's acclaimed book about the life inside one of America's most pressure-packed public schools, the author quotes a teacher who sums up high school life succinctly. Schools are like organisms, the teacher said, because you never can identify exactly how and what makes them go. For those who claim to carry the quick fixes to an education system said to have been broken off and on for the last 50 years, take that advice.

And just when you think you have all the answers, read Hume's book about Whitney High School.

Using a formula of high expectations, partental involvement and a selective admissions process, Whitney has built one of the jewels of the California educational system with about 95 percent of the students college bound and SAT scores to drool over.

But before principals nationwide begin to copy the forumla, Hume illustrates the neagative variables to such success. This school has been built on the backs of automatons who begin their quest for the HYP (Harvard, Yale, Princeton) track as early as third grade. Hume characterizes life at Whitney as a six-year experiment in nerves. Like the physics projects illustrated in the book, some students are one Alka-Seltzer short of an emotional explosion. AP classes and numerous extra-curriculars are means to the HYP end, not necessarily instrinsic desires to gain knowledge and life experience.

While Hume's portrayal represents a microcosm of Whitney, it reveals the predicament high-stakes plays in the educational accountability movement. Success is not in the subjective and personal nature of knowledge, but the impersonal (hence the faceless student on the cover of Hume's book and pictureless inside) ranking on standardized tests.

While Whitney may be at the top, others school continually try to knock it off, using the same twisted reason a Whitney junior spends $1,000 to increase his SAT score to 1560 then decides to retake it again -- "You can never have too high a score."

I believe in high expectations and no excuses for schools and students, but I am wary of a federal system trying to devise a formula to improve the education of tens of millions of children controlled by tens of millions of variables. When you try to control the beast, the beast ultimately ends of controlling you. Whitney students are perfect examples.

However, if Hume's book shows anything, it is that not just parental involvement is key to educational success, but local (not state or federal) control is vital to the success of any school. For whatever negative side effects, Whitney's formula works well for them. It is up to other schools to create their own.

This is an important, readable and incredibly well-balanced book that really brings us into the lives of students and teachers at Whitney High. You can tell that Humes cares for this school, its earnest and impressive students, and its hardworking teachers. What's most impressive about this book is that it makes an extremely balanced assessment of not just Whitney High but the entire history of and debate about the meaning and possibility of public education in the U.S., while telling an engaging story filled with sensitively drawn characters. Every educator, school administrator and concerned parent should read this book.
As for the sensationalism that some readers detect, of course the book won't be representative of every single person who goes to Whitney. But it captures the contradictions inherent in the culture of high achievers, when getting the grades becomes more important than the substance of learning. Anyone who recently attended a top college (especially those who came to that college from a low-achieving public school, as I did) will recognize these students and their uber-competitive culture of studying. These are the kinds of issues that we should all be thinking about and discussing as a country.

If you read one book about education in the New Year, make it School of Dreams, the story of a school that works, teachers who inspire, and kids who give us hope for the future. Whitney High was a public school with no money and run-down facilities that remade itself at the grass roots level into the top school in California and one of the best in the USA. But Humes gives us more than the story of a public school that works. He writes intimately of the lives of high-achieving students, the pressures they face (and are subjected to by parents) and the sometimes overwhelming temptations to cheat or cut corners they struggle with in a test-obsessed culture more interested in grades and scores than in the best possible learning experiences. A must-read for parents and teachers who wonder where are schools are headed... and where they could be.

This terrific book about a high performing public high school in California is one you won't be able to put down. It reads like a novel, with nuggets of wisdom and insightful observations on what truly goes into achieving an exceptional public high school. This is not an uncritical look. The pushy parents and students who would rather cheat than risk a grade below "A" are rampant. But the message of success is clear -- excellent teachers, a supportive environment where all students are known, high expectations planted before puberty kicks in, and focus on an indepth, academmically challenging curriculum, rather than test scores, is the ticket. Most refreshing is the total absence of educational & bureaucratic jargon. School of Dreams is a must-read for anyone who cares about what is going on in public education today. Kudos to Edward Humes for this breakthrough book.

I'll start with a disclaimer. I'm a Whitney alum, so let's get a few inaccuracies and omissions out of the way. First, the big orange lockers were not part of the original décor; they were installed in the late 1980s, a vast improvement over the old one foot by one foot sorry excuses for lockers. Second, despite not having a gym way back then, Whitney still offered an impressive array of varsity sports, including basketball, tennis, and water polo. And third, unless the food in the Hutch has gone completely downhill over the past decade, it was never *that* bad.

That said, as a scholar, I think Hume has written a good ethnography within a solid historical context. I have no doubt that if he'd spent a few more years on the campus, the picture he paints would be even more revealing, simply because he would have been able to share even more insight from a wider variety of people. (Perhaps this volume would then include interviews with my favorite teachers who are still teaching at Whitney, Mrs. Breik, Mrs. Kesinger, and Mrs. El Moussa, and maybe even a few in-depth portraits of students that were more like me!) In all honesty, however, I can't imagine the average reader wanting to read much more than the existing 400 pages.

From an educator's point of view, here's what I think this volume has to offer to K-12 teachers and administrators:

1) Get parents involved. Parents have a vested interest in their children's achievement. Take advantage of their natural enthusiasm; the next time you run into obstacles with the school board, get your parents to attend a board meeting.

2) Believe in your students. It doesn't matter if you enroll your students through an admissions test or they came straight off the streets. If you believe in them, they will succeed.

3) Use technology wisely. Computers are not a cure-all. In fact, they can even be a hindrance. Don't let them displace a well-designed traditional curriculum. Use them only where they are relevant.

Finally, as a parent, I find Hume's treatise to be a useful cautionary tale. Despite having attended Whitney not too long ago, I'd already forgotten much of what it was like, and this book brought it all back: the students' misguided focus on grades, the pressure cooker atmosphere during comps, etc. One parent's confession was especially poignant - she didn't know what it was like because her daughter never said anything to her. I want to teach my children to try their best but know how to have fun, and it's good to be reminded that what we don't say is just as important as what we do say.

Humes details the turnaround of Whitney High in Cerritos, California, which went from the brink of extinction, where local schools dumped failing students, to becoming the number one school in California. This is an example of what can happen when schools set high expectations for their students. Although a public jr./sr. high school, students must take an admittance test to be enrolled at the school. Once enrolled, students are told that they must apply to at least 5 colleges, including at least one public and one private. Most of the students aim for Harvard, Yale or Princeton, due to parental pressure.

As the parent of a high school student, I found this book to be very interesting.

Edward Humes aspiring book, School of Dreams is an incredible story of a top achieving public high school. The book is a satisfying read and a page-turner. It gives you a window of what happens behind high school doors. As a student enrolled in a top achieving high school I found the experiences in this book both insightful and misleading. The different types of ways in which students made themselves stay up at night and do tons of homework shows how everyone strives to be on top. Whitney is a school that attracts families from all over the world because of its high reputation. Because of all the high standards, Whitney is considered mostly Asian. Whitney is not a high school that is preparing its students for college or the outside world and realities. It is a school that is all about scoring the highest on the college placement tests. It is a story of `pushed' students often driven by parents to achieve excellence. School of Dreams is a story for someone who wants to know about a student's life underneath the skin at a top achieving high school. Also, to see what lengths teachers and parents put on their students to get into a top university. And to reveal what hardships parents put on their child psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually to earn that top grade.

Edward Humes has written an engrossing and balanced book that is useful for anyone concerned with public education in America. The writing style, combining the author's first-hand experiences with those of the students and teachers, is compelling and very readable. I recommend it.

But that's saying what the book is; I want to comment on what it is not, and was not supposed to be as far as I can tell. Some other reviewers seem to have missed the point. Some of the Whitney alumni express disappointment that the book does not completely mirror their experiences. I doubt if they were the target market of the book. Other, more detached people wished the book was an academic study that could be broadly applied without interpretation to other environments. That is certainly not true and I don't think the author hides that fact. Whitney is an exclusive school that creme skims the best students from the local area and draws other, would-be students from around the world. No secret there. But it still serves as an example, in the extreme, of the benefits and costs of what a great many educators think are the key features of success. The one example that comes up over and over again as a double-edged sword is involved parents. The kids at Whitney no doubt benefit greatly, in the narrow sense of that word, from parents that stress achievement and place that well above any other objective in their children's (and their own) lives. That this comes at a significant cost comes out clearly in the book. Similarly, the narrowness of students' world view is also laid bare, despite teachers' efforts to the ameliorate the situation.

I read this book as a father who wants to encourage his daughters to succeed and to put aside ephemeral pleasures that might stand in the way of that success. At the same time, I have been very conscious of overdoing it, of creating an unbalanced environment for my children. The importance of getting this balancing act right was underscored by my reading of this book. I'm still working on it.

That said, it is true that the book could have done a bit better, particularly in trying to relate what the reader can draw from the Whitney experience for the broader world. The authors attempts on this score in the Epilogue and the accompanying endnotes do not satisfy since he cannot control for the effect of those highly motivated Whitney parents. There simply isn't enough of this for my taste. There are remarkably few allusions in the book to what the academic literature has to say about education, and they appear without references. Still, there are lots of other books that one can consult on those topics. For me, this book works nicely at what it seeks to do.