Urban Educators Lament Negative Public Perception

As big-city educators gathered here for the annual convention of the Council of the Great City Schools, many expressed a powerful faith that they are turning the tide of failure engulfing so many urban school systems.

Yet they projected an equally strong awareness that theirs is not the prevailing view.

"The public perception of us is very low," Franklin L. Smith, the embattled superintendent of the District of Columbia schools and the council's current chairman, said during his keynote speech at...