The Mohawk Story - Expectations

This is a true story of how high expectations impact student achievement.

After a few years of central office work, I decided to return to the principalship. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to open a new urban high school in Virginia -- my third new high school as principal.

As soon as I arrived, I learned something troubling. It was common knowledge that the proposed attendance zone was supposed to be very challenging.

Bad kids -

The principal of a rival high school said his test scores were going to go up because our new school was getting all of his bad kids.

Only three teachers from a second rival high school applied to teach at our school. The rest of the teachers didn’t want to follow eight hundred of their worst students.

Gang violence -

It was the same story at the city’s other ten high schools. A member of the police department’s gang task force said the school district was crazy to put three rough neighborhoods under one roof. He said that gang violence was inevitable at a school with students nobody wanted.

9/11 -

By the second week of school, it seemed like the critics were right.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, a fire broke out in our new gym. When parents saw the fire trucks, they panicked. I later learned they thought the school was under terrorist attack like the World Trade Center.

A week later, I had to appear on local television to defend our school's safety. We'd already confiscated two handguns from students.

High expectations -

It was going to take something dramatic to turn things around, but I had a secret. I knew that people usually achieved what was expected of them. In other words, student achievement was directly related to high expectations.

So I set very high expectations for our students and teachers. Goals others thought were impossible:

• become fully accredited by the state on the achievement tests, in our first year,
• out perform our rival high school on the state tests, in our first year,
• win a national technology competition and a state championship in something, in our first year,
• and since no city high school had done it in over thirty-five years, win the state championship in football within three years.

But there was a problem. We couldn’t get our students to believe in themselves enough to try.

Already armed with a caring faculty, I knew we had to do something more. Something outrageous.

Doc Fro -

So I stepped way out of my comfort zone. By working late into the night practicing to a dance groove video, I created a convincing hip-hop alter ego -- Doc Fro.

When I unveiled Doc Fro at the school’s first pep rally, my message was simple, “If a forty-two year old principal can learn to do this, don’t tell me you can’t learn Calculus, Physics, and Algebra because I know you can.”

The results -

Slowly, our students bought into our vision. By the end of the year, the high expectations paid off. We became one of a select few high schools ever to become fully accredited by the state of Virginia in the first year.

We outperformed our rival high school in all four testing areas with the kids that school didn’t want, achieved the highest adjusted English test scores in the city, won a national technology competition, and won a state championship in an outdoor track relay event.

In our second year, after finishing first in the city in both the adjusted English and math test scores, Doc Fro entered the pep rally on a motorcycle. In order to repay our students and teachers for their accomplishments, I let them cut my hair into a royal blue Mohawk.

And in our third year, we played for the state championship in football – and lost. But we won the football state championship the following year.

“. . . all things are possible to him who believes.”

(Mark 9:23; New American Standard Bible)

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