Winston-Salem Journal - “School gives at-risk kids a chance to change their lives; Gaston Prep students told to work hard, aim high and their goals can be achieved”

By Gil Klein
February 19, 2006

GASTON

It's 9 a.m. Saturday and nearly 150 fifth- and sixth-graders sit in the school cafeteria, reading books and doing homework.

Nobody whispers. Nobody passes notes. Nobody squirms. The only sound is the shuffling of chairs and rustling of papers.

At a signal from teacher Keith Burnam, students break into a foot-stomping, raplike cheer.

"Why you work so ha-a-a-rd in pre-algebra?" shouts a sixth-grader.

"We work so-o-o hard because we all know in order for there to be progress there has to be struggle," everyone shouts back. "We work so-o-o hard because we have a goal. To prove to everyone who doubted what was possible. The sky's the limit; there's no shortcuts or gimmicks."

Welcome to Gaston College Preparatory, a high-energy public charter school that is trying to prove that poor students in rural Eastern North Carolina can accomplish the same things as kids from the middle-class suburbs.

Chants and cheers are part of the motivation for these at-risk students. But discipline and more time in school are just as important.

While their friends in other schools sleep late or watch cartoons on Saturday, these students head to math and English classes.

"I like to come to school on Saturday because I have something to do, not just watch TV," said Paris Mills, a sixth-grader. "I want an education, and every second counts."

This school promises kids and their parents that if the students work hard, stay in school until at least 5 p.m. every day, come to school two Saturdays a month and for three weeks during the summer, they will be able to attend the college of their choice.

"So far we have kept the promise," said Caleb Dolan, the school's leader. "But the dream isn't fully realized until the first group in 2009 heads off to college."

The school works with a combination of tight discipline and high energy. As an incentive, students earn "KIPP dollars" for participating in class, turning in assignments, scoring well on tests and behaving. Students then spend those "dollars" for school-sponsored trips - everything from ice skating in Raleigh to touring Washington.

The purpose, Dolan said, is not only to give the kids reasons to work and behave but also give them a chance to see places and have experiences that usually are not available to poor children.

"They had to earn it," he said after seventh-graders left for the ice-skating trip.

By the time they finish the eighth grade, students visit about 15 colleges from Harvard to Morehouse.

Built on a peanut field just outside town with money that the school raised, Gaston Prep is part of KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program), a nonprofit organization founded in 1994 in Houston by two teachers - Michael Feinberg and David Levin.

KIPP now has 47 schools in 15 states and the District of Columbia with seven more schools opening this fall. It is planning to expand in the South. KIPP wants to start schools in Durham and Charlotte.

"We're pleased with what they've done, and it's not all academics," said Jack Moyer, North Carolina's director of charter schools. "It's changing the lives of these children forever."

The key to a KIPP school is its leader, Feinberg said.

"We bet the ranch on finding great educators who, with some leadership training, will become great school founders and great school leaders," he said.

KIPP started a school in Gaston because Dolan, 30, and Tammi Sutton, 31, applied to be leaders. Both had come to Gaston as part of Teach for America, which puts recent college graduates in urban and rural schools with high-risk students. After three or four years teaching at the local middle school, they were frustrated.

"We saw kids blossom in our classes, and then they were pregnant by ninth grade and not going to college," Dolan said.

After their training at KIPP, the two returned to Gaston in 2001 to build the school and recruit students. Of the first group of 80 fifth-graders, fewer than half were working at grade level, Dolan said. By the end of the first Kipp year, 93 percent were. Last year, every eighth-grader was doing math and reading at or above grade level.

More important, Dolan said, many had turned from problem kids to hard workers, staying after school for help.

In hiring, Dolan says he watches how applicants teach.

"You know in two minutes whether this person is passionate about kids," he said.

In Burnam's sixth-grade math class, kids were bouncing on the balls of their feet, both hands stretched in the air, their faces eager with anticipation as they competed to answer during a rapid-action math quiz game.

"I use my whole eraser in math class," said Adam Dickens, "but Mr. Burnam makes it fun."

Burnam was a Morehouse College psychology graduate heading for a career in public health when he discovered Teach for America. He came to Gaston College Prep and knew in the first 10 minutes that he wanted to teach here.

"I tell the kids, if you work hard and you work with me, I will work with you, and you are going to be smarter," Burnam said. "After a couple of weeks when kids start seeing themselves doing things they couldn't do before, then all of a sudden they're invested."

Teachers are paid 20 percent more than their counterparts in other public schools to make up for the extra time. But Gaston College Prep gets by on the same $5,150 a pupil that goes to other North Carolina public schools because almost everyone on staff teaches. No guidance counselors, no resource teachers, no special-education teachers.

The school accepts all applicants, first come, first served. No one is screened for academic performance or learning disabilities. Three-quarters of the students are on free and reduced lunch, and 90 percent are black. With nearly 300 students in the middle school, about 70 kids are on the waiting list for next year's fifth grade.

Other KIPP middle schools are in urban areas where students can transfer to high-performing high schools or private schools. Not in Northampton County. Last fall, KIPP opened KIPP Pride High - only the second high school that the organization has started.

A $4 million high school is under construction next to the middle school with a $500,000 donation from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and a $600,000 matching grant from the Julian Robertson Foundation.

For ninth-grader Chris Escalante, the school has transformed him. He plays the trumpet in the school band and has his sights set on a music degree from Ohio State University, which he visited on a school trip.

"I was an outsider and always in trouble," he said. "If I hadn't come here, I would never have picked up a trumpet. I wouldn't even be able to spell trumpet. Now I've helped a couple of other students learn how to play, and it felt good. After I graduate, I want to come back and teach music."