Top-ranked Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies

In the extensive U.S. News & World Report ranking of all the public high schools in the country, LA’s top 10 include four independent charters, three magnets and three traditional schools.

The Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies was the top-ranked LA school and the only LA Unified school in California’s top 20. It was 18th in the state and 138th nationally. The school was just honored last month for exceptional merit and innovation by the Magnet Schools of America.

The magazine evaluated nearly 20,000 public high schools throughout the country and ranked them on several factors, including state test scores, the number of students taking Advanced Placement and college-level courses and overall college readiness.

The rankings showed that 47 LA Unified schools, or 19 percent of all local high schools, rank above the California average.

“These results affirm our commitment to prepare our students for college and careers,” said Chief Academic Officer Frances Gipson. “LA Unified is proud of our students, teachers and leaders for their scholarly accomplishments, both locally and nationally. This recognition represents the best of the best.”

LACES Principal Harold Boger pointed out that 90 percent of students at LACES take Advanced Placement classes, and minority enrollment is 72 percent.

“Obviously we are thrilled to get recognized for creating a culture where students are not afraid to challenge themselves by taking AP courses,” he said. “We have made a special effort to eliminate middle school courses that have the effect of tracking students at an early stage of either being AP or non-AP students. In fact all of our students know that they will take AP World History in the 10th grade and that all of their prior courses will have been sufficient preparation to succeed in this course.”

But they may be a victim of their success. Boger added, “On the other hand we are a little concerned that we have done such a great job in developing this AP culture among students that maybe it is time to encourage students to consider taking less AP courses. Presently about 40 percent of our juniors and seniors take four or more AP courses. Even though students continue to find ways to ultimately be successful in these courses, we have noticed that the stress level of some students has increased. This has led us to pay more attention to students’ emotional development as we strive to maintain high academic standards.”

The second-highest ranked LA Unified school is Harbor Teacher Preparation Academy at 196 nationally, and third is the charter school Magnolia Science Academy 2 at 223. Two charter schools, Wallis Annenberg High and Bright Star Secondary Charter Academy, rank 246 and 247 nationally, and fourth and fifth in the LA Unified rankings.

Listed at sixth in the district is the magnet school Francisco Bravo Medical Magnet High, at 252 nationally, seventh is Elizabeth Learning Center at 277, and eighth is Downtown Business High at 360.

Rounding out the top 10 locally are the charter school Alliance Gertz-Ressler Richard Merkin 6-12 Complex at 383 and, at 406, the traditional school Foshay Learning Center.

Five Alliance College-Ready Public Schools are in the top 20 California schools in the rankings.

Dan Katzir, Alliance’s CEO, said in a statement, “A record-breaking 14 Alliance high schools were recognized. Six were ranked among the top 10 percent of high schools in Los Angeles County. We are proud to announce that, once again, Alliance schools rank among the best in the nation.”

Green Dot has one school in the top 200 high schools nationally, Animo Leadership Charter High which came in at 168, and six schools in the top 200 charter schools nationally.

KIPP had two schools in California’s top 20, both in Northern California.

Magnolia Public Schools had two schools in California’s top 100 and also had the top charter in LA Unified, Magnolia Science Academy 2 in Van Nuys. It was the 66th highest-ranked charter high school in the nation.

In California, Magnolia Science Academy 2 was ranked 32, and Magnolia Science Academy Reseda was ranked 96.

“We’re proud to once again have our schools recognized as among the best in the state and nation,” said Magnolia CEO Caprice Young. “When our charter schools repeatedly rank high on this list, it’s further validation of Magnolia’s successful track record of ensuring that all students—no matter their socioeconomic, ethnic or cultural background—graduate prepared for college because they’re already succeeding in college-level work in high school.”

For more: Read LA School Report’s in-depth look at one of the top schools, Francisco Bravo Medical Magnet. 

Jose Rodriguez and Alvaro Quintero recount their journey from a public charter high school in South LA to attending Yale and Harvard. (Credit: Kathy Moore)

By the time Alvaro Quintero and Jose Rodriguez reached the end of their senior year, they were no longer Alvaro and Jose.

“Before we left, we got our names changed to Harvard and Yale, respectively,” Rodriguez recalled. “That is how we were referred to.”

At once they had lost their familiar identity in the halls of Animo Pat Brown Charter High School in Los Angeles and taken on instead the weight of becoming the first graduates in the 10-year history of the Green Dot school to reach the Ivy League.

That they won admission to two of the most elite colleges in the country coming from a heavily Latino community where 74 percent of the residents don’t have a high school diploma and 72 percent of families live on less than $40,000 a year was no small feat.

“The first school I got into was Princeton. I remember getting home and being super excited,” said Quintero, who ended up at Harvard. “My dad didn’t know what Princeton was until I got in. I told him it was ranked the best school in the country and I was getting to go for free. ‘Where is it?’ ‘New Jersey.’ ‘You can just go the community college down the street. It’s the same thing, right?’”

“It’s been great for the most part,” Rodriguez said. “My parents are super proud of me, but even to this day I don’t think they understand what it means for me to be at Yale. And they probably won’t have the chance to visit me until I graduate, which is kind of a bummer.”

But that was only part of the story they told Tuesday in Austin, Texas, at the South By Southwest Education Festival panel From South LA to the Ivy League. What happened to them once they got to those bastions of East Coast privilege and how they are surviving their critical first year was the other.

With them on the panel was Joel Snyder, a teacher and advisor at Pat Brown who is tracking the college outcomes of 10 graduates from the class of 2015 who ended up at places ranging from community college to Cal State, to the University of California, Berkeley, to the Holy Grail of Harvard and Yale.

Some of these students have special education classifications, some were undocumented. All, including Rodriguez and Quintero, bore the statistical burden that they were not likely to graduate.

“A lot of the excitement when an alum comes back to see me is tempered by a lot of concern with what they are going to say,” said Snyder, who taught for several years at Morris High School in the South Bronx before moving to the West Coast. “There are too many stories of students coming back with an explanation of why they are no longer in school or why they won’t be after this current semester.”

Panel moderator Ellie Herman said afterward that a recent study from high-performing charter network KIPP showed that only 33 percent of their graduates who went on to college graduated in six years. The two additional years were already tacked on to recognize the extra courses that students might need to take or that some would be forced to leave school to help support their families.

“For me, the most difficult part was the academics,” Rodriguez said. “Green Dot does a wonderful job preparing kids for college, but as hard as they try, there is no way they can prepare for the vast change of what is expected of us.”

Rodriguez and Quintero said they took advantage of study groups, support networks with other first-generation college kids and professors’ office hours. Some of their classmates from more privileged backgrounds might need the same help, they said, but were embarrassed to seek it. They were not.

Quintero said he didn’t speak to a soul for the first month he was at Harvard and can recite without hesitation that Cambridge is 2,295 miles from LA. Eventually, both he and Rodriguez were excited to encounter students so foreign to them, ones who who flew home on the weekends (they won’t go home again until summer vacation), were from countries they never heard of or are majoring in obscure subjects like elliptical metallurgy.

“Meeting people from different socioeconomic backgrounds, different cultural backgrounds is a little intimidating at first, but it’s fun,” Rodriguez said.

“No matter how different they might be, no matter how much the gap might be in wealth, they are still very much like me,” Quintero said.

Going home and fitting in with old friends has its own challenges.

“They fall into two categories. They are either super proud of us, we are like goals to them, or they fall into the category where they kind of resent us,” Rodriguez said. “We have to be careful talking to them about our experience at college or they feel like we are showing off.”

“It’s gotten to the point where I can’t tell people about my school. It’s kind of like I’m ashamed,” Quintero said. “I never thought I would be judged by the school I went to. They treat me like the guy that goes to Harvard, not as Alvaro. They treat me differently.”

As for moving from South LA to the Ivy League, Quintero and Rodriguez credited their teachers: a chemistry teacher who stayed after school to prepare students for the AP exam, or any number of teachers who would still be in the building at 6 or 7 in the evening doing work or “sometimes just talking, trying to get to know them, and it was wonderful,” Rodriguez said. Quintero recalled the guidance counselor who paid for some of his college application fees.

Snyder said these educators should be commended but the bigger issue was figuring out a system of sustainable support, to help students surrounded by family and friends without college diplomas get through to earning their own.

“It’s a dirty, messy complicated question and no one really wants to get in the middle of it,” he said. “We won’t get by on heroes.”

This article was published in partnership with The74Million.org.

“Resolutions like this distract us and are perpetuating harmful myths in the community,” Rachel Hazlehurst, of Camino Nuevo Charter Academy told the board, calling the resolution from board member Scott Schmerelson “divisive in nature.”

Hazlehurst and 14 other speakers were part of an effort to pushback against the motion, which was scheduled for a board vote later in the day. The measure is general in its wording but was precipitated by the recent formulation of Great Public Schools Now, an offshoot of the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation that wants to expand the number of charter schools in LA Unified.

Schmerelson nodded and listened intently to all the speakers. Before the meeting adjourned for a closed session, board President Steve Zimmer applauded the speakers for expressing their opinions and pointed out that their messages of urging collaboration and best-practices sharing was far more collegial that what he has heard from Great Public Schools Now.

“I hope that there is internal conversation that is happening,” Zimmer said. “The words [in the resolution] were in response to the a proposal that had very different words than the words that were said today.”

Zimmer said he found materials and websites that “perpetuate deficit thinking” about traditional schools and “present a negative picture of the schools they want to collaborate with.”

Zimmer, who has been critical of the Broad initiative but has not weighed-in on Schmerelson’s proposal, said, “We welcome conversation and visiting charter schools, and want the charter community to visit LAUSD schools as well.”

He added he wants to continue “making sure that we have ways of establishing restorative practices and end negative discipline practices at all schools” and welcomes “an honest and open conversation” about the charter school issues.

Emilio Pack, the executive director of the Math and Science College Preparatory school said he has “noticed a lot of speakers [coming to school board meetings] perpetuating some of the myths of charter schools and I feel that some of the language that is part of the Schmerelson resolution perpetuates some of those myths.”

Larry Fondation, director of community engagement for Green Dot, which has 20 schools, said his three children have graduated from LAUSD schools and his wife works at LA Unified headquarters. “We need to stress the commonalities we have, not differences,” Fondation said. “We work closely with many other schools and have large parent engagement and community involvement.”

When she was an LAUSD teacher, Abigail Nunez, now of the Alliance Tennenbaum Family Technology High, said she recalled the myths she heard about charter schools. “The reality is that charter schools are laboratories of innovation.” She said her school routinely shares resources and practices with other LAUSD schools on their shared campus.

With budgets getting tighter and funding from the state unpredictable, many educational organizations are turning to crowd-sourcing to keep after-school programs going.

Two organizations taking this approach are CORE Educational Services and arc After School Programs, which are using a partnership to provide after-school programs at seven L.A. Green Dot Public Schools in Los Angeles. Green Dot runs a network of 21 unionized charter schools in Los Angeles. 

In a crowd-sourcing campaign on Indiegogo, CORE is asking for $50,000 to keep the programs alive until it can apply for new funding from the state in two years. According to CORE, the programs lost their state funding on May 21.

The campaign has received over $29,000 in donations as of Tuesday afternoon, but donation period expires on Nov. 2.

“When we refer to ‘after-school programs,’ we’re not talking about babysitting services, arts-and-crafts, or open gyms for pick-up sports and dodge ball,” the campaign’s page says. “These high school after-school programs provide enriching classes in art, music production, culinary arts, career-and-college-readiness, and more. Importantly, these classes are taught by skilled instructors from ‘the neighborhood’ who serve as mentors for at-risk students.”

Click on the the attached video to learn more about the campaign.

“If these programs are cut, No. 1, there won’t be a dedicated safe space for these kids to go to every day,” Leon Clayborne, a regional manager for arc, said in the video.

Tuck was said to be considering a run for State Assembly, but has instead decided to challenge Tom Torlakson, who will be running for a second four-year term.

“The current state superintendent has been an elected official for 35 years,” Tuck said in an interview with LA School Report. “He’s been part of the education establishment for a very long time. While certainly well intentioned, he’s not making the fundamental changes we need to help our state.”

As an example, Tuck cited Torlakson’s resistance to certain reforms, such as using student test scores to evaluate teachers, which helped cost California a federal waiver from No Child Left Behind regulations. That led eight school districts within the state to join forces, seeking a federal waiver on their own, which was granted earlier this month.

“For the first time ever, the federal Department of Education granted a waiver to individual entities,” said Tuck. “That’s because our State Superintendent wasn’t leading. We needed to go and do that ourselves. Think about the amount of time spent by those districts going around the state.”

Tuck’s campaign sets the stage for another showdown between teachers unions and “school reformers.” As the LA Times‘ Howard Blume pointed out this morning, unions spent $3.9 million to elect Torlakson in 2010.

The primary for State Superintendent will be held in June 2014. The two top vote-getters will then face off in the November general election.

Previous posts: Partnership Head “Exploring” Run for Public Office; Joan Sullivan to Head LA Partnership Schools

I had the chance to watch the first two episodes and I have to say that I liked it — not because it’s necessarily accurate or even particularly new or original (Locke High School, anyone?) but because it’s a good reminder of the day-to-day struggles, the retail work of making a broken school better.  This is messy, one-kid-at-a-time work done by teachers, counselors, and administrators, and so many of the real setbacks and successes have nothing to do with learning geometry or American history. The fact that it’s a charter conversion — and that so few charter operators get involved in school turnarounds — may be distracting or even troubling for some.

The show opens like any show set in New Orleans these days — street scenes from Treme, muted trumpets, etc. And some of the opening credits are similarly familiar to those of who’ve watched a lot of urban school documentaries (or reality television): sweeping shots of the new principal (baby-faced 48-year-old Dr. Thompson), standing cross-armed in front of the school.

The new teachers include both the stereotypical blonde first-year teacher from Duke (of course she’ll cry, but will she last?) and the somewhat less stereotypical Ms. Campbell, who graduated from the school and helps explain the kids and the culture to the outsiders on the faculty (and among the viewers).

The school is extremely small — 370 students — though the building seems much larger.  The security guards are armed, in khaki uniforms.  The kids are big and often seem immature until you learn what they’re dealing with or where they’ve come from. A lot of the action is in the halls and the counselors’ offices.

Having written about the Locke High School rescue effort, I’m jealous of the access that the camera crew seems to have gotten — including closed circuit TV footage — and can’t help but feeling a sense of deja vu.

There’s the ‘worst school in America” rhetoric, and the charter conversion.

There’s Steve Barr, the eternal outsider, with his baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes.  The chunky black Clark Kent specs are new, but the rhetoric is the same.

There’s Dr. T — a tough if flawed leader who sometimes lets his temper and his need for respect from students get the best of him — in place of Zeus Cubias, the Locke High School administrator who’s great with kids but sometimes loses track of his role as instructional leader (and has since departed from Locke).

What’s different from the Locke story is that there aren’t so far any teachers left over from the “old” school.* Roughly a third of the teachers at Locke were holdovers from the previous regime.   A veteran teacher shows up mysteriously in the second episode and there’s a JROTC guy who might be a holdover, but that’s about it.

And of course, we still don’t know if the McDonogh turnaround will work.  Locke was recently renewed after five years, but I have no idea how closely the Oprah show tracks with what was actually going on in New Orleans during the time period  (Fall 2012) being depicted, or whether things have gotten better or worse since then.

The show trailer caused a lot of concern and upset from the community when it was aired a few weeks ago.  For a little more about that, here.

For some, the absence of unionized teachers will be distracting or even dismaying.  What if Dr. T. makes a bad decision and nobody questions him?  Who’s looking out for the teachers?  What happened to all the teachers who were there before?

For others, the show will highlight the lack of charter operators willing to get involved in turnarounds — that Barr (and Green Dot) are doing dirty work that almost none of the other charter operators are willing to do.  Charter advocates strut around talking about no excuses as if what they’re doing is some sort of educational SEAL Team Six, but they don’t want to risk their reputations or funding to do the hardest job out there.

I’m hoping to talk with Barr and with the producers of the show to get more information about how the story was shaped and how it compares to Locke.  Meantime, check it out on Saturday — it comes on right after the Beyonce show.

*Barr says that while it isn’t made clear in the early episodes I viewed, 7 of the 24 teachers from the old version of the school were kept on.

Previous posts:  Oprah Channel to Feature LA Reformer, Movie Trailer Inflames Charter Meeting, Steve Barr: Beyond Charters,

Teachers’ Ratings Still High Despite New Measures
High teacher rating results, among the first trickling out from states’ newly revamped yardsticks, paint a picture of a K-12 system that remains hesitant to differentiate between the best and the weakest performers—as well as among all those in the middle doing a solid job who still have room to improve. EdWeek

School Principals Who Fail to Report Abuse Are Rarely Prosecuted
Principal Irene Hinojosa and teacher Robert Pimentel worked together for years, and she thought highly of Pimentel as a teacher. So when parents complained that he’d been touching girls, district officials said she disregarded the complaints. KPCC

L.A. City Workers’ Union Doesn’t Endorse Garcetti or Greuel
Members of six locals of the Service Employees International Union questioned City Controller Wendy Greuel and City Councilman Eric Garcetti, two top contenders in the race, for at least half an hour. Neither was recommended for an endorsement. LA Times

Seriously, a Bar Exam for Teachers? This Is Not the Answer
Pearl Arredondo, the founder of a pilot middle school in Los Angeles, feels more student teaching is the best way to prepare new teachers. Take Part Op-Ed

East L.A. Murals Come to Life in School Plays
Students at Monterey Continuation High School write and perform one-act skits about the wall art in their neighborhood. LA Times

Green Dot Continues to Make Improvements at Locke High School
Moving proactively to address the growing needs of its students, Green Dot Public Schools today announced the next step in the evolution of the management structure at Locke High School. LA Sentinel

Educators Celebrate First Six Months of Transitional Kindergarten
Transitional kindergarten, the new grade level for children whose fifth birthdays fall early in the school year, is 6 months old in February. EdSource

The Obama No Child Waiver Gambit: It’s Time for It to End
A few things are clear after today’s Senate Health Education Labor & Pensions Committee hearing on the Obama administration’s move to eviscerate the accountability provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act. And, for the most part, it didn’t reflect well on the gambit. Dropout Nation Opinion

Another Trophy in the Case for Long Beach Unified
The state’s third-largest school district was named Thursday one of the five top school districts in the world by Battelle for Kids, a Columbus, Ohio-based nonprofit organization that counsels school districts on school improvement and innovation. EdSource

LAUSD Sues Insurance Companies for Garfield Repairs
Los Angeles Unified has sued its property insurers for at least $13 million for allegedly balking at paying to reconstruct the James A. Garfield High School auditorium ravaged in a fire almost six years ago. City News Service

Charter School Petition Goes Before LAUSD
The effort to bring a new elementary school to Downtown could take a big step forward next week. LA Downtown News

One key aspect of the emotion-filled event was the first public showing of a trailer for the forthcoming Oprah Winfrey Network reality series, “Blackboard Wars.” You can read all about it at The Lens.

The three-minute video begins with dramatic footage (a 2003 incident in which suspects brought an AK-47 into the school and began shooting), as well as scenes of fistfights and security takedowns. the implementation of school uniforms and tuck-in requirements. There are dramatic graphics  (“Nobody believes he can do it.”) Also depicted: overwhelmed teachers, a strong-willed new principal, angry community members — and glimmers of improvement.

Previous post: Oprah Network Features NOLA Turnaround Story

Charter Schools See Largest Boom Since Their Inception 20 Years Ago
Charter schools across the United States are proliferating and expanding at a record pace, with the trend particularly pronounced in California and Los Angeles County. LA Daily News

California Schools Asked to Put Moratorium on Controversial Bonds
State’s treasurer and schools chief ask districts to avoid capital appreciation bonds until governor and lawmakers can weigh proposals to restrict their use. LA Times

L.A. County’s Teen Court Aims to Put Kids Back on Right Path
Van Nuys High hosts one of 18 Teen Court programs operating in Los Angeles County, where students hear the cases of first-time juvenile offenders accused of nonviolent misdemeanors like petty theft, tagging and drug possession. LA Daily News

Green Dot Charter Group to Reorganize Locke High
In a move to address the slumping academic performance of incoming ninth-grade students, charter school operator Green Dot Public School is proposing to reorganize Locke High School in Watts. LA Times
See also: LA School Report

Older School Systems Will Support New Computer-Adaptive Testing
There has been growing concern among officials in California – as well as other cash-strapped states – that the existing array of computers being used in districts may not have the hardware or operating systems to properly administer sophisticated tests. SI&A Cabinet Report

Legislative Leaders Assert Role in Shaping School Finance Plan
Gov. Jerry Brown hasn’t yet presented the substance of his plan to reform K-12 school finance, but already he’s in a disagreement with the Legislature over its form. EdSource

Crush of Education Laws Await Renewal in Congress
The new, still-divided Congress that took office this month faces a lengthy list of education policy legislation that is either overdue for renewal or will be soon, in a political landscape that remains consumed with fiscal issues. EdWeek

Front cover of Stray Dogs, Saints, and Saviors, the 2011 book about the effort to rescue Locke High School

Located near Watts, Locke was converted to charter school status through a 2007 teacher petition and given over to Green Dot in 2008.  The just-announced changes include creating a campus-wide 9th grade academy and bringing the satellite campus called Locke Tech onto the main grounds of Locke.

The changes are necessitated by the increase in students coming into Locke with below basic skills from 67 percent to 82 percent, Green Dot CEO Marco Petruzzi told LA School Report.

However, the overall impact of the Locke turnaround effort remains strong, Petruzzi said in a press release: “Graduation rates and API scores are way up, more students are passing the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE), and far more students are attending college.”

Well it took the US Department of Education about five minutes to reject LAUSD’s application, and — thanks to 300 peer reviewers — it took just a few weeks to whittle nearly 1200 district applications down to 61 finalists.

LAUSD is not one of them, of course, but Animo Charter High School (a part of Green Dot) is included on the list.  And in related news, Green Dot founder Steve Barr noted that Green Dot NYC was awarded a “big fat A” by the NYC Department of Education.

*UPDATE: Also on Monday, Green Dot announced that founder Barr had resigned from its board, severing the last remaining official connection between them. See LA Daily News for more.

Previous posts:  LAUSD Applies Without Union Support, Deasy’s Go-It-Alone Application, Cautious Union, Sad Superintendent