The Fayetteville Observer (Fayetteville, NC) - “High standards challenge charter school students”

By Michael N. Graff
February 10, 2008

GASTON — Six years from now, George Shelton — a troublemaker, a fighter, a failure in school — should be headed to college.

It’s hard to picture that now. George is trying seventh grade for the second time this year. He’s twice the size of some of his classmates, a 6-foot tall model of pre-teen awkwardness. When kids made fun of him at his previous school, he punched them. George was suspended six times for fighting last year. He finished with a string of Fs on his report card.

But at KIPP Gaston College Preparatory, people see through all that. They refuse to push him through the system on the bad-kid track. Here, they tell him he’ll straighten up. He’ll fix his grades. He won’t fight.

He’ll go to college.

These standards aren’t negotiable here. They’re at the core of what’s made Gaston College Preparatory one of the most successful charter schools in the nation and a beacon for other charters in North Carolina.

“It’s more challenging here, but it helps,” George says. “I want to go to college now. I never thought about that before.”

Gaston Prep and its accompanying high school, KIPP Pride High, sit on 30 acres of an old peanut farm in Gaston. Here in Northampton County, a rural area sandwiched between the Roanoke River and the Virginia state line along Interstate 95, students are twice as likely to live in poverty as they are to earn a bachelor’s degree.

But this KIPP campus, operating on the same state per-pupil budget as every other charter school in North Carolina, is crushing the popular theory that poor, rural, mostly black schools cannot succeed.

Nearly 90 percent of the students here are black. Nearly 70 percent are on free and reduced-price lunch.

More than 80 percent are achieving at or above grade level. Their only secret is their hard work. Students attend school from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and they’re not allowed to make excuses for failures.

“You can almost see the cycle of poverty breaking here because of this school,” said Brent W. Maddin, a doctoral student at Harvard University who is studying charter schools. “We’ve asked in the community, ‘What can I do to make the school better?’ And people just say, ‘Have more seats.’”

There are more than 600 students at Gaston Prep and Pride High, with about 600 more on the waiting list. Students are chosen by a lottery, ensuring nobody is hand-picked.

Earlier this month, a pregnant mother walked into Gaston Prep’s office and asked to be put on the list for a spot in a fifth-grade class nearly a decade from now.

There were no lines in 2001, when a pair of teachers in their mid-20s searched this rural region for children to fill their new charter school.

Caleb Dolan and Tammi Sutton had given the traditional public school system a chance. But they kept watching as students achieved high in their classrooms, only to drop out later.

At the peak of their frustration, they found the Knowledge Is Power Program, which had started two schools, one in Houston and one in New York, geared toward low-income students. KIPP offered to train Dolan and Sutton to become principals. KIPP wanted the pair to start a school in Atlanta, which was offering $1 million to start.

But Dolan and Sutton — both transplants to Gaston — argued that Northampton County needed the school as much as any city.

“So much of the hype about the educational crisis in the United States has an urban face,” said Sutton, a 1992 graduate of Westover High School in Fayetteville. “There are just as many kids in rural situations that don’t have access to good education.”

Charter schools, self-governed alternatives to traditional schools, were new to North Carolina then.

The KIPP school was a difficult sell in Northampton County. Sutton and Dolan went to the door of every prospective fifth-grader in the region. Dolan, who was 25 then, grew facial hair to look older and help his pitch.

They wound up with 80 students for fifth grade.

“We had to do something different,” Dolan said. “I couldn’t keep sending my kids off to failure. Girls who were all-stars (when I taught them) were pregnant. Boys who busted their butts were not succeeding.”

It would be easy to assume that Gaston Prep and Pride High receive a load of money from the Knowledge Is Power Program each year.

They don’t. They operate on the per-pupil budget from the government and fundraising. Fundraising has been strong lately, mainly because of the schools’ national reputation. For instance, Gaston Prep received more than $100,000 in money and educational supplies from Intel for being named a scholastic school of distinction in 2005.

But the school had to earn it.

Using the standard amount of start-up money from the state in 2001, Dolan and Sutton opened a few trailers in a peanut field. They purchased plastic lunch tables from Wal-Mart, had inmates paint the walls, and welcomed their first class.

They brought the students into school two weeks early. They never opened a book during those two weeks. They taught the students how to act in the classroom. They taught them discipline. They gave them uniforms.

They changed their thinking.

Students initially sat on wooden benches. If they were good, they graduated to chairs. Then, if they’d acted properly for two weeks, they were allowed to go to the classroom.

“Imagine you take every paradigm of typical school and flip it,” Dolan said. “They had to earn their way into class.”

Outside the school, though, the world wasn’t changing with the kids.

Ciara Caine, now a junior at the high school, remembers having rocks thrown at her bus during the first year.

“Maybe they thought we were trying to be different,” Caine said. “I don’t know.”

Although the school has expanded and earned national acclaim — The New York Times and The Miami Herald have published stories — the local perception hasn’t completely faded.

During a recent lunch period, Dolan held a fist high in the air, immediately silencing a noisy cafeteria.

He asked how many kids had been harassed by people who weren’t a part of the KIPP schools. Nearly every student raised his hand.

Succeeding isn’t embarrassing here. It’s expected.

The walls are painted blue. College pennants circle the cafeteria. Each locker has a student’s name and a tag — “Pride of ... ” — to remind students of their graduation years. On those same lockers, there are no locks.

In one hallway, a road painted on the walls leads to an entranceway that reads: “The future belongs to those who prepare for it. What will keep you on the road to college?”

About 50 of the original 80 students remain. Most of the others left on their own, although Sutton and Dolan insist they try to keep every student. Some students have been expelled for major offenses.

“We have all the problems that traditional public schools have. In no way do we have it all figured out,” Sutton said.

In order to graduate from KIPP Pride, students are required to be accepted to a four-year college.

During assemblies, students who have passed certain tests or completed certain assignments are told to stand. Those left sitting are reminded publicly that they are off course.

Signs are posted throughout the school: “Will you be standing next time?”

Two years ago, Dale Pagano was an unsatisfied high school English teacher in public schools in Cleveland when he saw an advertised opening at Pride High.

He had no idea what awaited him when he applied.

At his interview, Pagano was put in front of a class and told to teach a mock lesson, something he’d never experienced in his 10-year career.

“It was a challenge and a risk,” Pagano said. “I hadn’t pushed myself to do something professionally like that.”

Teachers are held to even higher accountability standards than students.

Students fail when teachers fail, Dolan and Sutton believe. And when teachers fail, they are dismissed.

The two principals have the power to fire teachers, which they have done a handful of times in the school’s seven-year history. It’s a perk, Dolan says, of being at a charter school.

“I have a hard time seeing how (traditional) schools operate without that power,” Dolan said. “You would never see that in the business world. You wouldn’t tell an executive, ‘Here’s this team, you don’t have any power. If one of them’s lousy, you have to ask four other people to fire them.’”

Teachers at Gaston Prep and Pride High are paid 20 percent more than state scale. They receive full benefits.

But they work longer hours and are monitored closely. And many of them have left friends and family to teach in a remote part of the state.

“I don’t think anybody comes in because they’re attracted to Gaston, North Carolina,” said Knick Dixon, a social justice teacher in the high school. “We’re here because we believe this is a movement. All of us see ourselves as activists. We are to be great. We expect that of ourselves.”

Sutton and Dolan have traveled as far as South America to interview teachers, hoping to find people who fit their model.

“We tell them, ‘Here is a chance to be part of a movement,’” Sutton said.

Patrick Jones, a junior at KIPP Pride, stares at a piece of paper and taps on his leg, trying to finish a drumline presentation. A few of his friends, including Jaquan Bobbitt, look over his shoulder, trying to help.

Sitting on a nearby couch, Michael James is nose-deep in pre-calculus.

Other students are scattered around. Some are fixated on computers, some bent over books.

It’s study hall time. In other settings, that might mean a free period. But at KIPP Pride, the common area is as quiet as a coffee shop.

It’s like nothing Jones saw last year when he was at Northampton-West High School.

“Since everybody’s at a high level here, there’s competition to do well,” said Jones, who carries a 3.5 grade-point average.

Pride High will graduate its first class next May. Only about 49 percent of the students in the original class were at grade level when they arrived in 2001.

When they leave in 2009, a full 100 percent will have a college acceptance letter.

“It’s going to be real big to be one of the first schools around here to have everybody graduate,” said Frank Wilkins, an 11th-grader and one of the original 80 students. “It’s going to be a big celebration.”