The EconomistNovember 21st 2020 United States 27N
ewyorkcity’sschoolsmaybe
closing,butthepupilsatSuccess
Academies,a networkofcharterschools
whichhasplacedallofits20,000pupils
inremotelearning,willstillbewearing
theiruniform(vivid,pumpkin-orange
shirtswithnavytrousers)everydayof
theweek.Unliketraditionalpublic
schoolsinthecity,whichreopenedeight
weeksagobutarenowclosingasco-
vid-19casesspike,Successhasremained
all-virtual.Justaswiththeirin-person
offerings,high-performingcharter
networkshavemanagedtocreatean
exemplaryvirtualprogrammethatother
schoolsarestartingtolearnfrom.
EvaMoskowitz,thefounderofSuc-
cess,comparesthelogisticsofarranging
high-qualityremotelearningtothe
d-Dayoperation.Childrenneededlap-
tops,sciencekits,andnoise-cancelling
headphones.The7%ofherpupilswho
liveinhomelesssheltersneededinternet
hotspots.“Remote2.0’s”curriculumis
continuouslyrefined.MsMoskowitz
tweakedtheschoolschedule,usually
sacrosanct,tomakemoretimeforsmall-
grouplearning.Unlikemanyschools,
Successdidnotabandonlearningstan-
dardsorliveteachingafterclosuresstartedinthespring.It requiredpupilsto
snappilystartschoolontimeandin
uniform.If a childisnotatherscreenby
9am,parentsarecalled.
Thisapproachhasachieved“striking
successinthefaceoftheviralchallenge,”
notesa reportfromtheThomasB.Ford-
hamInstitute,aneducationthink-tank.
LikeSuccess,UncommonSchools,an-
otherhigh-performingnetworkwith
21,000pupils,hasnowmademuchofits
virtualcurriculumavailablefreeonline.
Atleast227,000peoplefromeverystate
inAmericaand 92 countrieshaveused
thematerials.Anyonecanloginto
downloadlessonsgivenbyitsbestteach-
ers.OnefamilyinWashington,dc, even
soughttoenrolltheirchildvirtually,
despitebeinghundredsofmilesfromthe
nearestUncommonschool.
AsmuchasSuccess,whichalso
sharesvirtuallessonplansandwebinars,
andUncommonareengineeringa new
modelforremotelearning,virtuallearn-
ingisstilla paleimitationofin-person
instruction.“Iwanttogetbackoncam-
pussobadly,saysMsMoskowitz.“It’s
justnotthesameonZoom.”Withcovid--
19 infectionsaccelerating,though,that
mightnothappenfora while.Crashcourses
Chartersandcovid-19NEWYORK
Successfulchartersareoutperformingtraditionalpublicschoolsinvirtuallearning,tooW
hen charlotte troup leighton
first looked around her house, in the
Maryland suburbs of Washington, dc, she
was drawn to the small wooded meadow
that lay behind it. Brambly and overgrown,
it formed a picturesque buffer between the
house and the thundering multi-lane Capi-
tal Beltway beyond. Looking closer, she
saw it was dotted with small stones, some
engraved by hand, and periwinkle, which is
often planted as a ground cover in cemeter-
ies. Though it was not listed, it was an Afri-
can-American cemetery, established by
former slaves in the 1890s.
America has innumerable old African-
American burial grounds that have been
largely forgotten. The one at the back of Ms
Troup Leighton’s garden, which she is now
trying to protect from a plan to widen the
highway, was established by Morningstar
Tabernacle No. 88, the local chapter of a be-
nevolent society set up by former slaves
after the civil war. During segregation, it
used members’ fees to provide services,
from care of the ill and destitute to educa-
tion and burial. Along with a meeting hall,
the foundations of which are still visible,
and a church, it formed the heart of a tight-
knit black neighbourhood known as Gib-
son Grove, named after Sarah Gibson, who
was enslaved in Virginia before buying
land that she donated to the community.
She is one of at least 80 people thought to
be buried in the cemetery.
By the middle of the 20th century, as thesuburbanisation of a once-rural area
pushed up property taxes, many had left;
today the area is almost entirely white. The
community was dealt a decisive blow in the
early 1960s when the highway, built to link
the capital’s fast-growing suburbs, separat-
ed the cemetery and hall from the church.
Alexandra Jones, an archeologist who has
studied the remnants of the Gibson Grove
community, says this pattern, in which
highways were driven through the middle
of black neighbourhoods, was repeated in
many places during the building boom of
the 1950s and 1960s.
Today, developers are required to assess
whether they are building on graves or his-
toric sites. Yet often they do not. In 2018 the
Maryland State Highway Administration
published a plan to widen the beltway, po-
tentially disturbing a slice of cemetery
land, including parts of the hall’s founda-
tions. Its map did not list the cemetery as a
burial or historic site, prompting Ms Troup
Leighton and Ms Jones to form a group to
protect it. The state is now planning to un-
dertake a survey to establish whether the
expansion would destroy any graves.
Across America, the fate of African-
American burial sites depends upon the ef-forts of local campaigns such as this. That
may change if Congress passes the African-
American Burial Grounds Network Act,
which would create a database of historic
black burial sites, managed by the National
Park Service, and provide funding to re-
search and protect them. It was introduced
last year by A. Donald McEachin, a con-
gressman from Virginia, who discovered
that his great-grandfather was buried in an
African-American graveyard in Richmond
which, until a few years ago, was over-
grown and strewn with rubbish. The act
may become law in 2021.
For an unknown number of burial
grounds, the law will have come too late.
Earlier this year Richard Stuart, a state sen-
ator in Virginia, spotted a headstone in the
river that runs alongside the farm he had
just bought. He discovered that a two-mile
stretch of a barrier, constructed in the
1960s by a previous owner, contained innu-
merable others. They came from Columbi-
an Harmony, once one of the biggest Afri-
can-American cemeteries in Washington,
dc. It was dug up in the 1960s to make way
for development. Many of the graves were
moved to a new burial ground in Maryland.
But the headstones were sold as scrap. 7WASHINGTON, DC
Should development be prevented to
preserve African-American cemeteries?CemeteriesBlack tombs
scatter