"We want a teacher who has more than a credential," she said. "We want someone who wants to be here. If we don't see that you are really here for the children, you don't get hired."

Many religious schools see teaching as a ministry, one that brings an extra dimension to a classroom where instruction is grounded in spiritual values.

Garvey's founder, Anyim Palmer, gives teachers there a class on African and African American history. The idea, Executive Director Beverly said, is to ensure that teachers know "some of the experiences we've gone through as a people--raising the consciousness of that teacher."

Although Garvey is generally acknowledged to be an academically outstanding school, it does not measure student achievement on standardized tests.

If school officials say a child is reading on a college level, Palmer said, "that is determined by his ability to use a college-level text."

Dolores Blunt, principal of Sheenway School near Watts, also does not give her students standardized tests, unless they are donated. She, like Palmer, has no room in her extremely tight budget to pay for them.

But she is also concerned by experiences her students have had taking such tests. She remembers an incident when students were given several choices from which to choose the discoverer of America.

Her students, having been taught that Native Americans had been on this continent long before Europeans arrived, selected "none of the above." But that answer was judged incorrect, she said.

U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) is a great admirer of Garvey and Sheenway and has contributed her honoraria from speaking engagements to both schools.

"I think Marcus Garvey is a wonderful school," she said. "My grandson went many years ago. I also know there are some wonderful public schools with teachers like the teachers at Marcus Garvey in various places throughout America. There are not enough of them. We don't reward them enough; we don't support them enough."

Waters, however, has long been a staunch opponent of vouchers, seeing them as the brainchild of political conservatives. She questions why what she calls "business giants" like Wal-Mart Stores' John Walton and former junk bond king Michael Milken have become deeply involved in education.

"Education cannot and should not be privatized or marketed like Wal-Mart Stores," she said.

She said she does not blame black parents for being angry.

"What I don't want parents to do is to simply resort to an unknown solution," she said. "I want them to spend time in the schools, at the board of education. I want them to demand more from education and I want them to be in touch with their children's growth and development and not think somebody else is going to do it."

Concerned About a Lack of Challenges

Racquel Sheppard is a parent who says she has been very involved at Los Angeles' Figueroa Street Elementary school, where her daughter Rayven is a student.

The school has improved with class-size reduction, she said, but she doesn't believe it is challenging her daughter.

"If I had a voucher, I most definitely would place her in a private setting," Sheppard said.

"I'm also concerned about safety in the environment surrounding the school," she said, recalling a highly publicized incident in which a teacher was shot there when a stray bullet from a gang confrontation outside slammed though a library window, leaving him brain damaged.

That concern is shared by parents with children at Garvey, West Angeles and Price. As important as academics are to those parents, officials at those schools say, safety is parents' main reason for enrolling their children there.

If California had tax-supported vouchers tomorrow, however, there simply wouldn't be enough classrooms in private schools to accommodate public school students who would want to transfer, private school officials say.

Many of those schools have enrollments of about 300. Garvey's Beverly said her school could expand. Other schools want to remain the same size.

While there is not enough capacity, there are also classrooms that are not being used, said former Rep. Floyd Flake (D-N.Y.), one of the few black elected officials who has supported vouchers.

Flake, a minister whose congregation runs a 500-student school for grades preschool through eight, said churches have "invested a great deal of capital in buildings they only use for two or three hours a week."

"My challenge to them is rather than look at vouchers as a right-wing, white conspiracy, look at them as an opportunity because vouchers are here to stay. We ought to take them and use them to our advantage now by opening schools in these vacant spaces that our churches have during the weekdays."

Flake would also like to see African Americans look at alternatives to public schools with more of a sense of urgency.

"When a white person kills a black person, we all go out in the street to protest," he said. "But our children are being educationally killed every day in public schools and nobody says a thing." Copyright 2000 Los Angeles Times