A certain kind of pride quietly and unobtrusively permeates a community. It’s not always visible on billboards or banners. You can sense it in the way parents discuss the schools at the grocery store and in the way former students speak of their elementary school years as a crucial period they never fully moved on from. The schools are a major factor in Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania’s sense of pride.
The Mt. Lebanon School District serves about 34,000 people and is located in Allegheny County, a six-square-mile suburb of Pittsburgh in the southwest. Those figures don’t seem particularly noteworthy on paper. However, it is truly difficult to ignore what this district has created over the course of more than a century of operation within those six square miles.
The district operates two middle schools, the flagship Mt. Lebanon High School, and seven elementary schools: Foster, Hoover, Howe, Jefferson, Lincoln, Markham, and Washington. The organizational structure is neat, almost methodical. However, the underlying history is quite different. The district was formally established by the Court of Quarter Sessions in 1912, when it had fewer than 5,000 students and a five-member school board. Two structures. A single room was one of them. Even at that time, the goals seemed to exceed the available space.
The district began experimenting quite early, which is intriguing and a little unexpected. By 1914, a group of parents had actually petitioned against the “Mt. Lebanon system,” claiming that it encouraged students to advance at their own pace and did away with standard exams. The controversy was thoroughly documented by the Pittsburgh Post. More than a century later, it reads like a point of contention in any discussion about progressive education. Depending on who you asked, Mt. Lebanon was ahead of its time.
Teachers from 120 colleges and universities ranked the high school among the top 44 in the nation by 1959. Of its seventy-five instructors, sixty-two had master’s degrees. That isn’t a fortunate coincidence. That is a culture that has been consciously developed over many years and continues to compound.
It’s difficult to ignore the persistence of that culture. The US Department of Education awarded the district two Blue Ribbon Awards in 1998, including special recognition for having one of the top eight fine arts programs in the country. fine arts. not just test results in math. not only pass rates for the AP. It seems that Mt. Lebanon recognized early on that academic achievement and creative growth are not mutually exclusive. They support one another.
Mt. Lebanon Elementary, located in Pendleton, South Carolina, across the state line, has a slightly different but no less fascinating tale to tell. The school, which serves 491 students in pre-kindergarten through sixth grade in a fringe rural setting, has reported reading and math proficiency rates of 65% and 71%, respectively. With a student-teacher ratio of 14:1 and a student body that is 56% economically disadvantaged, it is ranked 94th among South Carolina’s elementary schools. These figures are important. Gains in proficiency in economically disadvantaged schools are not coincidental. They occur as a result of someone focusing on the specifics, such as the counselor’s presence, the classroom ratios, and the regularity of instruction.
The weight of expectations and the effort to meet them are shared by both schools, whether they are located in rural South Carolina or suburban Pittsburgh. This level of education is rarely dramatic. Lesson plans, parent-teacher conferences, and budget decisions made in quiet rooms are all largely unglamorous. However, the effects mount up. After a sufficient number of years, a school becomes more than just a structure; it becomes a symbol of the community.
That’s most likely what took place long ago on Mount Lebanon. It is still being written whether and how it will continue.
