The Reeducation of Silicon Valley

Andrea Summers's first few months teaching at Costano Elementary School were terrible. The children were wild. Vandalism was so bad that the police needed to be called almost every week. She was teaching right on the edge of America's richest region, California's Silicon Valley. But she and Costano were trapped in a pocket of persistent crime and poverty: the isolated bay-side town of East Palo Alto.

In such a dismal setting, Summers didn't immediately notice some visitors: engineers from a high-tech company across the street who would hop the fence to play basketball with the students. Then, some of the engineers offered to help tutor math. Finally, in the spring of 1990, the company's boss paid a visit. His name was John Morgridge; his company was Cisco Systems.

Cisco was tiny then, and it didn't have much money. But Morgridge said that he and his wife cared passionately about education. If Costano needed math tutors, his company would help supply them. If Costano needed computers, Cisco would find them. And about those dingy walls: Morgridge and some employees would come by on Saturdays with paintbrushes.

Across the table, Summers sat wide-eyed. For years, she had been teaching in some of America's toughest schools. She had scrounged for chalk, textbooks, and special reading instructors. "I can't believe that someone finally gives a damn about these schools," Summers told Morgridge. And then she burst into tears.

More than a decade later, Morgridge's bet is paying off. Costano's students, mostly Latino, African-American, and Pacific Islander, treat one another with respect. The classrooms are packed with inspirational slogans. And on standardized tests, Costano scores in the middle of California's range, up from the bottom tenth in the early 1990s. All this is happening in a district that annually spends just $4,500 per student -- barely half of what neighboring Palo Alto musters.

Just about everyone in business gets excited at some point about "fixing" the schools. And just as predictably, after a few years, the well-meaning crusaders drop out, disappointed and dispirited. Nowhere is this cycle of hope and frustration more evident than in the way that Silicon Valley relates to the 30,000 people of East Palo Alto. The Valley is packed with optimistic entrepreneurs whose success rests on doing the impossible. If you can do great things with silicon or software, the thinking goes, how hard can it be to transform a few schools in a hurry?

But Silicon Valley's fast-paced way of doing things has turned out to be exactly wrong for communities like East Palo Alto. It isn't possible to call a meeting, set a plan, and insist that units meet their "Q2 deliverables." These days, East Palo Alto is 55% Latino and nearly 10% Pacific Islander, so language barriers can be immense. And it isn't easy to unravel problems associated with poverty -- gangs, poor health care, poor housing -- that often paralyze attempts at better education.

John Morgridge understands this as well as anyone. In East Palo Alto, he preaches patience and an old-fashioned, sleeves-rolled-up commitment: "If you want to make an impact, you need to invest your time every bit as much as your money. And you need to stay involved for the long run. If you can't look at a five-year horizon, you shouldn't get involved."

Get beyond the quick-fix mind-set, and progress does seem within reach. One case in point is East Palo Alto Charter School (EPA Charter), the educational equivalent of a startup. The school was founded in 1997. Its catalysts are teachers, mostly middle-class whites who arrive from all over the United States, believing that they can help transform urban education. They are passionate and still in their twenties, with degrees from the likes of Brown, Harvard, and Stanford. Their naïveté is gone. They know that they can't work miracles in a single quarter. Yet they have become savvy, effective teachers. And they have forged remarkable bonds with East Palo Alto parents who want to do something extra to brighten their children's prospects.

Costano, meanwhile, is like a change program inside an established company. In part, its progress is a testament to Cisco's persistence. But Costano has also achieved what author Malcolm Gladwell calls a "tipping point." Once outsiders help create a climate for learning, good things happen. Parents become more committed. The best teachers help recruit other stars. And before long, troubled schools turn into winners.

The chattering has stopped. All eyes are on the blackboard. In a sheet-metal mobile classroom, 24 fourth graders watch with excitement and a little nervousness as their teacher posts five math problems on the board.