When a new crop of 5-year-olds shows up for the first day of school each August, the children share a clean slate.
At this tender starting line, kindergarten promises equal opportunities, endless possibilities.
In reality, it's much messier.
The kids show up as varied as the colors in a 64-pack of crayons, and with nearly as many issues: hunger, homelessness, attention problems, unstable home lives, abuse.
Too many kids will fall by the wayside, tripped up by parents who took too little interest, teachers who were inept, a school district bureaucracy that is unresponsive and a community uncertain how to help.
Rather than marching on to graduation, they fall behind. And then, that hopeful 5-year-old who showed up on the first day decides at age 9 or 12 or 16 that the real lesson of school is that it's time to give up.
Over the years, The Indianapolis Star has given you glimpses into the lives of some of the children who are failing and have been failed. But it is easy to miss the whole picture.
This year, we will assemble those glimpses into a portrait with stories and pictures about the children trying to get a decent education in the system we've built for them.
It's often not a pretty picture. One in five students in Marion County can't finish high school in four years. More than half in Indianapolis Public Schools fail state reading or math tests.
The good news is that thousands of dedicated adults are already at work to change the picture, and there is room for more. But to fix the problems, it is important to know what we are up against. And just how bad it can get.
1. Children start out behind >and many never catch up.
Some children enter kindergarten not knowing how to hold a crayon. Some can't identify the letters of the alphabet -- no idea what a "b" is -- much less distinguish between an "m" and an "n." Their vocabulary is limited. They simply have heard fewer words than kids from affluent areas.
In the suburbs, kindergartners are reading and counting. In the city, teachers are still showing them how to interact.
It is a gap evident on Day One. Over a school career, it usually gets wider.
2. Without the ability to read, their options will narrow.
Each year, more than 1,000 IPS third-graders cannot read at a basic level. Come fourth grade, they can't grasp the textbooks and worksheets in history, science and literature.
Gaps begin to widen.
As they fall further behind, they are passed on to the next grade in hopes that they'll catch up on the fly. The result? The high school freshman at a Near-Westside charter school -- a transfer from IPS -- who struggles with Dr. Seuss. The 19-year-old at Manual High School who can't pass the driver's test because he can't read it.
3. Teachers are key: Two bad ones in a row, and a child may never catch up.
Most of the city's children are taught by competent and dedicated teachers. Too many are not.
Some teachers have to be fired because they can't pass basic requirements for a teaching license. Many know too little about the subjects they teach, and there are those who hand out a worksheet and retreat to the back of the room.
There is the special education teacher in a Far-Eastside middle school who read the newspaper in the back of his classroom when he should have been teaching. The middle school teacher who read his class a short story in a mind-numbing monotone. The teachers who only lecture, never working to make lessons interesting.
One-third of students nationally say they don't find anything interesting in their classes.
At schools in two malls -- Washington Square and Lafayette Square -- where dropouts go to make up failed courses, the children will tell you they failed, at least in part, because previous teachers bored them and didn't care.
4. Children's basic needs must be met before they can learn.
Children come to school so poor, so hungry, so desperate that one Near-Eastside school sends 2,000 pounds of food home each weekend so kids will have something to eat. To stave off panic in starving preschoolers, teachers at one site keep food in front of children -- at all times. Otherwise, they can't concentrate.
Beyond food, some kids show up to school without socks, belts and underwear. Schools keep closets full of donated shoes, clothing and toiletries for kids who would otherwise go without.
Other children suffer from mental illness caused by abuse, neglect and traumatic home lives. One troubled child at an Eastside elementary school ran outside, lay down in a busy street and pitched a fit until police and mental health workers could force him inside 30 minutes later.
Then there are students becoming parents themselves. They are in every middle school in IPS -- and as young as 12. Arlington Community High recently reported 55 girls pregnant or raising children.
5. When children change schools or homes, education suffers.
Children live in the city's homeless shelters, rotate among couches in friends' homes and even crash in vacant houses their families have broken into.
Teachers talk of children who show up with no homework because their family had to quickly abandon the home in which they were squatting.
And some students get shuffled among schools without ever moving. Because of school closures, children in one Far-Eastside neighborhood have been assigned to three different IPS schools in three years.
6. For good or for ill, kids will take their cues from parents and neighbors.
Children need caring adults in their lives, yet one Westside school found it could persuade just three people to join its parent organization. Desperate for a president, it had to enlist a woman whose granddaughter had attended the school -- 15 years ago.
Involved parents know the teachers' names, help with homework and pelt their kids with annoying questions about school around the dinner table.
But too often we find examples such as the 16-year-old boy whose mother was in jail. She made his 21-year-old cousin his guardian. At least until the cousin gave up and shuffled the boy to a family friend.
As they look around their community, some children may never encounter a college graduate. At Washington Community High School, only 5 percent of the people in the surrounding neighborhoods have ever been to college.
Children dream what they see. They could become doctors or accountants. Or dropouts and drug dealers.
7. Without their community, students can't succeed.
Children in the city's poorest neighborhoods are in need of tutors, classroom volunteers and people able to lead after-school activities.
Men, especially.
But for some children, their own schools erect barriers that keep out the community.
One woman was inspired to volunteer help after reading about Marshall High School. But her interest was met with ignored phone messages and dozens of busy signals at four different schools and the central office. Eventually she gave up.
8. Children won't have a chance to learn if outside distractions can't be controlled.
Children must deal with classmates who bring weapons to school and sell drugs between classes. Some classrooms are so disruptive that students have little opportunity to learn.
In his visits to Manual High, Star columnist Matthew Tully has told you about a student who launched a textbook at a teacher and unleashed a profanity-laced tirade at her. Another Star reporter saw a student at Marshall spit 10 feet across a classroom.
The situation is such that IPS has created more than a dozen special schools for troubled students.
9. Children are held back by a sprawling, unwieldy bureaucracy that gets in the way.
In IPS, the incompetence and bureaucracy became so bad that students at Tech High School pleaded with state lawmakers to fix their school -- not for themselves, but for younger siblings. They knew any help would come too late for them.
They had pleaded to keep an Advanced Placement class, but it was canceled anyway. They begged for teachers who care. They even asked for more schoolwork but couldn't find teachers to give it to them.
IPS lost $274,000 -- money that could have been spent in the classroom -- when an administrator's error left middle schools three days short of a full year.
And this awkward bureaucracy has grown over time. Today, roughly half of all district employees work outside the classroom.
Failing the children fails the community. It's our future, too.
Some children leave high school essentially illiterate. They not only are unprepared for the work force, they also run the risk of making crime their vocation. Their future as healthy citizens who are graced with a decent education is lost.
It is, perhaps, inevitable that some kids can't avoid failure. But teachers shouldn't contribute to their fall. Schools and their bureaucracies shouldn't make the climb harder.
A city struggling to break away from the Rust Belt can't afford to throw away its next generation. And the good thing is, we don't have to fail. There's hope.
Amid the blight, children thrive in schools that have figured out how to beat the odds. Churches and businesses and lone individuals have stepped in to lend a hand, to be a father figure, to write a check and to make a difference.
For every one of these problems, people have figured out solutions.
This year we will tell you how you can help. We will show you the children whose futures are at stake.
Don't let them down.
