I had my second visit over the past week with a group of students at University City Senior High School in Saint Louis today. At the request of a teacher there, I've been working with her class to help plan and execute an Our Education petition drive as a class civic engagement / service project.

On the outskirts of Saint Louis (it is actually in Saint Louis County as opposed to the city proper), U-City HS is a fairly typical urban school with high numbers of minority and low-income students. The school experienced a huge surge in test scores last year (it more than tripled the number of 10th graders proficient in math from 7% to 22% and experienced similar bumps in 11th great reading going from 12% to 29% proficient), and the school itself has what seems to me to be a pleasant, positive feeling to it.

But the students there know that education in Saint Louis and across the country is not receiving the attention and priority that youth deserve. During my first trip in to see them last week, I shared a number of statistics that they found to be startling, regarding achievement gaps, drop out rates, and international counterparts outpacing children here in the US. And when I asked them what they would do if they could change anything in our schools to fix these problems, they came up with some very compelling solutions. The two they felt most passsionately about were the need to a.) reduce class size so that students can have more one-on-one attention, and b.) to improve teacher quality so that each class is led by a dedicated and bright teacher. While the two ideas are somewhat at odds (especially politically, since the former is directly in-line with the calls of teacher unions and the latter may come at the cost of union control), they certainly reflect long-standing statistical evidence from researchers who have found that teachers are the main determinants of student achievement.

Today they set the school-wide goal of 750 signatures on the petition; a lofty one that would put them third overall on the wall of fame. In order to reach that goal, their first task is to prepare a letter and presentation to gain their principal's approval for the drive, which they'll be doing next week. I'll continue to update you on the progress of the UCity HS petition drive as the days go on.