550: Three Miles

Ira Glass

Hey there, everybody. Ira Glass here. It's This American Life from WBEZ Chicago. I'm just here for a minute to say we have a special show for you today. One of our producers, Chana Joffe-Walt, has been reporting a lot on education and schools.

And three years ago, she did this story that's about a part of education that everybody knows about, but I think we do not talk about much at all, not in a way that feels like anything. And this is one of my favorite shows we've ever done and full of surprise turns and twists. And I don't want to waste any more time here setting this up, so I'm just going to hand over the show to Chana so we can get to it. Here she is.

Chana Joffe-Walt

In 2005, Lisa and Angela were part of a program that brought their two schools together, sort of a classroom exchange. Kids from Lisa's school would see Angela's school and vice versa. They thought their students would get a lot out of meeting each other and learning about one another's schools because their students spend their school days in two very different places.

Lisa Greenbaum's school, University Heights High School, is a public school. It's 97% black and Hispanic. It's located in the poorest congressional district in the country, the South Bronx.

Angela Vassos' school, Fieldston, is also in the Bronx. But it's one of New York City's elite private schools. It's 70% white. It's known as a progressive school. One in five kids gets financial aid, which is helpful because last year tuition was $43,000.

These two schools were three miles from each other, but the students basically needed a foreign exchange program to meet each other. The teachers started by having their students write letters to each other. They were pen pals for a while, which was going well.

And then Lisa and Angela planned a time to get them together. Lisa, the public school teacher, says the moment her kids got off the bus at Fieldston, the private school, they had a dramatic reaction to what they saw.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Some context, University Heights, the public school these kids were coming from, it's small and friendly. There are no metal detectors. But it's a public school in a poor neighborhood. The kids share a building and a gym with another school.

The private school, Fieldston, has an 18-acre campus on a hill. Stone buildings are connected by landscaped paths. Every few windows is the size of a garage door. There's a dance studio, an art gallery, a pool.

So on that first day, the public school kids, almost all of them Puerto Rican and Dominican kids from the South Bronx, walk onto the campus, look around at the quad, the trees, see the school's mission etched into the stone arches. Angela, the private school teacher from Fieldston, came to greet them and immediately noticed that one of the girls seemed upset.

Chana Joffe-Walt

There are hundreds of programs right now that are trying to do some version of this exchange program to help people connect across a growing divide. For a lot of students, American public schools are more segregated than they were a generation ago, not less. The gap between rich and poor is wider than it's been since the Great Depression.

Basically, whatever gap you hear about-- income gap, achievement gap, racial divide-- these two groups of kids from University Heights and Fieldston exist on opposite sides. And just seeing across that divide, something so many of us never do, can be incredibly powerful.

In this case, from the very first few minutes, it was definitely dramatic. This incident when the kids visited Fieldston happened 10 years ago. And I heard this story from so many different people-- the teachers, kids from both schools. Allison Roland was a junior at the private school, Fieldston, at the time. She remembers the girl who freaked out.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Even more, she remembers the feeling she had seeing the girl freak out, feeling helpless.

Chana Joffe-Walt

A lot of Fieldston students do go on to be politicians, and run Walt Disney and the New York Times, and host evening news programs, and design major American cities. And part of the point of programs like these that try to bridge the divide is-- seeing as the private school kids will likely go on to be important, influential people, maybe write education policy or finance new businesses-- it's good for them to know not everybody's life looks like theirs. But of course, then there's the question, what do the public school kids get out of it?

Right now, there's a popular idea in education-- it pops up all over the place-- about exposure, that exposure is particularly important for poor kids-- not just important, that it can change destinies. You know, you take a group of kids to tour a college campus, they'll be more likely to go to college. Or if you just know someone who went to college, that'll help.

The idea is if you want a kid to move from one social class to another, that kid has to see what it looks like over there on the other side. Exposure is a tool for social change and economic mobility. Or it just sucks.

You see how much you did not get, and it's shocking or painful. And you freak out, like that one girl, Melanie. The people who run programs like these hope that even if it's upsetting in the moment, ultimately, this kind of experience helps more than it hurts.

But nobody really knows because this is the kind of thing that plays out over time. It occurred to me that the group of kids who were part of that first year exchange between Fieldston and University Heights could answer this question. Does it hurt or help the public school kids?

It's been 10 years. They're in their mid-20s now, so they've gone to college, gotten apartments and jobs. And it turns out this one experience really has shaped some of the public school kids in profound ways, ways I did not see coming. Today's show, what happens when you see the other side, and it looks a lot better?

Let's begin with Melanie, the girl who freaked out. I wondered about Melanie because she had such a strong, immediate reaction that everyone remembered, but also because listen to what happened after that. So apparently, Melanie started crying the moment she got to Fieldston, wanted to leave. But the teachers managed to calm her down. And for a while, it seemed like the moment had passed, and they were fine.

They partnered all the students up, so the University Heights kids could go with the Fieldston kids to some of their classes. Marlena Edelstein, a Fieldston student, told me the girl who shadowed her, she doesn't remember her name. But other people told me it was Melanie. Marlena has never forgotten her.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Then, after wowing everyone in this class with her intellect, Melanie left, ran away. She found the experience of being at Fieldston so upsetting she ultimately could not stand to be there. And Lisa Greenbaum, her teacher, told me Melanie did not just run away from Fieldston that day. She also seemed to run away from high school. She doesn't remember seeing her much after that.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Lisa told me she had no idea where Melanie was. But she said, you know who you should call? Ashleigh Wallace. That was Melanie's best friend. She'll know what happened.

Chana Joffe-Walt

I asked Ashleigh, so where is Melanie now?

Chana Joffe-Walt

For a while, it seemed like maybe they just lost touch. That happens after high school. Ashleigh's mom moved to Atlanta. Eventually, Ashleigh did too and had a baby.

But after a while, it stopped feeling to Ashleigh like the two of them had just drifted apart and started to feel more like Melanie did not want to be found. Her phone number changed. She's nowhere online. Ashleigh has checked Facebook so many times.

Chana Joffe-Walt

But Ashleigh says she must have. How else does someone disappear like that unless they make it out of the Bronx and never look back? There is a New York City number listed under Melanie's name, but of course--

Chana Joffe-Walt

There's a woman with the same name who manages a real estate firm in Corpus Christi. There's a dental lab technician in Harrisburg, an executive office professional in Las Vegas, a woman on Twitter, who I think lives in Mexico and has devoted her account to retweeting Justin Bieber's Twitter account. They all seem to be about the right age, all not her.

A background check on Melanie's name lists a current and former address. I went to the current one. She does not live there. Sent letters to both-- no luck. Ashleigh, her friend from high school, gave me a couple of names of people she thought might have kept up with Melanie.

And top of the list was Pablo Muriel, their high school history teacher. He's Puerto Rican, like Melanie, from the neighborhood. Ashleigh says, we all loved Pablo, but especially Melanie.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Pablo said Melanie is one of those kids you remember because she was very, very, very smart-- three verys-- and full of potential. She stood out to him for other reasons too.

Chana Joffe-Walt

I began contacting former classmates. And I became sort of obsessed because it was weird how invisible she was. Everyone else was super easy to find. These are 25-year-olds, and we have the internet.

And the classmates' memories of Melanie were all similarly mythic. She spoke her mind. She was brilliant. She was fierce. She was going to make it. And no one had heard from her.

Weirdly, the one person I contacted who had a real idea of what happened to Melanie was the teacher from Fieldston, the private school, Angela Vassos. Someone told me Angela had taken a special interest in Melanie after she got so upset at Fieldston. And a decade later, when I met Angela and first asked about Melanie, she started crying.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Angela got a box of tissues, then sat down.

Chana Joffe-Walt

After that first encounter at Fieldston, Angela tried hard to gain Melanie's trust. I think she felt partially responsible. And she really wanted to help Melanie, even though she wasn't Melanie's teacher.

The program kept going throughout the year. Angela would bring her private school students over to the public school. And sometimes she'd visit on her own. And every time, she'd make a special point to check in on Melanie. The last time Angela ever saw Melanie was in the public school. Angela was over there visiting, and Lillian, the college advisor, comes in.

Chana Joffe-Walt

I called Middlebury to see if maybe Melanie did attend. They said, no. Did she get in? They said, we have no record showing that she received an offer of admission. I didn't know if that meant she wasn't admitted, or they just had no record either way, but that's all they would say.

And this was strange because Angela had such a vivid memory of Melanie getting in. And Angela herself went to Middlebury, so she probably didn't mix up the name of the college. Plus, the college advisor at Melanie's school seemed to remember it.

So at this point, I went back to Melanie's high school friend, Ashleigh, and just asked if it sounded like Melanie to psych herself out like that. And she said, no way. I only made it to my GED, but Melanie was singularly focused on college. She'd curse me out when I cut class.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Melanie was not going to fail at high school. She would go to college with no babies and live far, far from New York City, period.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Death record.

Chana Joffe-Walt

I didn't think Melanie was dead, but a friend asked. And once that seed was planted, I could not get the idea out of my head. The same day I went in person to the city's office for vital records, I also went to an old address listed on a background check, one I'd sent letters to.

The buzzer didn't have Melanie's name on it, and I pressed it anyway. No answer. Stood by the door to the building.

Chana Joffe-Walt

That's his girlfriend. She's at work.

He told me she'd call when she got off work. He didn't want to tell me anything more. But he did tell me Melanie worked at a supermarket on Sixth Avenue. It happens to be around the corner from my office. It took three days for Melanie to call me. And when she did, she carefully said, I've given this a lot of thought, and I'm ready to talk.

Chana Joffe-Walt

She's also wearing pink sweatpants and a hoodie. Her hair is actually under a hat, so all I can see are some green bangs peeking out. The "they" she's talking about, that's you listening right now. Melanie has considered you a lot-- who you are, how you'll hear her.

I asked Melanie about the visit to Fieldston pretty early on in our conversation, but her answer began with her first day of high school. She says she was just one of those kids who always loved school. She got good grades, and she'd been anticipating high school years before she got there. She had a clear image in her mind of how exciting it would be. She'd become a better writer, read, read, and read, and go to games, maybe join the dance team. And her first day of freshman year--

Chana Joffe-Walt

Then, in 10th grade, Melanie's English teacher said they were going to start a pen pal program with a school called Fieldston. Melanie was open to it. She wrote a sincere letter describing herself and her dreams and climbed onto the bus with the rest of her classmates to go to Fieldston.

Chana Joffe-Walt

For so many University Heights kids I talked to, seeing Fieldston was shocking because of the stark difference. It was a surprise. They could not have imagined a place like Fieldston. For Melanie, it wasn't that. Melanie had imagined it.

Chana Joffe-Walt

So that's what she found so upsetting. It seemed that the people around her must believe that this was the natural order of things. Melanie knew there was no innate difference between her and a kid born into wealth. She could see that this division we're all so inured to was not a reflection of her inferior worth or ability. She just didn't know what to do with the idea that she might be alone in seeing that.

But Melanie had her own plan after Fieldston, as soon as she could get out of high school. And her plan did not involve holding doors. She had enough credits to graduate high school early, as a junior.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Melanie's vision was so clear. And the adults around her could see it too. Pablo Muriel, the teacher, and all the teachers at her school knew their job was to fill in the gaps, make up for the fact that Melanie did not get to be a Fieldston kid and get her to college anyway.

So a few months before graduation, the high school guidance counselor nominated Melanie for something called a Posse scholarship. The Posse Foundation sends kids from 10 cities to private, elite colleges, full scholarship-- schools like Cornell, Dartmouth, and Middlebury. Melanie had her eyes set on Middlebury, just like Angela Vassos remembered. And the thing that could get her there was the Posse scholarship.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Posse sends groups of kids to college together, a posse. And they're trying to choose kids who would otherwise be missed because their test scores aren't great, or because they go to bad schools. After the first round, half the students get called back, the next round, half the remaining students. Then that group gets cut again.

Trying to figure out how to get into college is stressful for everyone. But for most people, it does not look like reality TV.

Chana Joffe-Walt

This year, I sat in on the Posse finalist interviews. And I can tell you that by this point in the process, the only kids left in the room could do your job with a week of training. We were sitting in this room with 25 amazing kids. 15 of them were about to get voted off the island. They get a letter, like Melanie did, saying no.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Melanie did not get in. She made it to the very last round. But in the end, she did not get it.

I don't know why Angela Vassos remembers Melanie getting into Middlebury, except that what she and the school college counselor must be remembering is the moment Melanie was selected as a finalist, because that would have been an exciting moment. And it would make sense that they did not know the very last step-- that in the end, Melanie did not make it-- because they never saw her again. They couldn't have known seeing Fieldston was not what made Melanie want to run away, it was this.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Melanie could see an elite college was a long shot, especially for a kid from a poor public school. But she was going to make it because she was exceptional. Her teachers saw it. She knew it. That was the ground she stood on-- until this moment.

Chana Joffe-Walt

I was walking with Melanie one day recently when she played a voicemail for me she got from Lisa Greenbaum, her old high school teacher. I hadn't given Lisa Melanie's number. I hadn't even told her yet about being in touch. It turned out just a few days before, Melanie had called the front desk of the high school to get a copy of her diploma, and people from the school started getting back in touch.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Melanie is shaking her head, listening.

Chana Joffe-Walt

In other words, yeah, absolutely not. Melanie never called Lisa.

Chana Joffe-Walt

This, of course, makes no sense. Somebody calling your mobile device and saying, I would love to hear what's going on with you, that's the definition of someone reaching out. But this is where Melanie is right now.

For the last decade of her life, she's been working at the supermarket, taking local college courses part-time, stopping every few semesters when she needs money or sleep, and thinking about where she went wrong. She didn't apply to any other private colleges after Middlebury turned her down. She did not reach out to Lisa, or Pablo, or Ashleigh, or Angela. She graduated early and checked out of high school. And she's furious at herself for doing that.

Chana Joffe-Walt

So now, a high school teacher who remembers Melanie as having so much promise is calling and wanting to catch up. Of course, Melanie doesn't want to return that call.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Just like she felt when she visited Fieldston that first time, Melanie can sense a better, alternate reality sitting right there next to her today-- an alternate reality where she went to college, and her life is totally different.

Ira Glass

Chana Joffe-Walt. Coming up, we meet that alternate reality, Melanie if she went to college. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.

Ira Glass

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, Three Miles. Chana Joffe-Walt is looking at a group of students who shared one small experience. They're students from a public school in the Bronx who took field trips three miles up the road to visit one of New York's fanciest private schools.

In the first half of our program, we heard from Melanie, who thinks that if she had gone to college, it would have made all the difference in her life. In this half of the show, we're going to look at whether or not that's true. A lot of kids from her public high school, University Heights High School, lived the life that she did not. They did go to college, two thirds of them last year. Again, here's Chana Joffe-Walt.

Chana Joffe-Walt

I've been talking to lots of University Heights graduates. And I've had this experience a couple times where I feel like I'm speaking to Melanie's alternate reality. The year after Melanie graduated, a handsome, young, black University Heights senior named Jonathan Gonzales won the Posse scholarship.

This is a kid who grew up in Melanie's neighborhood, went to her school, was one of only a dozen or so kids picked to be part of the program with Fieldston. And he won the Posse scholarship Melanie so desperately wanted. If anyone is alternate reality Melanie, it is Jonathan. But this is not a role Jonathan conveniently slots into.

Chana Joffe-Walt

At 15 years old, Melanie could see a future with college and graduate school. Not only that, everyone around her could see it too. This is not what people saw for Jonathan. This is not what Jonathan saw for Jonathan.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Raquel Hardy. I wish you could see Jonathan's face when he talks about Raquel. I know that's a corny thing to say. I promise, if you could see it, you'd forget to be so cool. Jonathan says he's loved Raquel basically as long as he can remember.

Chana Joffe-Walt

But that summer right before high school, Raquel and Jonathan got together. And it stopped feeling like a joke that they might just stay together. Jonathan and Raquel both found being at home stressful. Jonathan was given up to foster care as a baby. His foster mom adopted him. He says she loved him, but she could be very cruel.

Chana Joffe-Walt

This, of course, is Raquel. Raquel is beautiful, driven, and just quick. She's the friend you want sitting shotgun when you're lost driving.

Raquel and Jonathan were both selected for the Fieldston program. And for Raquel, seeing Fieldston was a revelation. She remembers specific details-- the trees in the quad, that the library was a freestanding building. She remembers walking up to it.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Raquel says she had the following thoughts all within the first few minutes. These kids are free. This is what freedom looks like. We must not deserve to be free. And finally, I am really lucky to be seeing this.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Raquel says everyone felt bad seeing Fieldston, but Jonathan more so because he had been taught to feel that way at home.

Chana Joffe-Walt

She says she just told him over and over how special he was.

Chana Joffe-Walt

That was how Jonathan went from imagining himself as a janitor to applying for college-- not because he saw Fieldston, because Raquel saw Fieldston. Raquel wanted to go to a college where she could sit on the rug and debate with friends, laptop on the floor by her knee.

Senior year, they were both nominated for a Posse scholarship. Raquel didn't make it past the first round, but she went on to apply to lots of other schools and got into Bard College with a scholarship. And Jonathan got Posse. He got into Wheaton College in Massachusetts.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Jonathan's first day at Wheaton, he looked up his course syllabi and panicked. He couldn't afford the books. He also did not tell anyone he couldn't afford the books, he just never got them.

Chana Joffe-Walt

It had not occurred to either of them that the beautiful, freestanding library on campus was there to serve them and had a lot of the books they needed for free. But when Raquel panicked, she went to the student center and learned about the library and the interlibrary loan system. She told Jonathan, 200 miles away, who still had not asked a soul.

And Jonathan was the one who was in Posse. Posse scholars have a 90% college graduation rate. The program is full of supports for kids just like him. He had months of training from Posse before he even went to college. He had a special campus mentor. Posse was calling him and sending him letters. He was ignoring it all. A few months into his first semester, Jonathan was barely getting outside of his room-- or his head.

Chana Joffe-Walt

In the middle of her junior year, Raquel let go of Jonathan. They broke up. By this point, Jonathan was so far behind, the school was warning him he'd be expelled. He'd already been suspended twice.

He did not respond to the letters, did not tell anyone what was happening. Jonathan appeared to be unable to see how bad it was himself. He went back to school after Christmas break that year.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Jonathan came back to the Bronx, got a job at the front desk of a gym, and moved back in with his mom. Raquel finished her senior year without Jonathan. She unfriended him on Facebook.

But other friends she had on Facebook seemed to be struggling with the same things he had. All the time, Raquel would see the same news. So-and-so flunked out of that school, or this kid partied too much and got kicked out. Her high school friends were failing at college, one by one. Jonathan was not the anomaly, she was. By the time she graduated, Raquel was the only person she knew of who made it.

Raquel is now more than twice as likely as Jonathan to make it into the middle class-- statistically more likely to be employed, to be healthy, to enjoy her daily work, to have a happy marriage. But most poor kids who make it to college do not make it to graduation. In fact, the number is shockingly low. Less than one fifth finish in six years.

There are swarms of researchers trying to figure out what to do about this right now. Education is the best way to cross class barriers. And in many cases, education seems to be the barrier. Pablo Muriel, the high school teacher who all these kids remember and loved, he knows this very well. Just listen to what happened when I asked Pablo if he remembered Raquel.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Pablo is Puerto Rican. He grew up in the Bronx, in the projects. So when he told kids they could make it to college, it was credible because he did it. He graduated college. He went to graduate school, traveled the world.

Pablo says it's important for kids to see someone like them succeed. But he also feels deeply ambivalent about playing this role. He still tells kids to go to college because what else is he supposed to do?

Chana Joffe-Walt

Pablo says Bard College, Columbia, these are Fieldstons. And he imagines that what happened to lots of his former students is probably the same thing that happened to them at Fieldston. They were dropped into a foreign land and asked to mentally imagine themselves as belonging.

That's hard to do. In fact, the entire project of Raquel's life has been trying to convince herself she does belong. In this regard, she is a mental gladiator. Because this project did not end when she got into the prestigious college. It did not end when she graduated from that college or when, after college, she landed an excellent job interview at a law firm to be a paralegal.

Chana Joffe-Walt

She has to ignore the fancy library that she did not get to enjoy in high school, the bad grades she got in college, the fact that she can't afford books, the fact that she's the only black kid in class, the fact that her peers in college already knew how to use a semicolon correctly, the Facebook stream of high school friends dropping out of college one at a time, and the boyfriend who deeply, more deeply than her, believes the message confirmed again and again by all these things, that he is unworthy. Raquel has to not look at the mountain of evidence that what she's working toward will not be possible, and instead has to repeat to herself, you do deserve this. You deserve this. You do deserve this.

Chana Joffe-Walt

Raquel keeps waiting for the sense of entitlement to set in, the bravado she sees in her peers from Bard. She can fake it, but she hasn't gotten to the point where she truly feels it. I mentioned this to Pablo.

Chana Joffe-Walt

This group of kids got their first peek over the fence a decade ago now. And Melanie, the girl who found it so upsetting as a 15-year-old that she ran away, she's 25 now. She's the same person she was at 15, but there are no longer people around to tell her, you are exceptional. You're going to make something of yourself. What there is are customers in an upscale supermarket with red banners out front announcing luxury apartments upstairs.

Chana Joffe-Walt

There's this one thing I keep replaying in my head after talking to all these people. It's the story Angela Vassos told me about Melanie getting into Middlebury. Do you remember that? The teacher from Fieldston, the private school? You remember how vivid Angela's memory was?

Chana Joffe-Walt

Melanie did not get into Middlebury. She doesn't remember this moment at all. But Angela does, clearly. Even today, she acknowledges it must not have been what really happened, but she remembers it.

I have a theory about this. I think Angela has this memory of Melanie making it-- triumphantly making it-- because it is really hard to believe that Melanie would not make it. And I can completely understand that.

I met Melanie in November, and I still call her most weeks just to say, so what happened-- with your dentist, with your grades, with that meeting with your professor? I keep expecting there to be news, like she's about to get her big break or something and things will happen for her. It feels suspenseful, but nothing has happened for her for 10 years.

I think it's some special brand of American pathological optimism that so many of us believe the story of Melanie has to turn out to be happy. And that if it doesn't, something unusual has happened-- and not just this is what happens all the time, that the supermarket might be full of Melanies.

Ira Glass

Chana Joffe-Walt is one of the producers of our program. It's now been three years since we first broadcast this story. Raquel, Jonathan, and Melanie all decided that they want to be educators like their teacher Pablo Muriel. And Raquel's been a teacher for awhile. Jonathan's recently become a school aide in the Bronx. Melanie is still at the supermarket, working toward a job as a school aid.

Ira Glass

Our program was produced today by Nancy Updike with Zoe Chace, Sean Cole, Stephanie Foo, Chana Joffe-Walt, Miki Meek, Jonathan Menjivar, Brian Reed, Robyn Semien, and Alissa Shipp. Our senior producer is Julie Snyder. Editing on today's show from Paul Tough and Joel Lovell.

Production help from Simon Adler. Seth Lind is our operations director. Emily Condon is our production manager. Elise Bergerson is our office manager. Adrianne Mathiowetz runs our website. Elna Baker scouts stories for our show. Research help today from Michelle Harris. Music help from Rob Geddis.

[ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS]

Our website, thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks as always to our program's cofounder, Mr. Torey Malatia. You know, every year when Beyonce fails to win album of the year, Torey walks out of our Grammy party saying--

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.