Sending Bright Kids From Harlem To Prep Schools

"No education and lack of preparation for the working world does eliminate competition. We are well aware of this, and we let those who criticize the program know it."--Edouard E. Plummer, Director, Wadleigh Scholarship Program, Harlem, New York ("Wadleigh Scholars: From Harlem to Hotchkiss," Independent School, February 1983)

This fall [1984] the A.B.C. (A Better Chance) Scholarship Program, at Harlem's Wadleigh Junior High School 88, will be 20 years old. During those years, the program, administered by Edouard E. Plummer, a Wadleigh math teacher and guidance counselor, has placed academically promising youngsters from the school in 68 preparatory--or independent--schools across the United States. "No school in the country," boasts Plummer with ample justification, "has sent as many people to preparatory school as we have at Wadleigh. Nobody." To prove the success of the program, Plummer points out that these students have gone on to major universities such as Princeton, Dartmouth, and the University of Massachusetts and enjoy careers as doctors, lawyers, engineers, bankers, and so forth. "[W]e have lost no more than three per cent," he writes in Independent School magazine. "Because many of those who drop out do finish in public schools and universities, we do not consider them a complete loss."

It all began in the summer of 1964 when Plummer (who came to Wadleigh in 1960) was vacationing in the South of France. He read an article in Time magazine about a scholarship program called A Better Chance, which had been set up by a group of preparatory schools to increase their minority enrollment. "I talked with a friend of mine," he recalls, "who taught at a preparatory school in Connecticut and I was going to make arrangements with him to get somebody in his school. He told me how to do it with scholarships. When I saw this article, it just put everything in perspective. I called Time magazine from the South of France [and asked them] to send me the information. When I arrived back in the city, everything was waiting for me. I read all this information and said [to myself], 'This is what I want.' I wrote to the people [at A Better Chance]. They sent me everything I wanted. After studying it, I asked my colleagues [what they thought about it] and they said they liked the idea."

When Plummer approached the principal with the idea, the principal's reply was "Do you think you can get these children in these schools?" Plummer, understandably upset by such a question, especially from a fellow educator, "looked at him and shook my head. All of my insides began to boil. All of my African, my English, my French, my German, and any blood I had in me. To me, he was underestimating his teachers and the pupils and the community. And that was a put-down. I said, 'I have never been in a flop in my life. I only have hits and I know I'll get someone in those schools.'" Plummer, by this time, had already gotten assurances from other teachers that they would sponsor a child by paying the seven-dollar fee for the secondary School Admission Test (SSAT). The test, now $21, is, says Plummer, "very important. Anyone who is going to a prep school must take that test. That score that you get can determine whether you're going to a prep school or not." By 3 o'clock that afternoon, Plummer, as he was about to leave the building, met the principal, who had changed his tune. "'Oh, Mr. Plummer, I like your idea,'" recounts Plummer. "'I'd like to support one of those children, also.' Every teacher that I named was black. So this thing about black power, I showed him where black was before the others knew it was chic."

Plummer's determination to see that the program survives and remains successful is rooted in his belief that "there is a conspiracy, overt and undercover, to sabotage our children. I had seen too many bright children just lost. They went no place afterwards. No one kept in touch with them. No one directed them. I said that 'This is going to change.' That's why I started this program."

To date, 210 kids have gone through the program from its inception. (There were 14 kids in the program during the 1983-84 term.) Out of a total student population at Wadleigh of between 500 and 600, those who become A.B.C. students is comparatively small. "We have worked with as many as 27. Some years we have had 20. We can accommodate 10 to 25. I'd like to have at least 25 children."

These young scholars, who are in the top five per cent, are selected because they meet certain tough criteria. "We look at their reading levels. We look at their math levels. We look at their academic potential, their attitude, and their response when we tell them about the program and the sacrifices they have to make. And if they have a great deal of drive, I-will, an ambition, have a positive attitude toward school, and a goal, a sense of direction, and willing to take advice, and willing to listen and to put forth extra time and effort when the others are out there playing. They sit in here twice a week, from three to five o'clock in an enrichment program: mathematics, English, skills in test-taking, discussing what preparatory schools were like, what it will be like once you leave this area and go to one of those predominately, or all-white, communities, white schools. How are you going to deal with this and things of that nature."

Prep school, explains Plummer, is equivalent to senior high school. The length of time one attends prep school can range from "three to four years, sometimes five."

Most of the A.B.C. students enter the program in the 9th grade. "Our first group [came in] in the 10th grade. We've had some who've gone in the 8th grade. They can spend one to three years here. If they leave after the 7th grade, that means they spend one year here. If they leave after the 8th grade, they spend two years here, after the 9th grade, they spend three years here. Some have left us and gone to high school in the 10th grade."

Plummer, has over the years encountered many parents who were unwilling to, let their children experience the "new demands, new challenges, and new avenues of learning" that prep schools provide. "I have a very good example," he says. "A couple of years ago, the mother of the top girl in the class refused to even talk to me. She wasn't going to let her daughter come here. Another young lady's mother sent her here. The number one girl who did not come here was sent by her mother to another junior high. She did not make Bronx Science or Stuyvesant. She's now in a regular high school. The other young lady who came to me is in a preparatory school. One parent had confidence in us, the other one didn't."

Teachers can also be stumbling blocks to the program and to the kids it tries to help. "There have been teachers who have been very supportive. There have been those who have not been supportive. They, white teachers, have hurt the program and do not care about hurting it. This is bad. I'm aware of this and the young people are aware of it. We know why they're doing it. We're here to serve the children. If you're not going to serve the children, get out. If you don't save them, what are we going to have for the future, especially for minorities? Why are they building more jails? Why aren't they building more schools, giving us more teachers? Who are they building the jails for? I can go to Rikers Island [a detention center in New York City] and have a class reunion of young people who attended this school. But I'd rather go to Harvard and have that class reunion."

Doris Brunson, an English teacher at Wadleigh and a longtime participant in the program, recognizes the "very powerful negative influences" of the area surrounding Wadleigh, despite the efforts of parents and educators "to turn all that negativism around." She also recognizes the unlimited, and untapped, potential of the young people she sees hanging out near the school every day. She, no doubt, taught many of them. "The youngster who can remember all the numbers for an entire block and whose number is the favorite one, isn't that child a math genius? You have children who are involved in the drug racket who can cut drugs and so forth. That's a future chemist."

These kids who, Plummer admits, are "envied and admired at the same time" by their peers, have become "an inspiration to all young people, especially minority children."

"Support within the community," writes Janice C. Simpson, a former A.B.C. student, in New York magazine, "slacked off during the heyday of black power. There were complaints that the Program was elitist, that Plummer was sending the best talent away from the community." In his Independent School article, he says he answered critics by saying to them: "'Do you have something better to offer these students?' To this we get no reply or anything to substitute for what the child has been offered."

He further states, in my interview with him, that the prep schools these young people attend are not elitist. "People made them elite. They never wanted that type of [label]. The people who did that could not get in and were jealous and envious of [those who did]. They [prep schools] downplay all of this. That's why they call themselves preparatory schools, not private schools. They prepare you for life. Everybody's the same up there."

Plummer sees himself as "their advisor, their teacher, and their friend." The 48-year-old bachelor instructs the students, past and present, that if they have a problem to "call me anytime they want to, 24 hours, and reverse [the] charges."

But Plummer is not their only friend. The others range from Lena Horne and Carol Burnett to ordinary folks [90 per cent of them white] who, hearing about the program, have sent financial contributions. (Lena Horne, who Plummer calls the "godmother of our program," has been a supporter since the program's inception.)

"I can get ten basketball players in one minute," says Plummer. "How many scholars can I get up in ten hours? We're looking for scholars, people of the future. We know all blacks can sing and dance. They can all play ball. We want to do something else. What about our mental ability? Why can't we use that and excel? These schools are going to make demands upon these young people. We have to be sure that we have children that can stand the pressure. It's not easy sending a child out there in that situation. It's easier now because others had gone and opened the doors for them and paved the way."

This article was originally published in the newspaper, the Harlem Weekly, in 1984.