Remember the SATs? Bird is to steamboat as frying pan is to ”¦ ? Or: Train A leaves the station heading south at 72 m.p.h. ”¦ ? Your palms could be sweaty just recalling the ordeal.
When the next round of the student-dreaded SATs take place, the Yonkers public school system stands ready to deliver a shock to the system ”“ an extremely positive shock.
Through the efforts of the public-private Yonkers Partners in Education and its Executive Director Wendy R. Nadel, students who might otherwise have taken the college entrance exams cold will now arrive hot.
Kaplan Test Prep has been teaching 50 Yonkers students who live below the poverty line ”“ and who would never have had the opportunity to hone their test-taking skills the way students from tonier districts routinely do ”“ how to rock the tests and show the world what they”™ve got. The test won”™t be any easier, but for those 50, it will be a lot more manageable. And the news gets better. The 50 are but the first wave of 300 underprivileged Yonkers high school students who will receive the Kaplan edge this year.
The Kaplan effort is the first big victory for the year-old Yonkers Partners in Education, which for the last four months has been headed by Nadel. To her credit, Nadel is not resting on her laurels. She and the Mayor Phil Amicone-appointed board of directors have set their sights on remaking Yonkers from the ABCs up.
“If you”™re going to make a great city, you can”™t do it without a really great school system,” Nadel says. Outside her third-floor Main Street office, the makings of that great city are visible in steel, glass, cranes, restaurants, banks and bustle.
“Here in Yonkers, we have a high minority and immigrant population,” she says. “Our mission is to support the public school district in improving the educational outcomes for all children. Having kids graduate high school with a strong vocation or trade or prepared to go to college ”¦ it”™s necessary to survive in the 21st century.”
One myth that”™s squarely in Nadel”™s crosshairs regards underperforming poor children. And myths can be powerful millstones to bear: “A lot of people kind of give up on them,” she says. “It”™s my belief that every school can be great and that every child can learn and achieve to their highest potential. This is it in a nutshell: helping kids break out of poverty through education. Education is the most powerful tool for breaking out of poverty.”
The flip side of the coin ”“ what happens to those who fail to graduate ”“ can be scary: incarceration for the young men and unwanted pregnancies for the young women, Nadel says in an office stocked with book titles like “Building Engaged Schools,” “A Passion for Excellence” and “Corporate Foundation Profiles.”
Â
The corporate foundations book is telling because part of Nadel”™s mission is to attract the private sector, as more affluent communities ”“ she cites Bedford and Armonk ”“ are doing. “They enrich already good systems,” she says of corporate involvement with wealthy schools. But she quickly makes clear Yonkers is not sitting back, waiting for good things to happen: “There are a lot of really fabulous things going on in the schools here,” she says of the county”™s largest school system, which educates about 27,000 students. “The key is getting kids to graduate high school. We can only bite off small chunks. We can”™t really transform the whole system. But we can begin to bring in programs the district cannot now afford to impact educational outcomes.”
On Jan. 15, Nadel and Yonkers Partners in Education will host New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg at an education summit. “He has embraced the New York City public school system as a cause and they”™re beginning to see some transformation,” she says. “He has also leveraged the business community to invest in the schools, which is what we want to do here in Yonkers.” The event will feature a fundraising breakfast at Peter Kelly”™s X2O Xaviar”™s restaurant and an address at the Riverfront Public Library afterward.
Nadel, 46, is former chairperson of the Byram Hills Education Foundation and a longtime advocate for education causes. An Emory University graduate, she sits on its alumni board and founded the Westchester-Fairfield chapter of the Georgia school”™s alumni association. Her familiarity with education has taught her results cost money. “We”™re looking to raise money because what we”™re trying to do here is going to take a lot of money,” she says, offering her group”™s Web site, www.ypie.org, and phone number, 377-4882, in short order.
She identifies her work as her passion and her demeanor ”“ professional and reassuring ”“ strikes all the right chords for a person in her position. But she”™s human, too, and that means letting loose. She and her husband, Larry Nadel, and their daughters, Nicole, 17, and Julia, 13, retreat from their Bedford home to a country house in Maine where hiking in nearby Acadia National Park is often the order of the day. She evinces the youthful athleticism and frame of a regular hiker, the sort of woman you can easily picture hopping boulder to boulder.
Hiking among Acadia”™s craggy heights and surf-splashed shores surely qualifies as a life passion ”“ she has hiked Yosemite, too ”“ but Nadel is unwavering about her education work and says plainly, “This is my passion.”
Â
