In an effort to close the gap between its highest and lowest achieving students, the city adopted a small but ambitious new Head Start program aimed at kindergarten students and their teachers in fall 2006 called the Total Learning Initiative. The program, which is a hands-on, arts-intensive training regimen administered by the Total Learning Institute (TLI), launched with $500,000 of initial funding.

"It's expensive, but it's incredibly effective," noted TLI trainer Patricia Bogart at the World Innovation Summit for Education in Doha, where she and president Susan Snyder were present to receive an innovation prize. She said that after three years, test scores in the schools that have implemented the program are "soaring."

Total Learning Initiative trainer Patricia Bogart said the key to her program's success has been reaching the youngest students first.

Its cost may well raise some eyebrows, especially since only a few students have benefited so far. Just one kindergarten classroom in one school implemented the program in its first year. State lawmakers, impressed with early results, allocated $1.2 million per year for the 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 school years to expand the TLI program to 16 classrooms in eight schools in Bridgeport, according to a 2007 article in The Connecticut Post. Other Head Start programs statewide, by contrast, received a total of $1 million in new funding between them.

Unlike many other teacher training systems, which are conducted outside of the school day, the Total Learning Initiative trainers work almost every day with teachers in their classes, suggesting new approaches and working directly with the students. "We're right there in the trenches," said Bogart. "After we've worked with a teacher, day-in and day-out for a year, they've changed the way they teach."

The program focuses on early childhood development, starting with kindergarten students in its first year, and expanding to first and second grades in the years following. "The key is reaching them as early as possible," said Bogart, who noted that it is much more difficult to close an achievement gap than to prevent one from forming.

Bogart said she hopes the innovation prize will help bring national, even global attention to the program, which currently employs 23 trainers and operates only in schools around Bridgeport.

The WISE Qatar sign outside the conference center features piled stones, which represent the notion of building in the desert.

And for students who face more than one of a host of identified risk factors, including geographic isolation, gender, language, and disability, the picture grows ever more desperate. If, for instance, you are a physically handicapped girl in rural Qatar, and worse, a recent immigrant, you will likely not receive an adequate education.

On the other hand, recent advances offer more to the neediest than to the wealthy. Special needs students, such as those with dyslexia or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and students with physical handicaps, can benefit tremendously from new technologies, such as voice recognition software, and diverse learning environments, such as multimedia instruction, but only if they have access to the materials and expertise.

Opportunities, it seems, are abundant, yet "the low quality of education has undermined" prospects for young people in much of the Arab world, according to "Generation in Waiting, The Unfulfilled Promise of Young People in the Middle East," the report by the Brookings Institution. The total spent in school for Iranians under 30, for example, has more than doubled from the prior generation, but test scores have dropped significantly, especially among the poorest.

The Ritz-Carlton in Doha played host to the inaugural WISE Qatar conference in November.

In this seemingly dire climate, the Qatar Foundation, an educational non-profit funded by the Qatari royal family, convened its first annual World Innovation Summit for Education in Doha in mid-November, paying travel expenses and lodging for teachers, administrators, and businesspeople from as far as Cameroon, Japan and Australia to begin what the organization hopes will be a lasting collaboration to improve education in the Middle East, and worldwide.

David Arnold, president of the American University in Cairo, feels that the recent gains in access in the Middle East are a prerequisite for improvements in quality. "The sequencing is important," said Arnold at a panel session. "We are not living up to a fundamental responsibility if we provide excellent educations only to a select few."

But following access with quality may not be enough, said Katy Webley, who heads the education branch of the UK-based advocacy group Save the Children. The poorest families must bear the cost of sending their children to school, rather than work, she noted. "If they decide that their childrens' education is not relevant, they will pull them out of school" before the schools have improved. Quality, in her view, must go hand in hand with access.

They may differ on methods and solutions, but the panelists at WISE 2009 agreed on at least one thing: young people in Arab states are falling behind, and, warns the Brookings report, "institutions which once ensured intergenerational equity and improved economic wellbeing are no longer working."

Construction is well underway at Stoddert Elementary in Glover Park.

Memorably described as a "handsome triathlete" by the Post's Michael Grunwald during his run for office in 2006 (next to Linda Cropp's "matronly grandmother"), Fenty has always been enthusiastic about the benefits of exercise--especially for kids.

Since taking office, he's been moving forward aggressively on that basis, using $21.5 million in taxpayer money to update football fields and tracks at six DC high schools in 2007, and most recently unveiling the dazzling new 55,000 square foot Wilson Aquatic Center.

"I think people demand better recreational centers, better playgrounds, and we've got a great team that is doing just that," Fenty said in late August at a ribbon-cutting for a new elementary school soccer field in Columbia Heights.

Closer to my home--across the street, in fact--Stoddert Elementary is well into a yearlong "modernization" that will add athletic facilities to the school's campus. This upgrade has so far involved the razing of 50 or 60 old-growth trees in the northwest corner of the park, reduced parking on Davis Place, and led to an awful lot of early-morning construction noise. (Why do backhoes spend so much time in reverse?)

Some of the crankier tenants in my building are beginning to raise a stink. They say the new buildings are unnecessary and intrusive, and complain that the gymnasium will be open to the public, with city-wide basketball tournaments, increasing parking problems on game nights. There will also be a new access road directly across from my building.

The ANC presentation for Stoddert's modernization reveals some compelling facilities upgrades.

I confess I was initially on the side of the complainers, feeling that Fenty's knee-jerk "build more athletic facilities" approach was going to ruin my pretty little park, at vast expense to the city during a severe economic recession. It still might, but I'm warming to the project all the same.

Taking a look at the ANC presentation, it's clear that the modernization involves much more than putting up a gym where some beautiful old trees once stood. The new LEED-certified buildings will also comprise a media center, cafeteria, and visual and performing arts space. The draft educational specifications are impressive.

So, despite recent questions about the wisdom of Fenty's recreational profligacy, and resisting the urge to adopt a NIMBY attitude, I'm throwing my support behind the project. Or, at least, I'm hoping it will turn out to be the right thing for the kids and the neighborhood. That seems possible, at this point.

Mayor Fenty graduated from Oberlin College in 1992 (I'm a 1994 grad). The college had then, and still maintains as far as I'm aware, a ban on all fraternities (despite bizarre references to a fictitious all-white fraternity in NBC's The West Wing). Here's the wording, from the student handbook:

"No secret society is allowed at Oberlin, and no other societies or self-perpetuating organization is allowed among students, except by permission of the faculty. This is to be understood to include social and rooming-house clubs."

This ban was one of the things that drew me to Oberlin as a high school senior, and it was a point of pride among most of the students who attended the school. Oberlin tries to be an open community without a lot of weird cliques and social dividers. Even so, the Kappas were known to exist at Oberlin, keeping a low profile most of the time but occasionally conducting hazing rituals on campus.

It's possible Fenty became a Kappa at Howard, where he went to law school, but more likely that he joined while an undergrad. That's a shame. Many students find fraternities and sororities positive contributors to college life, and helpful in career networking after school, but Oberlin's frat ban is an important symbol of the school's commitment to social justice and equality, and it should be respected and enforced.

Here's Alan November at the recent NECC conference. He says some very complimentary things about my Student News Action Network project around minute 36.