While politicians around the country have been debating the merits of choice as an instrument of reform, Omaha has quietly been fine-tuning its system. What began 16 years ago as a successful desegregation effort, says Superintendent Norbert Schuerman, has become a way to force schools to improve dramatically in order to attract students who otherwise might flee to private or parochial schools. The kids can opt to stay in their zoned high school, but the choices are so rich that nearly one third of Omaha’s 10,000 public-high-school students pick a school outside their neighborhood.
It’s a buyer’s market-kids almost always are accepted by their top-choice schools. So the schools take on all the zeal of marketing firms. At Central High, parents and staff have been meeting every Tuesday for the last nine weeks to discuss ways to sell the school. In December, members of Moller’s staff fanned out to area junior high schools to talk with interested students. The contest really intensified last month, when the schools held open houses. “They pull out all the stops,” says district spokesperson Winnie Callahan. At Burke High School, for example, about 600 people listened to the school’s jazz band as students passed out folders with the school’s promotional material (including a glossy pamphlet that noted the school has the only planetarium in a Nebraska high school). “This is our second biggest night of the year, next to graduation,” says Nancy Faber, a vice principal.
The schools make their initial pitches on a 25-minute video distributed to all the junior highs. Two high schools, North High and South High, are magnet schools, centering their curriculum on technology and computer science. The other schools offer the same basic curriculum; they sell ambience. Burke is “where you create the traditions.” Northwest tells students: “We care.” Central, the oldest school in the district, boasts of its rich history of academic success. Benson shows off its new football field and auditorium.
Key to Omaha’s success is a high degree of central planning, with district officials closely monitoring each school’s performance. The district steps in to help any school that’s struggling. When Northwest began to lose students, district officials worked with the school to help it attract more kids. They sharpened Northwest’s pitch and expanded the number of students eligible to choose the school. Every recruiting document must be approved by the central administration-negative advertising is forbidden-and schools can’t recruit individual students. But, says Moller, “every year there are rumors. We’re under orders that we can’t target that blue-chipper, but we hear all the time that it happens.”
Even in Omaha choice alone won’t fix all that ails the schools. “If you’re really giving students options,” says Thomas Harvey, principal of North High, “then you better have something to sell.” The schools have tried hard to improve their curriculum. Before Harvey took over as North’s principal in 1986, enrollment was falling faster than elsewhere in the district. A school that had once held 2,700 students was down to 921. Harvey reached out to elementary-school students, offering summer programs to fifth graders in robotics and physics. North’s state-of-the-art computer facilities also helped boost enrollment to nearly 1,800 students, including the largest freshman class in the district.
The competition is paying surprising dividends. Omaha’s Roman Catholic schools now lose about a third of their students to public high schools and feel the heat. “We know that our schools have to be better because Omaha’s public schools have gotten better,” says John Flynn, the archdiocesan director of education. And parents are no longer passive consumers. Assistant Superintendent Gary Bennett says parents are more demanding of academic programs and “are better shoppers than they’ve ever been.”
School officials are committed to their plan-and proud of how it has made the schools better. “Omaha is now the stop for most people looking around for new ideas,” says Casserly of The Council of the Great City Schools. “They’re known as one of the nation’s top-drawer urban public-school systems.” The city’s students and parents have learned to expect nothing less.
