Visitors to the John Locke Foundation heard this afternoon the success story of a California charter high school.
Education writer and blogger Joanne Jacobs shared the story of Downtown College Prep in San Jose, California. It’s the subject of Jacobs’ book Our School: The Inspiring Story of Two Teachers, One Big Idea, and the Charter School That Beat the Odds.
Jacobs says the school helped transform struggling students into college-bound achievers.
In the following excerpt (video clip), Jacobs highlights for a North Carolina Education Alliance audience the early days of the school’s first baseball team:
The boys lost 34-0, but amid the pain there’s hope.
“What’s this I hear about Shakespeare?” asked Jennifer Andaluz, who’s the co-founder.
Jorge, who had read “carrousel” as “carrot salad” in ninth grade, who’d gone from Fs to Bs and Cs, stood in the outfield quoting Macbeth, which all the sophomores read: “Fair is foul, and foul is fair.”
The tenth graders on the team explained the reference to the ninth graders.
“Our kids were quoting Shakespeare,” says … the coach and the math teacher. “That means we won.”
“Are the kids really down about the scores?” a teacher asks.
“No, actually they’re OK,” says Jill Case, who’s the counselor. “They know the story of the girls’ basketball team. They kept talking about it — about how the girls lost big at the start of the season, but they kept at it and they won in the end. The kids know they need practice now, but they believe they can get better. They believe they can win.”
For a few seconds, the room falls silent. Then Andaluz speaks softly. “That’s what DCP is all about,” she says, almost whispering. “That’s it. That’s the whole thing.”
DCP students enter the school as academic losers. They don’t know how to play the game. But if they keep working, they get better.
If they stick with it, they’ll win a college education.
