When we walked into the building that Ebbets Field Middle School shares with PS 375, one of the city's worst elementary schools, students were straggling in after 9 a.m. and parents were talking back to security guards who asked them to move their children quickly to class. We overheard two security guards commenting about how parents at PS 375, also called Jackie Robinson, "just don't care."

When we got upstairs to visit Ebbets Field, Principal Marge Baker, a 2005 arrival to the school by way of the city's Leadership Academy for aspiring principals, informed us that classes were not in session that morning because 7th and 8th grade students were taking a standardized test and 6th grade students were in an assembly. We walked quickly through the school and saw that the school has a Read 180 lab, in which students can use computers to practice reading, and a room devoted to science, which lacked extensive lab equipment but had some models and microscopes. We also saw a large room that Baker said will be used for teacher development and special events.

Baker was frank about some of the challenges the school faces. She noted that the school's math teaching positions, which are hard to staff, are filled with teachers from Slovakia whose English is not optimal. She also noted that the school has many overage students who have been held back in the past. She said the school has suffered from disorder, attributing much of it to the fact that many of her students are residents of the Ebbets Field Houses, a public housing project across the street from the school. Still, she said the school is on the right track. "My halls are empty and my classrooms are full," Baker told us, and on the day we visited, this was true.

Although our whirlwind tour of the school did not allow us to examine student work in detail, we did notice that poems posted on the walls demonstrated only the barest literacy skills. (Philissa Cramer, June 2006)