The YES in "YES Prep" stands for "Youth Engaged in Service". Students each month complete a service project in the local community. Most students are Hispanic with 78% eligible for free or reduced lunch. To graduate a student must successfully enroll in a four-year college. They report a 100% graduation rate. They acknowledge that because of their tough standards some self-selection may take place. The YES Prep founder Chris Barbic and teacher Melanie Singleton were brought to Minneapolis by the Hope Collaborative.
Presenters: Chris Barbic, founder and head of Houston-based YES Prep
Melanie Singleton, teacher and former YES Prep student
Data from handout (2005-06 school year)
• Chartered 1998
• Grades 6-12
• 665 students enrolled (currently 2000)
• Ethnicity: 92 percent Hispanic; 5 percent African American; 2 percent white; and 1 percent Asian American
• Special Education: 2 percent
• Free or Reduced lunch: 78 percent
• Graduation rate: 100 percent
• Annual cost per student: $7,205
YES stands for Youth Engaged in Service. Students complete monthly service projects in the local community.
Mission: YES Prep exists to increase the number of low-income Houstonians who graduate from a four-year college prepared to compete in the global marketplace and committed to improving disadvantaged communities.
Notes from presentation, (paraphrased)
YES Prep hypothesis: If low-income kids have access to the same things they would get at a good suburban public schools or good private schools, same opportunities and resources, they would “knock it out of the park.”
Barbic taught with Teach for America in Houston. Eventually started a charter high school. Bought 11 modular buildings and set them up in a parking lot next to an abandoned building. In the second year, it was the top performing high school in Texas. Great schools are not about buildings. They are about the people inside.
Looked at Houston data and concluded kids had a poor shot at graduating from college.
Our focus is on four-year college. We require every student to get accepted into a four-year college in order to get a diploma from the school. A kid does not leave YES unless they get into a 4-year school (can’t be a two-year school or an open enrollment four-year school.) We want to be sure that every student who leaves our school has an option. ….
More recent school demographics include:
• There are now five schools with 2,100 students.
• 90 percent plus are the first in the family to go to a four-year school
• 7 percent special education
• 95 percent Hispanic/African American
• 80 percent low income
• Enter school on average 1.5 grade levels behind.
Most of our special ed issues are learning disabled, students going to regular classes. We are not seeing kids who have severe special ed problems.
We start in 6th grade. It is a lottery. Most families entering understand where there kids are and they see the graduation requirements. There is a little bit of self selection in terms of kids choosing to apply for the lottery.
YES got started because we were mad. Kids leave for middle school talking about their futures, with goals and plans. Kids for the most part were on grade level. They would come back after three or four months from the middle school and light in their eyes was gone. We were tired of it. It was done out of frustration.
School mixes research and experience. You need the theory and the research and the dissertations. But is has to work. We tried everything. Because we are small, one of the mottos around the office: Fail fast. Learn quickly. Improve. We will try things and be innovative. The charter environment has more freedom. We can try things. Our appetite for risk is bigger. If you are not innovating, you are not serving kids.
School works to Institutionalize success: The culture of our school is: Every kid goes to college.
Tried to create balance between freedom and fences. What makes a YES Prep School and where is the autonomy? We define the “what” in all of our schools. The “how” varies a little bit from campus to campus. We want campus-based leadership teams to have autonomy.
Every student and family signs a contract. The contract says that they will buy into everything that we sell to them.
• They have to stay every day from 7:30 a.m. to 4:45 p.m.
• They have to come to Saturday school, both enrichment and community service.
• They have to call their teachers when confused about their assignments. Showing up without homework complete is not an option.
Teachers sign a contract as well. It says we will dedicate our lives to make sure you get all these things accomplished.
• Teachers are available by phone in the evening. I will answer the phone at 8:30 when I am having dinner to help you out with your homework assignment.
• I will take you to a place to get a new outfit when we are going to the opera and we are exposing you to a cultural experience.
There are three pieces to the extended day approach:
• Most students come in a grade and a half below where they should be. We have extended school day: tutorials, study halls. We have YES Core, college grads working with the students as well.
• Saturday School is a pleasure. They come at 8 and stay until 1 pm. They are working on extra assignments or community services.
• Add on to that one month of summer school. It is to prepare you for the next grade. Not remedial.
Q: We have contracts at our school, parents, students, teachers sign off. You can’t expel a kid from public school for showing up and doing nothing. If you isolate that staff is doing their job, what do you do if kids don’t?
A: Most of our students are driven. Probably 96-97 percent of students who sign up for it know what they are getting into and they want it. For the few percent of students who are not on the right track, we work and work and work with the families. We get to the bottom of it. If the student is not working, there has to be a reason why. There is no end to what we will do. We make home visits. I will drop off a student and let them stay with me until 6 after school, drop them off at home later just so I can make sure they did all their assignments, if their home life isn’t conducive to studying.
And some kids opt out of school. We call it Choice In, Choice Out. We can’t kick a kid out if they don’t do their homework. We keep trying to turn that Rubik’s Cube until we figure it out.
Q: What is staff retention rate?
A: Our goal is to keep it under 10 percent. We call it “regrettable” turnover. We only count the staff members who leave who we don’t want to leave. (Some staff leave who we would want to leave, anyway.)
Last year, the regrettable attrition was 15 percent. This year, we will be around 7 percent.
Q: Total attrition?
A: Staff attrition was about 22 percent last year. This year it will be around 15 percent this year.
YES Prep uses a college prep curriculum, an effort to get students farther than where they need to be. As an 8th grade teacher, I am already teaching students pre-AP work. It is rigorous.
Q: Are you talking to colleges? Here in the Twin Cities, kids who graduate from high school and they still need college remediation. There is a disconnect.
A: What you normally see used is state standards. Frankly, the state standards aren’t competitive enough for college schools. We know that. Passing the state test doesn’t mean they will get a 1,600 on the SAT.
Our schools are small. A small environment keeps us sane. It makes our mission more achievable. The students now realize the student teacher ratio is small, we can give that personal attention.
Q: Do more apply than you have space?
A: Yes. We use a lottery system. No creaming. Siblings get priority. 30 percent of 6th grade spots go to siblings.
We have a 6-12 model. Built in middle school and high school. A built-in mentor program. Have kids for seven years, use that to our advantage.
Q: Other than signing a contract, are there other expectations for parent involvement?
A: We make a distinction between parent involvement and parental support. In the first years, we used to beat ourselves up about parental involvement. We had visions of parents in the back of the classroom, cutting out gingerbread men. That is not the reality for our families. Some work three jobs. We talk about parental support. Get kids there every day, someone at home checking homework. We don’t want the kids going home hearing “college is not important.”
Home visits. When a student is admitted, we will visit each family and have a serious conversation about what they are embarking on. People buy in.
Q: Is there a rule against students having a job?
A: There is no rule. The fact is our kids go to school around five, take the bus, home around 6. A normal homework load is a couple hours a night. They don’t have time. It is not recommended.
Q: Bilingual supports?
A: Home visits, with Spanish speakers. That is where the relationship begins. About 20 percent of our Hispanic students are illegal. To come to school can be intimidating. To go to the house, it builds the trust. … On the curriculum side … it varies by campus.
We have extended blocks of math and English in 6th and 7th grades, 90-minute blocks of English. Not grouped by ability, a mixed group. On top of that we have English and Math enrichment blocks; those are grouped by ability, an extra hour to work on comprehension, vocabulary, whatever. They get a Spanish class. It depends school to school. Divided between native and non-native speakers.
If you want kids good at English, you need more time doing it. Same with math. It has to be extended day with great teachers.
Q: Peer review?
A: A new teacher applying for school, they will do a sample teach. During the sample teach, we will gather some students already there and a couple of teachers. (Along with other measures) We normally pull from Teach for America teachers.
We have developed our own first-year teacher training program. We are a year away from applying to the state to certify our own teachers. We realized if we were going to grow, the biggest constraint would be great people.
If we are going to grow to serve the 10,000 students in Houston we want to serve, can’t just find a few rock stars. We have to grow our own rock stars. Started developing program 4 years ago.
Past year, hired new 80 teachers. Four of five campuses are still growing. Of the 80 teachers hired, 45 have never taught before. About half came from first year Teach for America, no formal education background. Some had education degrees. A lot were coming out of Rice, majoring in math or science, no education degree.
We’d prefer to get someone right out of school, teach them ourselves, no bad habits. We have more success if we can teach them ourselves.
We are looking at a value added model for teacher compensation. Moving toward differentiated pay for teachers. Tying bonuses to student outcomes. We want to see growth.
Q: How much autonomy do teachers have?
A: In Houston Public Schools, they have CLEAR, a complete outline of what each teacher should do in each subject each day. Tests every six weeks.
YES PREP: Teachers know the objectives and standards. We create our own curriculum. Have liberty and flexibility. No strict guidelines.
Experimenting with team teaching. We block arts and humanities, two hours team taught. Block of Math/Science/Technology, 2-hour blocks. It worked well. Every school we open we will do team teaching in 6th and 7th grade. It allows for flexibility with staff.
The two schools without team teaching, it is their choice … as long as they maintain results. When results drop, that is when you see more intervention by our home office.
Q: How do students see their culture in the curriculum and the culture of the school?
A: Teachers have the liberty to make sure students know about their culture. Melanie said she starts with a “Who Am I?” unit. This unit is about memoirs and personal narratives, building and constructing your own identity. They are very aware of their identify. They need a forum to express it.
Q: The culture of the school? People feel comfortable coming to the school?
A: .We try to build a YES culture, accepting and open to all cultures. There is a Team Class, with creative writing, team-building activities. Their differences all come together during this class.
We have to walk a tightrope. …. As we get closer to graduation, they have a junior and senior seminar. We start to talk pretty openly about what our kids will face when they go to a four-year school. You may be the only Hispanic kid in class, the only African American kid. We do the conversations around books …
There also is the service piece. We want the kids to feel empowered. It is not just about going off to college. It is about going off to college and coming back to your neighborhood and making it better.
We are also honest about this … One of two ways to go. Get in the game, and accept the fact that some of the things in the game aren’t fair and change it from the inside, or sit on the sidelines and bitch and moan that the game isn’t fair. The way you talk to your friends in the park, you can’t do that in a job interview. You have to be smart enough to switch back and forth. That is the reality. If you want to be successful in this country, that is what you have to do. Once you are in there and have proven yourself, you can start talking about changing the rules. You can’t do it from the margins. You have to prove yourself.
Some of it is assimilation. Our kids have to be able to hold their own in a collegiate environment. It is being able to have those conversations in a way that don’t become offensive, but being honest. Let’s talk real about how things are.
Q: What is the cost per child, holding special ed?
A: We operate a deficit while we grow out a school. It takes us seven years to grow out a school.
We want to be able to do the same thing a regular public school is doing .Not spending $2,000 more per kid. Once we are fully enrolled, we operate on the state and federal dollars. We get less state and federal dollars per kid than the traditional public schools.
We operate $7,880 per kid. We fundraise about a $1,500 gap when it is just one grade level. It shrinks to zero when fully enrolled 6-12. On top of that, we have to raise our own capital.
Operating budget we have to fundraise for is about $2.4 million a year. We have a campaign to raise $85 million to do the facilities we want to do.
Q: You are able to do this because of a selection bias, the motivated ones, the ones that are willing to sign a contract. I worry a little bit. Clearly we need schools like this. You worry about the kids who are left behind.
A: The students we are trying to target. We call it the middle 80 percent. We are not trying to get the top 10 percent.
Q: You have a lottery system. The parents learn about your school. I am a parent who is not engaged, I don’t care. How do you know you are not getting the selection bias?
A: We do diagnostics. Typical kid is coming in 1.5 to 2 grade levels behind. That is the average kid. It is no a magnet school, not a drop out recovery school, it targets the middle 80 percent.
The subject of students served by Minneapolis chartered schools came up – Joe Nathan responded by pointing out that charters in Mpls serve a higher % of low income, limited English speaking and students of color than the district public schools. People who are satisfied with their kids schools don't leave - kids who are doing well don't leave.
Q: How many kids who come in 6th grade are there for the full 6 years? Mobility?
A: Our goal is to keep attrition under 5 percent a year. We did that at every campus last year, except for one campus. We track it for whether it is controllable or uncontrollable (for instance, the family moves away.)
We have been close to keeping it under 5 percent. The problem is, if it is 5 percent a year over 7 years, then only 65 percent of your kids are finishing. We found that the majority of kids who leave YES leave in the 6th and 7th grade. They get there, they are behind, they say they don’t want to do it anymore. They choose out and go back to their home school.
We found if we can keep kids to 8th grade, about 80 percent of those kids will finish in 12th grade. We make all 8th graders reapply to high school. They have to recommit. About 10 percent of the kids don’t apply to the high school. They want to play football. They want the big high school experience that we can’t provide. Those that come back in 9th grade, about 85 to 90 percent of those kids graduate.
Trying to look at 6th and 7th graders, what can be done to keep more kids. That is where we went back to add the extra hour of English and Math enrichment. We stated YES Core, the alumni group. Match them with 6th graders who test near the bottom. They help them with academics and social issues. Their goal is to keep the students at school.
Q: Transportation?
A: We don’t get any services from the district, food, transportation. $700 per kid to bus.
Q: Does $7,880 include facilities?
A: In some schools, we build in a small lease. We get them for below market. (Note: Confusion here about what is a fair apples-to-apples comparison to Minneapolis-St. Paul Public Schools.)
Q: Kids have to be accepted to a college. What happens if they are not accepted?
A: They have to stay. It depends on the kid. Some stay an extra semester or a whole year. Some pick up an extra credit in the summer.
Walter was our toughest kid. I am most proud of Walter. Started in 10th grade, he didn’t speak English. Consultant said, what are you doing at YES? You have no business at a college prep. I said, “You can do it. You will have to work.” It took him an extra year and a half.
We measure how many of our kids finish at the college where they started. If they do, our counseling team is doing a good job.
Other things we do outside of school that contribute to success. YES – Youth Engaged in Service, that service is a major component of what students must do.
We also give students chances to do summer programs. (Melanie said she might have abused it when she was a student.) After 9th grade year, I went to the Duke writing program. Next summer I went to Texas Lutheran University. Then 11th grade year, I went to Stanford, UT and Virginia Tech. That is what puts us on the campus. If you are not exposed to universities, you don’t have a good sense of what that will look like.
Also spring trips every year. I have been on four spring trips at YES. I have been to Washington DC in 9th grade. I toured the east coast in 10th. That is where I met Columbia, my alma mater. We saw Harvard, Boston University, NYU and others. By 11th grade we went to the west coast: UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC-San Diego, several different college tours and met with college students. Senior year, we are funded to go visit school we are attending and do an overnight stay. All of this is on YES. That is one of the most exciting things we can offer our students. Most of our students would never have left the state.
That is another way we build a unique cultural experience.
Q: Teacher coaching? Enhancing teaching ability?
A: HISD has a designed curriculum. That is your guidance. At YES, you have to have a collaborative effort.
In response to a question about which kids are being served,
Generally, the staff is compromised of a lot of young, ambitious, passionate, driven people who don’t run out when the bell rings, who stay back for hours or two at a time, to work with students, to complete lessons. We are always pushing each other.
Melanie Singleton, teacher and former YES Prep student
Data from handout (2005-06 school year)
• Chartered 1998
• Grades 6-12
• 665 students enrolled (currently 2000)
• Ethnicity: 92 percent Hispanic; 5 percent African American; 2 percent white; and 1 percent Asian American
• Special Education: 2 percent
• Free or Reduced lunch: 78 percent
• Graduation rate: 100 percent
• Annual cost per student: $7,205
YES stands for Youth Engaged in Service. Students complete monthly service projects in the local community.
Mission: YES Prep exists to increase the number of low-income Houstonians who graduate from a four-year college prepared to compete in the global marketplace and committed to improving disadvantaged communities.
Notes from presentation, (paraphrased)
YES Prep hypothesis: If low-income kids have access to the same things they would get at a good suburban public schools or good private schools, same opportunities and resources, they would “knock it out of the park.”
Barbic taught with Teach for America in Houston. Eventually started a charter high school. Bought 11 modular buildings and set them up in a parking lot next to an abandoned building. In the second year, it was the top performing high school in Texas. Great schools are not about buildings. They are about the people inside.
Looked at Houston data and concluded kids had a poor shot at graduating from college.
Our focus is on four-year college. We require every student to get accepted into a four-year college in order to get a diploma from the school. A kid does not leave YES unless they get into a 4-year school (can’t be a two-year school or an open enrollment four-year school.) We want to be sure that every student who leaves our school has an option. ….
More recent school demographics include:
• There are now five schools with 2,100 students.
• 90 percent plus are the first in the family to go to a four-year school
• 7 percent special education
• 95 percent Hispanic/African American
• 80 percent low income
• Enter school on average 1.5 grade levels behind.
Most of our special ed issues are learning disabled, students going to regular classes. We are not seeing kids who have severe special ed problems.
We start in 6th grade. It is a lottery. Most families entering understand where there kids are and they see the graduation requirements. There is a little bit of self selection in terms of kids choosing to apply for the lottery.
YES got started because we were mad. Kids leave for middle school talking about their futures, with goals and plans. Kids for the most part were on grade level. They would come back after three or four months from the middle school and light in their eyes was gone. We were tired of it. It was done out of frustration.
School mixes research and experience. You need the theory and the research and the dissertations. But is has to work. We tried everything. Because we are small, one of the mottos around the office: Fail fast. Learn quickly. Improve. We will try things and be innovative. The charter environment has more freedom. We can try things. Our appetite for risk is bigger. If you are not innovating, you are not serving kids.
School works to Institutionalize success: The culture of our school is: Every kid goes to college.
Tried to create balance between freedom and fences. What makes a YES Prep School and where is the autonomy? We define the “what” in all of our schools. The “how” varies a little bit from campus to campus. We want campus-based leadership teams to have autonomy.
Every student and family signs a contract. The contract says that they will buy into everything that we sell to them.
• They have to stay every day from 7:30 a.m. to 4:45 p.m.
• They have to come to Saturday school, both enrichment and community service.
• They have to call their teachers when confused about their assignments. Showing up without homework complete is not an option.
Teachers sign a contract as well. It says we will dedicate our lives to make sure you get all these things accomplished.
• Teachers are available by phone in the evening. I will answer the phone at 8:30 when I am having dinner to help you out with your homework assignment.
• I will take you to a place to get a new outfit when we are going to the opera and we are exposing you to a cultural experience.
There are three pieces to the extended day approach:
• Most students come in a grade and a half below where they should be. We have extended school day: tutorials, study halls. We have YES Core, college grads working with the students as well.
• Saturday School is a pleasure. They come at 8 and stay until 1 pm. They are working on extra assignments or community services.
• Add on to that one month of summer school. It is to prepare you for the next grade. Not remedial.
Q: We have contracts at our school, parents, students, teachers sign off. You can’t expel a kid from public school for showing up and doing nothing. If you isolate that staff is doing their job, what do you do if kids don’t?
A: Most of our students are driven. Probably 96-97 percent of students who sign up for it know what they are getting into and they want it. For the few percent of students who are not on the right track, we work and work and work with the families. We get to the bottom of it. If the student is not working, there has to be a reason why. There is no end to what we will do. We make home visits. I will drop off a student and let them stay with me until 6 after school, drop them off at home later just so I can make sure they did all their assignments, if their home life isn’t conducive to studying.
And some kids opt out of school. We call it Choice In, Choice Out. We can’t kick a kid out if they don’t do their homework. We keep trying to turn that Rubik’s Cube until we figure it out.
Q: What is staff retention rate?
A: Our goal is to keep it under 10 percent. We call it “regrettable” turnover. We only count the staff members who leave who we don’t want to leave. (Some staff leave who we would want to leave, anyway.)
Last year, the regrettable attrition was 15 percent. This year, we will be around 7 percent.
Q: Total attrition?
A: Staff attrition was about 22 percent last year. This year it will be around 15 percent this year.
YES Prep uses a college prep curriculum, an effort to get students farther than where they need to be. As an 8th grade teacher, I am already teaching students pre-AP work. It is rigorous.
Q: Are you talking to colleges? Here in the Twin Cities, kids who graduate from high school and they still need college remediation. There is a disconnect.
A: What you normally see used is state standards. Frankly, the state standards aren’t competitive enough for college schools. We know that. Passing the state test doesn’t mean they will get a 1,600 on the SAT.
Our schools are small. A small environment keeps us sane. It makes our mission more achievable. The students now realize the student teacher ratio is small, we can give that personal attention.
Q: Do more apply than you have space?
A: Yes. We use a lottery system. No creaming. Siblings get priority. 30 percent of 6th grade spots go to siblings.
We have a 6-12 model. Built in middle school and high school. A built-in mentor program. Have kids for seven years, use that to our advantage.
Q: Other than signing a contract, are there other expectations for parent involvement?
A: We make a distinction between parent involvement and parental support. In the first years, we used to beat ourselves up about parental involvement. We had visions of parents in the back of the classroom, cutting out gingerbread men. That is not the reality for our families. Some work three jobs. We talk about parental support. Get kids there every day, someone at home checking homework. We don’t want the kids going home hearing “college is not important.”
The rubber hits the road in 10th grade. For YES kids, it is difficult if not impossible to work outside of school. They are getting home late and doing homework. There is pressure, especially for boys, to get a job and bring income to support the family. Having students for 7 years, we can build these great relationships with families.
We say that job may look cool now, but encourage them to look past the $6 an hour job at Walgreen’s. Understand if you do that and you can’t go to YES anymore because you can’t do the hours. You are checking out of a college education. Long-term that college education is going to be more lucrative for your family than the job at Walgreen’s. School uses alumni to support that message.Home visits. When a student is admitted, we will visit each family and have a serious conversation about what they are embarking on. People buy in.
Q: Is there a rule against students having a job?
A: There is no rule. The fact is our kids go to school around five, take the bus, home around 6. A normal homework load is a couple hours a night. They don’t have time. It is not recommended.
Q: Bilingual supports?
A: Home visits, with Spanish speakers. That is where the relationship begins. About 20 percent of our Hispanic students are illegal. To come to school can be intimidating. To go to the house, it builds the trust. … On the curriculum side … it varies by campus.
We have extended blocks of math and English in 6th and 7th grades, 90-minute blocks of English. Not grouped by ability, a mixed group. On top of that we have English and Math enrichment blocks; those are grouped by ability, an extra hour to work on comprehension, vocabulary, whatever. They get a Spanish class. It depends school to school. Divided between native and non-native speakers.
If you want kids good at English, you need more time doing it. Same with math. It has to be extended day with great teachers.
Q: Peer review?
A: A new teacher applying for school, they will do a sample teach. During the sample teach, we will gather some students already there and a couple of teachers. (Along with other measures) We normally pull from Teach for America teachers.
We have developed our own first-year teacher training program. We are a year away from applying to the state to certify our own teachers. We realized if we were going to grow, the biggest constraint would be great people.
If we are going to grow to serve the 10,000 students in Houston we want to serve, can’t just find a few rock stars. We have to grow our own rock stars. Started developing program 4 years ago.
Past year, hired new 80 teachers. Four of five campuses are still growing. Of the 80 teachers hired, 45 have never taught before. About half came from first year Teach for America, no formal education background. Some had education degrees. A lot were coming out of Rice, majoring in math or science, no education degree.
We’d prefer to get someone right out of school, teach them ourselves, no bad habits. We have more success if we can teach them ourselves.
We are looking at a value added model for teacher compensation. Moving toward differentiated pay for teachers. Tying bonuses to student outcomes. We want to see growth.
Q: How much autonomy do teachers have?
A: In Houston Public Schools, they have CLEAR, a complete outline of what each teacher should do in each subject each day. Tests every six weeks.
YES PREP: Teachers know the objectives and standards. We create our own curriculum. Have liberty and flexibility. No strict guidelines.
Experimenting with team teaching. We block arts and humanities, two hours team taught. Block of Math/Science/Technology, 2-hour blocks. It worked well. Every school we open we will do team teaching in 6th and 7th grade. It allows for flexibility with staff.
The two schools without team teaching, it is their choice … as long as they maintain results. When results drop, that is when you see more intervention by our home office.
Q: How do students see their culture in the curriculum and the culture of the school?
A: Teachers have the liberty to make sure students know about their culture. Melanie said she starts with a “Who Am I?” unit. This unit is about memoirs and personal narratives, building and constructing your own identity. They are very aware of their identify. They need a forum to express it.
Q: The culture of the school? People feel comfortable coming to the school?
A: .We try to build a YES culture, accepting and open to all cultures. There is a Team Class, with creative writing, team-building activities. Their differences all come together during this class.
We have to walk a tightrope. …. As we get closer to graduation, they have a junior and senior seminar. We start to talk pretty openly about what our kids will face when they go to a four-year school. You may be the only Hispanic kid in class, the only African American kid. We do the conversations around books …
There also is the service piece. We want the kids to feel empowered. It is not just about going off to college. It is about going off to college and coming back to your neighborhood and making it better.
We are also honest about this … One of two ways to go. Get in the game, and accept the fact that some of the things in the game aren’t fair and change it from the inside, or sit on the sidelines and bitch and moan that the game isn’t fair. The way you talk to your friends in the park, you can’t do that in a job interview. You have to be smart enough to switch back and forth. That is the reality. If you want to be successful in this country, that is what you have to do. Once you are in there and have proven yourself, you can start talking about changing the rules. You can’t do it from the margins. You have to prove yourself.
Some of it is assimilation. Our kids have to be able to hold their own in a collegiate environment. It is being able to have those conversations in a way that don’t become offensive, but being honest. Let’s talk real about how things are.
Q: What is the cost per child, holding special ed?
A: We operate a deficit while we grow out a school. It takes us seven years to grow out a school.
We want to be able to do the same thing a regular public school is doing .Not spending $2,000 more per kid. Once we are fully enrolled, we operate on the state and federal dollars. We get less state and federal dollars per kid than the traditional public schools.
We operate $7,880 per kid. We fundraise about a $1,500 gap when it is just one grade level. It shrinks to zero when fully enrolled 6-12. On top of that, we have to raise our own capital.
Operating budget we have to fundraise for is about $2.4 million a year. We have a campaign to raise $85 million to do the facilities we want to do.
Q: You are able to do this because of a selection bias, the motivated ones, the ones that are willing to sign a contract. I worry a little bit. Clearly we need schools like this. You worry about the kids who are left behind.
A: The students we are trying to target. We call it the middle 80 percent. We are not trying to get the top 10 percent.
Q: You have a lottery system. The parents learn about your school. I am a parent who is not engaged, I don’t care. How do you know you are not getting the selection bias?
A: We do diagnostics. Typical kid is coming in 1.5 to 2 grade levels behind. That is the average kid. It is no a magnet school, not a drop out recovery school, it targets the middle 80 percent.
The subject of students served by Minneapolis chartered schools came up – Joe Nathan responded by pointing out that charters in Mpls serve a higher % of low income, limited English speaking and students of color than the district public schools. People who are satisfied with their kids schools don't leave - kids who are doing well don't leave.
Q: How many kids who come in 6th grade are there for the full 6 years? Mobility?
A: Our goal is to keep attrition under 5 percent a year. We did that at every campus last year, except for one campus. We track it for whether it is controllable or uncontrollable (for instance, the family moves away.)
We have been close to keeping it under 5 percent. The problem is, if it is 5 percent a year over 7 years, then only 65 percent of your kids are finishing. We found that the majority of kids who leave YES leave in the 6th and 7th grade. They get there, they are behind, they say they don’t want to do it anymore. They choose out and go back to their home school.
We found if we can keep kids to 8th grade, about 80 percent of those kids will finish in 12th grade. We make all 8th graders reapply to high school. They have to recommit. About 10 percent of the kids don’t apply to the high school. They want to play football. They want the big high school experience that we can’t provide. Those that come back in 9th grade, about 85 to 90 percent of those kids graduate.
Trying to look at 6th and 7th graders, what can be done to keep more kids. That is where we went back to add the extra hour of English and Math enrichment. We stated YES Core, the alumni group. Match them with 6th graders who test near the bottom. They help them with academics and social issues. Their goal is to keep the students at school.
Q: Transportation?
A: We don’t get any services from the district, food, transportation. $700 per kid to bus.
Q: Does $7,880 include facilities?
A: In some schools, we build in a small lease. We get them for below market. (Note: Confusion here about what is a fair apples-to-apples comparison to Minneapolis-St. Paul Public Schools.)
Q: Kids have to be accepted to a college. What happens if they are not accepted?
A: They have to stay. It depends on the kid. Some stay an extra semester or a whole year. Some pick up an extra credit in the summer.
Walter was our toughest kid. I am most proud of Walter. Started in 10th grade, he didn’t speak English. Consultant said, what are you doing at YES? You have no business at a college prep. I said, “You can do it. You will have to work.” It took him an extra year and a half.
We measure how many of our kids finish at the college where they started. If they do, our counseling team is doing a good job.
Other things we do outside of school that contribute to success. YES – Youth Engaged in Service, that service is a major component of what students must do.
We also give students chances to do summer programs. (Melanie said she might have abused it when she was a student.) After 9th grade year, I went to the Duke writing program. Next summer I went to Texas Lutheran University. Then 11th grade year, I went to Stanford, UT and Virginia Tech. That is what puts us on the campus. If you are not exposed to universities, you don’t have a good sense of what that will look like.
Also spring trips every year. I have been on four spring trips at YES. I have been to Washington DC in 9th grade. I toured the east coast in 10th. That is where I met Columbia, my alma mater. We saw Harvard, Boston University, NYU and others. By 11th grade we went to the west coast: UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC-San Diego, several different college tours and met with college students. Senior year, we are funded to go visit school we are attending and do an overnight stay. All of this is on YES. That is one of the most exciting things we can offer our students. Most of our students would never have left the state.
That is another way we build a unique cultural experience.
Q: Teacher coaching? Enhancing teaching ability?
A: HISD has a designed curriculum. That is your guidance. At YES, you have to have a collaborative effort.
In response to a question about which kids are being served,
Generally, the staff is compromised of a lot of young, ambitious, passionate, driven people who don’t run out when the bell rings, who stay back for hours or two at a time, to work with students, to complete lessons. We are always pushing each other.
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