A Good Start at Lincoln on Building Credibility

For years, Lincoln High School has been a disaster area. Little about Lincoln--from the peeling paint to the lowest test scores in the San Diego Unified School District in reading, math and language--has inspired confidence in the education it offered. Perhaps most discouraging was the school’s dropout rate, which has been the second-highest in the district.

But now the school district is making an all-out assault on the problems at the Southeast San Diego high school. If it succeeds, test scores will rise, more kids will stay in school, and more students--whites and minorities--will choose to go there.

The program to turn Lincoln around will cost about $600,000. The money will go to improve the curriculum and the facility, and to pay teachers to attend seminars on teaching techniques.

A new, highly motivated team has been brought in, too, including Principal Ruby Cremaschi-Schwimmer, several other administrators and 19 new teachers. New courses are being taught with new books. Several programs never before offered at Lincoln have been added. New requirements include having studied a foreign language for three years in order to graduate. And this year, students who miss a day’s classes will be telephoned that evening and encouraged to attend.

Perhaps most important is a new, positive attitude that extends into the community. Unlike last year, when a proposal to turn Lincoln into an Academy of Language and Classical Studies was rejected by parents who felt they had not had enough say about the plan, parents have been very involved in the current planning. So have others in the Southeast San Diego community.

Lincoln is the educational and, in many ways, the social hub of Southeast. The effort to make it over is exactly what the public schools should be doing to make high-quality education available to all students. But devising the program is only half the battle. The district must follow through at every step and make sure the promised changes are being made. Parents, who in recent years have not even formed a PTA at Lincoln, must get involved with the educational program and the other school activities as well.

The revitalization of Lincoln won’t happen overnight. But it’s too important to let this opportunity pass without being fully exploited.