The Raleigh News and Observer (Raleigh, North Carolina)-- “Low-income students aim high at nontraditional school”

By Tim Simmons
December 25, 2005

No one at Gaston College Prep talks about the day they'll close the racial achievement gap. They did that the year the rural school opened in 2001.

Now they talk about the day when every kid will go to college from a student body that is predominantly black and mostly low-income. If they didn't believe it, they wouldn't be breaking ground for a new high school.

Located just off I-95 south of the Virginia line, the school sits in a part of the state where poverty rates are high and expectations are often low. But the school's test scores are among the best in the state. Most of the 300 students at the middle school and fledgling high school are above grade level. Some have already posted SAT scores that meet college entrance requirements.

There is no secret to how they do it. They work hard. Students attend class each day from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. - and every other Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tutoring takes place at the end of each day. Summer includes a three-week session to prepare for the coming year.

Discipline is tight. Excuses aren't accepted. High expectations include everyone. If children don't understand a lesson, they try again - and again.

"You can get in trouble pretty quickly for poor behavior," said ninth-grader Marco Squire. "But if you're in trouble academically, they'll work with you all day long."

From the middle school's name to the seemingly endless reminders about college, the mission of Gaston College Prep redefines the way students and teachers go about their daily tasks.

In a recent sixth-grade math class taught by Keith Burnam, students struggled with the idea of finding context clues in word problems. The question involved yards gained and lost in a football game, and many answers from the 26 students were either tentative or just plain wrong.

It was 4:15 p.m. The class was supposed to end 10 minutes earlier. But no one reached for books or stared at the clock, even though students could be heard in the hallway changing classes.

"This is important," Burnam said. "You need to know this."

Slowly, understanding seemed to seep into the students' questions and answers. It wasn't a perfect understanding, but it offered a place to start the next day's lesson.

Outside the classroom, the next class was waiting - standing in a line down one side of a relatively narrow hallway. They knew from experience why Burnam's class was running long.

A lesson is completed when students understand it, not when the clock says it's time to go.

Few children who attend Gaston College Prep and Pride High come from well-educated families. Most parents have completed high school, but many have not. Two-parent families with college degrees can be counted on one hand.

That makes the school particularly proud of its test scores, but other forms of accountability ensure that teachers and students keep sight of their college goals.

Every teacher, for example, is given a cell phone, and students and parents are given the numbers. Students who don't understand their homework are expected to call teachers at home.

Teachers quickly learn that a well-taught lesson cuts down on late-night calls. Students soon learn they don't want to be the ones who always call the teacher.

It's all part of the school's effort to push forward as a group. When two ninth-graders got into a scuffle on the first day of school, the new band director was surprised when classes were stopped throughout the entire ninth grade.

"All of the ninth-graders gathered in the band room to talk about what had happened and what should be done next," Kenneth Woodley said. "It's called 'Stop the World' because that's what happens. You take care of the family's problems right away and you do it as a group."

Woodley, who taught 13 years in traditional classrooms, called it "school as it should be." But it's not what parents are used to.

"At first I was surprised, shocked really, at how the students and teachers were held accountable," said Tina Davis, who has three children at the school. "But now we just assume the kids are going to accomplish more and go higher than they would have because of this school."

Gaston College Prep and Pride High are products of something called KIPP, shorthand for the Knowledge is Power Program. KIPP, which runs more than 40 schools nationwide, started in 1995 with two schools in inner-city Houston and New York's South Bronx. The schools are free and have no entrance requirements.

KIPP gained national attention in 1999 when it was profiled on the CBS program "60 Minutes." In 2000, the two urban schools were showcased at the Republican National Convention. The next stop was rural America.

KIPP's founders settled on Gaston, a town of fewer than 1,000 people. But it wasn't just the town that attracted them. It was Tammi Sutton and Caleb Dolan.

Sutton and Dolan were already working in Gaston as part of Teach for America, a program that recruits high-achieving college graduates from disciplines outside of teaching.

Teach for America expects its recruits to spend at least two years in inner-city or rural classrooms, but Dolan and Sutton were overachievers - they seemed never to leave their classrooms.

It was exactly the kind of commitment KIPP's founders were looking for. Gaston College Prep was formed with one group of fifth-graders. Since then, a new grade has been added each year.

Classroom success came quickly, and it wasn't long before teachers realized the kids would probably backslide if they returned to local high schools. So Sutton and Dolan started talking about scholarships to send them off to boarding schools. That idea eventually gave way to something more practical.

They decided to build their own high school. Until it's ready, ninth-graders are housed in a separate set of classroom trailers.

This all makes perfect sense to Sutton and Dolan, who weren't trained in a traditional college of education and don't spend much time worrying about the way schools are supposed to operate.

"You just use your common sense and stay away from things that don't directly benefit the kids," Sutton said.

And it helps immensely that Gaston College Prep and Pride High are both charter schools. That frees them from many of the policies and rules that govern traditional schools - and it dovetails with the autonomy required by KIPP. Those differences paved the way for longer days, longer years, a principal with full authority and teachers who might - or might not - be certified.

It does not mean they run a fancy school. The 27-acre campus is mostly a collection of classroom trailers. About three-fourths of its $2.3 million budget comes from state and county tax dollars as dictated by charter school laws. Fundraisers and grants cover much of the remaining costs.

But the school leaders are convinced that the quality of teachers - not buildings - dictates success. That's partly why teachers are paid up to 30 percent more than they could make in surrounding schools. The rules are simple. If something works, keep it. If it doesn't, toss it out.

For Danielle Brown, that means an unceasing, high-energy, in-your-face approach that defies students to ignore her. When a boy gets caught up in a vocabulary lesson about the word "ravenous," he tells Brown he is ravenously hungry every 30 minutes. She acts incredulous. After all, she tells him, a class period is 90 minutes.

"But I be hungry!" he insists.

His use of the phrase "I be" triggers a chorus of oohs from classmates who know what's coming next. Brown gets out a fly swatter, walks over to the boy and playfully swats the "be's" out of him.

"I be! You be! We be! No, no, no!" Brown says, flipping the swatter around.

While everyone in the room is having great fun, two things are clear. The boy is more likely to use formal English when it's demanded and he's not likely to forget what "ravenous" means.

Dolan smiles a bit sheepishly when he hears this story.

"Whatever works," he said.

Sutton and Dolan are both convinced that the success at the schools can be replicated elsewhere, but it's a tall order. First, schools would need to shed some of their traditional ways.

Principals, for example, must have the authority to set the school's goals and then hire or fire teachers based on their abilities to share that vision. Kids also need to spend more time in school - more time each day and more days each year.

Local school superintendents say they agree with many of the strategies used at Gaston College Prep and Pride High, but they are less certain about whether those approaches could be replicated.

Wake schools Superintendent Bill McNeal quickly pointed out that any school with voluntary enrollment enjoys a big advantage.

"That means someone chose that school for that child and they want it to work," McNeal said.

And Durham Public Schools Superintendent Ann Denlinger questioned whether traditional schools could legally require teachers to work longer hours.

But she believes most of what's done in Gaston could be done anywhere. The question, she said, is whether the community has the will to require it.

Dolan and Sutton wonder about that, too. The middle school has a waiting list to get in, but a few students do leave each year because the work is too hard.

Still, for five years running this school has turned conventional wisdom on its ear. Most of its students are black. They are typically poor. And they are scholars.

"Can this be done anywhere?" Sutton asks rhetorically. "Absolutely. We're doing it here."