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At One Worcester School, Demographics Aren’t Destiny
By Deborah Becker (WBUR)
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A classroom at University Park Campus School. Located inside an old elementary school in Worcester's poorest neighborhood, every student has gone on to post-secondary education. (Deborah Becker/WBUR)
The high-school dropout rate in urban areas of the United States is described as a crisis. Here in Massachusetts, the dropout rate in some urban districts is more than triple the state average.
But one school defying the odds is the University Park Campus School in Worcester, an urban public high school, where virtually every student has gone on to post-secondary education. The school and its partner, Clark University, are getting attention from educators around the world.
The friendly mood inside the University Park Campus School is a stark contrast to what’s outside. In the main south area of Worcester, the city’s poorest, roughest neighborhood, University Park is located amid some gritty triple deckers inside an old former elementary school.
There is no gymnasium or sports fields or computer labs. A sign above the front door says, “The school with a promise.” And that promise for the 240 seventh through twelfth graders here is that they’ll leave ready for college.
Anthony Hodges is a freshman.
ANTHONY HODGES: When I started at this school, it was hard. Cuz they pile, pile homework on you. For me, if I went to a different school, I probably would have been a bad boy. Once you come here, they force you – they want you to go to college, you do this, that, that, and you can make it.”
But many of the students here have the challenges of students who typically don’t make it. Almost three quarters of them qualify for free lunch, 67 percent speak English as a second language, 95 percent of them do not have a parent who attended college. On average they come in two years below grade level, says administrator and teacher Ricky Hall.
RICKY HALL: As a rule, we’re getting kids coming in relatively depleted academically. Our role in grades seven and eight is very intense academic wrap around, bolstering what they need for academic success in high school. By grade nine, they’re taking a full slate of honors level courses.
Since the school opened in 1997, every student has gone on to post-secondary education, every student has passed the MCAS. Last year, the school’s dropout rate was zero. Dan St. Lewis has been teaching at University Park for nine years.
DAN ST. LEWIS: In the same way that if I had a kid in high school I wouldn’t let him drop out, we don’t allow our kids to drop out here.
Melanny Dominguez, a student at University Park, has a full scholarship to attend Union College in New York this fall. (Deborah Becker/WBUR)
Not only are they graduating, many are going on to selective colleges. Melanny Dominquez has a full scholarship to attend Union College in New York this fall. She says the students don’t want to let their teachers down.
MELANNY DOMINQUEZ: My mom dropped out because of me. I’m her only child. She’s thankful to the teachers. She comes in to talk to my guidance counselor, they’re planning on — the day I move in to college — they’re planning on going.
Mary O’Sullivan is the University Park guidance counselor. She says a big difference in this school compared with others she’s worked at is that none of the 17 staff members allow a students background or circumstances to become an excuse for not succeeding.
MARY O’SULLIVAN: It’s fun to be around people who like kids. I was in other schools where I wouldn’t go into the teachers’ room because they just complained about kids. Now they say, ‘This kid got an A. Do you believe it?’ And the kids get excited too. They beam, they’re proud, their behavior on the street is different.
Expectations of student behavior are as high as academic expectations, according to Donna Rodriquez, the school’s founding principal. She grew up in this Worcester neighborhood and says she wanted to create a school that emphasized values she felt were missing in the other schools where she worked.
DONNA RODRIQUEZ: I had seen a student murdered at the large comprehensive school. So I had an explicit code of discipline: No cursing, no street talk or that kind of language.
When creating the school, Rodriquez also stood firm on the idea that the students must be randomly selected. The University Park students are chosen by a lottery, except for current students siblings, who are automatically admitted. About 150 kids apply for the 44 new seventh grade slots open each year. The only admissions requirement is that parents attend an informational meeting and fill out a one-page application.
In the classrooms, teachers also use certain instruction methods to encourage participation among all students — the seventh- and eighth-grade curriculum is described as boot camp with intense math and language work. Students are frequently required to help teach other students; there’s an emphasis on writing and, in most of the classrooms, there are a lot of active discussions taking place and a lot of group work. The average class size is about 20 students.
These instructional methods were developed with the help of nearby Clark University, which is a partner with the school. Because of its concerns about the deteriorating neighborhood, Clark approached Worcester officials about how to improve the area and about how to stem the city’s rising school dropout rate.
Jack Foley, a spokesman for Clark, says the university does not provide any financial support to the school, but its students volunteer and tutor, it offers use of some of its facilities and if a University Park student is admitted to Clark, tuition is free.
JACK FOLEY: Most of the kids in this neighborhood think college is for rich kids. We have a vested interest as a university in seeing these kids succeed. Because their success means we’re successful in the neighborhood.
Foley is also a member of the Worcester School Committee, so he deals with the city’s other public schools, where the dropout rate is six percent. Foley says replicating University Park is not a financial concern.
FOLEY: The per-pupil allocation in that school is the same as any high school in Worcester. Some enhancement from Clark, but it really is the opportunities for these students.
About 1,000 educators from around the country have visited Worcester to see if University Park can serve as a model for how to improve urban education and how to work with a university to dispel the notion that demographics are destiny.
Want to hear more about the University Park Campus School? Listen to Deb Becker’s extended interview with Ricky Hall, the coordinator of University Park, on why his school is so successful.
April 3rd, 2009 at 7:52 am
This effort is admirable. Do we have to wait until high school? What interventions
can be made in elementary and middle school?
April 3rd, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Kudos to Clark University. What a great model. I’d love to see other local universities consider duplicating this program in their communities.
April 4th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
in 1997, as a professional, MA,CAGS,SAC, in psychology, I had the opportunity to be the person who was supposed to go to all the schools - high schools as well as middle schools - to find out what the drop-out rate was. I was previously in the courts were I would have rather stayed but Ms. Moorehouse, as well as my mentor, insisted I talk on this take of finding out what the dropout rates were in the city of Worcester. As a person who grew up in this city, I knew they didn’t want this information, not from someone like me. My immediate feeling was these people do not want to know the truth.
In fact, I warned them that I had the ability to cross cultural boundaries, meaning even the poor and gang neighborhoods were not out of bounds for me because I grew up as a street kid in this city. They insisted.
I researched four high schools until my research was called to a halt. The Superintendent at the time was James Garvey, Ed.D. He happened to tell the president of the college I graduated from that I was a vigilante. Why? Because my numbers of students dropping out of the Worcester Public Schools (WPS) was increasing and way beyond four or five percent.
I approached Mr. Garvey, and informed him that I was a professional researcher who needed to prove her statistics. The percentage rate when we had this conversation was almost at seventeen percent. Four percent, apparently is the norm for WPS. I informed Mr. Garvey, that many of the children not showing up for school were disabled and not being home schooled and that many of them were a very quick fix by sending them to Massachusetts Rehabilitation Center in the city of Worcester. I informed in that not taking care of disable students was against the law. Needless to say, this conversation was troublesome, but especially for me. The research was halted. I had only researched four high schools and the Ms Moorehouse asked me to bring in all of my information up to that day, unfinished. There was little the administration could do but publish the statistics.
What Mr. Foley does is admirable. He’s an admirable and honest person to begin with and perfect candidate for this kind of work. He’s also has the privilege of being a male. That’s right, a male with strong political connections. His work with Clark University enables him to ignore the nepotism in this city.
WPS should have paid more attention to Dr. Hines, the principal, then, at Burncoat High School. He knew exactly what he needed to do to keep his students in schools, pregnant, disabled, poor, as well as some of the toughest gang members in the city. Rather than use the facilities run by the WPS - which were poorly run - Dr. Hines kept his students and his high school well run. My drop-out rate statistics for Burncoat was less than five percent. He and Jack Foley sound very much alike. I have an image of Dr. Hines running down the hall to stop a fight between two gang members. I was more than impressed with his ability to deal with these situations, not only with respect but humbly so.
The most interesting part of all of this work were the staff. People I graduated from high school with. They gave me more information than I could have ever hoped to receive. They, too, knew WPS didn’t want the truth about what the real drop-out rate was.
As I worked more and more with some of the students who dropped out, I was beginning to understand the problem had to more with the way the schools were run, particularly by the administrators, not only at the top, but also within the schools themselves.
I was told to leave, sign a document stating the information was privileged. What wasn’t privileged was the information having to do with the disabled students. To think that these administrators knew so little about the 1992 Disability’s Act should have been embarrassing to them.
I was told, when I left WPS, days later, that I was too “honest” to work for an establishment. This was one of the finest compliments I’ve ever received, thanks to a President who was at a local college in this city. I’ve since left the field and now pursue my art.
Whenever I hear that a public school, particularly in this area, has a drop-out rate of four percent, I laugh. It’s far more than that!
April 5th, 2009 at 8:53 pm
I fully agree with Ann and Christine that the same interventions and effort should be made starting in elementary school and all local universities should have the similar program. Further more, many retirees can help out as well.
April 8th, 2009 at 10:30 am
The projectdropout program was great on GBH last night. One piece that was missing, Emily Rooney, was the tutoring out of churches that is going on specifically at Quincy Street Missional Church in Dorchester. This is neigborhood church reaches an area of a few blocks. Sojourn an outreach group has provided tutors for the children in the church. Last Saturday 3 sibs shared in church their improved grades this past marking period because of their tutors. The three children are in elementary school.
The churches web sight has links to the Boston Globe four day articles done by Michael Paulson December 2007 about the church. The Christian Science Monitor back page recently covered the tutors at QSMC under the title NEW MONASTICS. Rev. Ralph Kee is the lead pastor at Quincy Street ralphkee@gmail.com
May 10th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
African-American males make up a disproportionate number of children in special ed. in Boston. This comes from the supt’s own website. They also make up a significant number of the dropout rate. This comes from the same website. Perhaps if we parents could actually get the BPS-SPED to give our children the appropriate services so that they could access the curriculum, they would not feel the need to drop out after failing the MCAS over and over again. How many of us would continue to work at something when not given the appropriate help and being allowed t fail endlessly?
I am not talking about children with very severe disabilities. I am talking about children in regular ed classrooms who need specialized intervention, and with said intervention can in fact go onto graduate.
My son is in first grade. Already the district is trying to limit the services his teachers, therapists, and doctors say he needs. We don’t have the money to take the district to court. This happens all the time in Boston. It happens over and over again in all of our towns and cities. When will the major news stations carry that message instead of pitting sped and reg ed children’s needs against each other? That misses the point. The point is why are children, particularly so-called minority children always the first ones to pay for a bad economy? If we weren’t spending billions of dollars every month in Iraq we would have plenty of money for the schools. Thank God for places like Clark. But frankly, until the citizens of our country decide to value all children and put our money where our mouths are, most interventions will continue to be bandaids on gaping head wounds.