The Marva Collins Story Revisited: Implications for Regular Classroom Instruction

The Marva Collins story has been sensationalized. News-papers across the nation have carried headlines referring to Ms. Collins as magical or marvelous. Magazines of gen-eral and special circulation have covered the story. The recently televised version of the story captivated the audi-ence with its emotional drama. Although much has been said and written about this terrific school, few analyses offer concrete recommendations that can be implemented by re-gular classroom teachers and curriculum developers. The reasons most frequently given for Ms. Collins ’ tremendous success include such factors as the use of positive rein-forcement, a traditional curriculum, adequate time on task, high teacher expectation, high motivation, good discipline, love, and just plain good teaching. Although each of these factors may be a part of the success story, educators have attempted implementation with little impact on Black pupils’ performance. The purpose of this paper is to discuss cultural congru-ence as a significant factor in Ms. Collins’success. Cultural congruence refers to the relationship between the curricu-lum and the pupil’s cultural experiences outside the school. Impetus for this line of logic can be found in Cohen (1969);