LAPD High Magnet Schools Sponsored by Cops Getting Results With At-Risk Kids

[PoliticalChic]

The statistics say that 17-year-old Rocio Sazo should have dropped out of school by now. In the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), outside studies show that fewer than half of ninth-graders graduate from high school within four years. Only 16 percent of Hispanics like Sazo, who constitute the majority of students in this vast and sprawling district, graduate having passed the classes needed to apply to one of California’s public universities. But Sazo is defying those odds, too. She earns top grades, teachers rave about her leadership skills, she says she might become a math teacher, and she has applied to seven colleges. Now, she proudly relates, she is “waiting for acceptances”—acceptances, not decisions.

Sazo credits a big part of her success to her magnet school. Magnet schools are public schools that draw their students from outside traditional neighborhood zoning boundaries, usually requiring them to apply to get in. The schools also have specialized curricula or themes—math or science, say—and often operate within larger schools. Sazo’s magnet at Reseda High School has an unusual theme—law enforcement—and a surprising sponsor: the Los Angeles Police Department.

L.A.’s six police magnets—five high schools and a middle school—have only partly fulfilled their original mission of recruiting and training more homegrown minority cops. But with four-year graduation rates that nearly double the LAUSD average, these innovative schools have done something far more important: preparing at-risk minority kids for college and sending the majority of them there. As the national school-reform movement contemplates how to spend the $100 billion in new education funding authorized by the Obama stimulus bill, the LAPD schools deserve a close look. Why do they work? And can we replicate the model?

Complete article below:

LAPD High by Laura Vanderkam, City Journal Spring 2009

 

[random3434]

Good Article.

Yes, Magnet Schools are another way inner city schools are trying to improve the quality of education for their population. They are geared to offering more detailed instruction for what the student wants to study, with the long term plan of getting them ready for college or vocational school after high school, in their field of choice.

If a student has a vested interest in their education, they will be willing to work harder to achieve those goals during school. I hope this becomes a trend in the public school systems everywhere, not just the inner city.

 

[Agnapostate]

I'll stick with the abolition of high school approach.

 

[random3434]

I think it's telling that there is a POSTIVE article about public schools on here, yet only 2 replies.


I wonder if this would have been about shootings or teacher/student love affairs, it would be 10 pages by now.

 

[Agnapostate]

I think it's telling that there is a POSTIVE article about public schools on here, yet only 2 replies.

Well, yeah! When there's something negative there, there's something to argue against. If there's just something positive, people can't say anything more than "I agree."

I wonder if this would have been about ...teacher/student love affairs, it would be 10 pages by now.

"Affair" implies equal status, as was a center point of the controversy over Neil Goldschmidt. And you don't want Detective Slowbum accusing you of anything unseemly.