After The Fall

By Jessica Siegel

It's 9:30 a.m. at James J. Ferris High School in Jersey City, N.J., and as the bell rings for a change of classes, a river of students washes by me in the hallway. Some of the students move in pairs, laughing about a joke or some teenage embarrassment. Others walk alone, eyes straight ahead, already thinking about, or worried about, the next class. Two friends coming from different directions slap hands in greeting and stop to talk. Another couple, clearly boyfriend and girlfriend, walk with arms wrapped around each other, their backpacks knocking. Some lope by in the "urban gangsta'' slouch. Others push through the doors to have a cigarette outside.

These high school students at Ferris and those at the 32 other public schools in Jersey City are part of an experiment. After 30 years of educational neglect--which one former New Jersey governor called "educational child abuse''--the entire district was taken over by the state four years ago, the first school system in the United States to be wrested from local control. Since that time, New Jersey has also taken over the schools in Paterson and is threatening to move on Newark's. Other states have followed New Jersey's lead.

The students probably don't realize it, but as they go on with their lives--in many cases extraordinarily difficult lives--people from around the country are watching to see if this drastic response to educational bankruptcy is working. Can state intervention really turn a deficient district around? Can students who have consistently failed and, more importantly, been failed by the system be helped to succeed? Or is the state's action, as the mayor of Jersey City puts it, simply "hubris''? I've come to Jersey...