By Deborah Becker (WBUR)

One of President Obama’s proposals to improve education is to increase high-school graduation rates. The challenge is daunting, especially in urban high schools where in some cases 50 percent of the students don’t graduate on time.

But a school in Worcester, Mass., is defying those odds and other schools around the country are taking note. The University Park Campus School is a public school located in the poorest section of Worcester, near Clark University. Clark says improving the area outside its gates will benefit the university, as well as its neighbors. So Clark provides student volunteers, the use of some campus facilities and the promise that those University Park students who meet Clark’s admission standards will be able to go to college there for free.

Clark provides no money to the school — it’s funded like all the other public schools in Worcester. And in the 11 years since University Park opened, every student has not only graduated, but gone on to post-secondary education. We visited University Park, which is in an unassuming, rather rundown, former Worcester elementary school. Instead of things such as computer labs and sports fields, there is a lot of enthusiasm.

Anthony Hodges is a freshman.

ANTHONY HODGES: When I started at this school, it was hard. Cuz like they, ‘pow, pow, pow’ homework on you. And see, me, if I went to a different school…probably would have been a bad boy. Because I used to be a troublemaker in elementary, used to be always like playing around, never doing homework. And once you come here, they just force you, like, ‘You want to go to college? You gotta do this, this, that and you can make it.’

We asked Ricky Hall, the coordinator of the University Park Campus School, why his school is so successful.

RICKY HALL: I think first and foremost it’s our shared and collective mission of student success here. I think all the teachers and staff bring to the school a genuine belief that all students can succeed and all students will go to college. And from the moment they walk in here in grade seven that’s our promise to them and that becomes a driving force — a driving cultural force — in the building. And everything is towards that end.

So, their rigorous academic coursework is to that end, but also their behavioral and academic and civic expectations are to that end. Kids take tough courses here. They don’t have a choice on what kind of course they take, they take all honors courses, all those courses are the core academic areas.

DEBORAH BECKER:  A lot of folks might say, ‘Well, doesn’t that happen at every school?’ Or, ‘Shouldn’t it?’

HALL: Yeah, it should. It should. And in the good schools it does. I think our smallness is another major factor here, because we only have 240 students or so, we have 17 teachers here. And so everybody feels like we’re a family. And much of it is, you know, kind of  “us against the world” kind of mentality. We know that there are challenges here, but collectively we can overcome them.

What makes this place different is it’s the same material being taught in other schools, it’s just being taught really well here.  I mean it’s being taught by expert teachers who love kids, who love their content area and work really hard to make sure that they, you know, bring that love to their students.

BECKER: A lot of the reasons that we hear – or the factors that we hear – of why kids drop out are poverty, English-language learners, mobility — people moving around a lot, not a lot of family support at home. It seems like you have all those factors and yet you’re defying the odds.

HALL: Yeah. I mean I think we have some kids that have all those factors you just listed, we have some kids that have some of them. I think every kid has at least one, for the most part. But yeah, poverty. We have ELL students. We have special ed students. We have the same group of factors and yet we consistently see, you know, very strong academic success.

It’s not just the instruction, but that’s a big part of it. I think part of it also is that kids come here and recognize that we’re just not going to let you fail. And it’s not just that we won’t accept you to fail, we won’t accept you not succeeding. It’s just not a matter of getting you through high school, but beyond that. It’s getting you into college, it’s getting you through college.  There’s a general misconception about the school that we cream the crop or take the best, academically most talented students in the city and that is the reason why we’re successful. But, in reality, our kids come here challenged as a population. Generally reading below grade level, doing math below grade level.

As a rule, we’re getting kids who are coming relatively depleted academically and challenged academically. Our role in grade seven and eight is to do a lot of wraparound academic and social services to kind of get them up to speed to be able to make access to a rigorous ninth grade curriculum. So seventh and eighth  grade is kind of this very intense, kind of bolstering the skills that are needed for high school success. And then by grade nine they’re taking a full slate of honors-level courses.

BECKER: Kids get in via lottery, is that right?

HALL: That’s right. Yeah.  So every year we accept 44 new seventh graders. The only admissions application requirement is that they live within a defined district around Clark University, that Clark defines around the school.

BECKER: Now is that something that parents have to sign up for or how do people get in the lottery? I’m wondering, are you dealing with a fairly committed group of parents?

HALL: That’s a good question. We send out notification to all the students in our Worcester public school system that show an address on the defined streets, explaining to them that there’s an informational meeting that they need to come to where they fill out the application. And so, that’s as much as we require of them. We don’t require any other things other than to show up to that informational meeting and fill out a very short application. The application’s merely: name, address, telephone number, that kind of thing. We don’t take test scores or anything like that. I think we do have some selective process there, that you know parents have to physically come, you know, to the meeting and fill out the application.

BECKER: Do you think that this model can be replicated in other places?

HALL: I get nervous when people want to just come here and take it like a cookie cutter and move it somewhere else and try to use the exact same model, because you know I think the school’s success is by virtue of not just its design principles, but also by the human beings who are here.

That being said, I think there are some clear, important lessons that come out of this school’s success. That if taken properly and used properly, I think could in fact really make people re-tool their understanding of how urban education is done. It’s not just –  some people have tried to figure it out by saying, ‘Well, it’s the smallness. Right, it’s the smallness that makes a difference. So we’re just going to make all of our big schools small.’ Well that’s not the only component of our success here. It’s one, but it’s not the only component. And when it doesn’t end up being successful they throw their hands up and go, ‘I can’t figure out why this doesn’t work.’

Well, it’s not just smallness. It’s part of it. So, if it were done really thoughtfully — someone came in and really said, ‘Let’s look at these design principles. Let’s try to replicate what makes sense for another school and really dive into what makes it successful here’ — I think it could be replicated. But this ‘quick fix, magic pill, we’ll make it small — that’s the reason why it’s successful’ — I don’t think that’s something that would actually work.