Joe Clark Un Lider Trabajo

In 1987, Eastside High School in Paterson, New Jersey, is plagued with numerous problems, especially drugs and gang violence. Furthermore, the students scored poorly on the state's test of minimum basic skills.

During the opening credits sequence, after a teacher is brutally beaten for trying to break up a fight and the state legislature has recently passed a law proclaiming that schools who cannot meet minimum test requirements will be put in receivership, Mayor Bottman (Alan North) consults school superintendent Dr. Frank Napier (Robert Guillaume), who suggests the school hire elementary school principal Joe Louis Clark, aka "Crazy Joe" (Morgan Freeman), who was a teacher at Eastside High 20 years before, as the new principal. The mayor is reluctant at first as he knows about the trouble the radical Clark has caused in the past, but Clark, nonetheless, is hired. At his first meeting, Clark reprimands the entire faculty for their inability to control the students and their failure to get the test scores up. Tension arises immediately when Clark dismisses hundreds of students from the school who are identified as drug dealers or abusers and troublemakers. A meeting between the parents of those students and the academic board only fans the flames.

The next day, Clark runs into one of the expelled youths, Thomas Sams (Jermaine 'Huggy' Hopkins), who asks to be let back into the school. In a dramatic rooftop scene, Clark gives him a sharp lecture about crack and what can happen to Sams if he keeps on using it. Clark then dares Sams to commit suicide by jumping off the roof, but Sams, breaking down in tears, refuses and promises to clean up his act. Clark grants him a second chance to turn things around. However, another expelled student manages to get inside the school and attack another student before Clark comes to break up the fight. Knowing he is breaking the fire code, Clark orders all doors chained and locked during school hours to keep drug dealers out, and enlists security guards to keep the fire chief out of the school. Clark's unusual methods lead him to clash with numerous teachers and with his vice principal Mrs. Levias (Beverly Todd). He fires one teacher and suspends another for clashing with him in front of the students, though the suspension is reversed by the superintendent.

The students take a practice version of the basic skills test, but only 33% of them pass it (the minimum passing requirement is 75%). Clark embarks on a campaign to prepare the students for the real test, culminating in a motivational assembly the morning of the exam. Over the school year, the students bond with Mr. Clark, not just as a principal, but as a father figure. Clark highly values school pride, and several times throughout the film insists that all students learn the school song and be able to perform it on demand.

Meanwhile, one parent, Leona Barrett (Lynne Thigpen),

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