First Things First

Few U.S. school superintendents have a tougher job--or a better record--than Carl Francis Hansen, 54, who heads the public schools of Washington, D.C. Like most big cities, Washington suffers all of urban public education's growing ills: crowded classrooms, underpaid teachers, juvenile delinquency. But Superintendent Hansen has extra trouble. In Dixie-oriented Washington, "massive" integration sparked a continuing exodus of white pupils to private schools and the suburbs; 76.7% of the city's 118,244 students are now Negro, up 20% since 1953.

While grappling with this legacy, Hansen has found time to launch an astonishing campaign to raise academic standards. In the two years since he took over as superintendent, Hansen's hard-hitting emphasis on basic education ("order and logic") along with classroom discipline ("firmness with love") has begun turning the "wreck" of Washington schools into a model that less beleaguered cities may envy. If in theory the nation's capital ought to be an educational showcase, Carl Hansen seems determined to make it so in reality.

Four Tracks to Excellence. Last week Hansen was discussing a budget for next year that, if approved by Congress, will raise the District of Columbia's school bill by 16%. His main aim: a hefty pay boost for teachers (from $7,300 maximum to $9,100), frankly aimed at attracting better teachers. Those who join him will find plenty to work with.

The key is a four-track system that Hansen, then assistant superintendent, sold to Washington's board of education in 1956. On the basis of ability and motivation, all students are divided into four groups. At the top are 3,000 gifted students (IQs above 120), navigating a tough "honors" track from third grade on (about 20% are Negroes). At the bottom are slow learners who need special remedial attention. In the middle are two tracks, embracing those of college ability and those who expect only to finish high school. Each student gets the kind of challenge and help he needs, and "tracking upward" is encouraged.

The four-track scheme has paid off. Despite the steady loss of better-prepared white students, College Entrance Examination Board scores have risen each year since 1956 by more than the national average. On three national high school achievement tests, Washington students have raised their position relative to the rest of the U.S. by 14 percentile points. Hansen is still not satisfied. Beginning this year, honor students must take 16 1/2 required annual units of work to graduate, including four years of foreign language, three of math, three of science. Next year the high school day will be lengthened by a full period for all students.

The Basic Ones. A stiff-collared man of headmasterly mien, Carl Hansen was born in Wolbach, Neb. (pop. 442), graduated from the University of Nebraska, got his doctorate at the University of Southern California. As an English teacher (and later principal) at Omaha's Technical High School, he developed a three-level English curriculum, forerunner of his four-track system. Long before going to Washington in 1947, he had hammered out a tough-minded notion of priorities: "Out of the unbelievable range and variety of human activities and experiences, only a limited number of basic ones can be selected for teaching in the classroom."

Among those basic ones now available to Washington students are Russian courses in three of the District's ten high schools and a sweeping program of French and Spanish for 1,900 third-graders in 49 elementary schools. But English remains Hansen's favorite basic, and better writing is one of his priorities: "It seems to me more important for us to know the structure of language than to know how a spark plug works in an automobile."

Compared with most U.S. public-school systems, Hansen's English composition program is downright revolutionary. Theme writing starts as early as the second grade, and students in the two top high school tracks are required to write 24 themes a year. To help in the time-consuming grading job (chief obstacle in other cities), Hansen has arranged with Washington's militant P.T.A. for 20 college-women "lay readers." To Hansen, it is only a small beginning. By whatever pulling and prodding is necessary, stubborn Superintendent Hansen aims to give Washington's children a real education. Says he: "Too often, I am sure, we expect less of students than they are capable of doing."

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