January 8, 2009 State of Education: Roxbury Prep Charter School Play video

(NECN) - The Boston Foundation and NECN continue the series: State of Education: Making the grade in Massachusetts. Over the last year, we have been examining what is working and what isn't in public schools, from preschool to college. Parents and educators everywhere want the best education possible for their kids. But just how to do that is a source of constant discussion.

The Boston Foundation commissioned a study, comparing Boston's charter, pilot and traditional schools.

In the first half of the program the panel has been talking a lot about what works. Reporter Peter Howe shows and example of a successful charter school.

State of Education: Boston's pilot and charter schools

State of Education: Pros and cons of nontraditional schools

State of Education: Funding for nontraditional schools

State of Education: Roxbury Prep Charter School

State

State of Education: Civil rights issue?

Here's one of the first ways you notice Roxbury Preparatory Charter School isn't a regular school. It's what you don't notice: Noise. To keep the 230 students' focus on learning, hallway time between classes is silent. So are the first five minutes of every class.

It's all part of making sure 50 minutes of class, means 50 minutes of learning. "We have 50 minutes of all work,'' says 8th grader Alexander Johnson. Even before graduating from RPCS, Alexander has won a Jack Kent Cooke Scholarship that will pay for high school and college -- and graduate school.

"Here," Johnson says, "teachers are on you all the time about reaching your goals and getting the best grades possible. The teachers don't give up on you no matter what and they always push you.''

But, with respect. The way a teacher says "you're wrong" at RPCS might be, for example, "I disagree with that.''

"By the time you get to eighth grade, nobody's making fun of you for saying the wrong answer,'' RPCS 8th grader Janaya Fulton says. "We all respect each other by the time we get to the highest grade here, and I think because of the rules, we respect each other way more than we did in sixth grade.''

As a state-licensed charter school independent of the Boston Public Schools system, Roxbury Prep is free to be different. College focus is something else unique here. How many middle schools do you know that work so hard to get 6th, 7th, and 8th graders thinking now about college, including pennants from every teacher's alma mater?

"The mission is to prepare these kids for college -- period,'' says math teacher Mara Rodriguez. She took a unique route here. After getting an M.B.A. From Tulane University, she spent seven years in marketing at Procter & Gamble helping market Pampers diaper, before sensing a call to teaching that led her to get a second master's degree, from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

"That routine, first of all, the students really welcome, and that was something i wasn't very sure of" when first considering applying for a job at RCPS, Rodriguez says. "I can tell they actually like the fact that the school is predictable. That stability helps the students be able to focus and helps the teachers be able to teach better.''

It even gives them some ways to teach vocabulary words like "homogeneous" -- the way students dress at school -- and "heterogeneous," the diversity of their personalities and talents.

There's reason for all this structure: it's so different from the poverty and crime many of these kids know back in their neighborhoods such as the Roxbury, Dorchester, Grove Hall, and Mission Hill sections of Boston.

"We can't make the kinds of academic progress that we're able to make without a really structured and safe school environment,'' says Dana Lehman, RPCS co-director. "The most important thing we do is have highly rigorous classes. Our students enter 6th grade on average two or more grade levels behind, and we have three years to catch them up.''

(Howe) Another big difference about Roxbury Prep is how much time people spend here, both teachers and students: Teachers, for three weeks in August getting ready for class, and students are here every day until at least 4:15 p.m. and often until 5:30 or 6 with enrichment, language classes, and other activities.

Lehman says it is not just "a longer school day" but one "where students have two math classes every day, two literacy classes, history, science, as well as phys ed, and an hour of enrichment at the end of the day.''

That long, very structured day is delivering impressive results, as measured by the MCAS state assessment tests:

This year, the percentages of 8th graders scoring 'proficient' or 'advanced' was as follows:

MATH

ROXBURY PREP 86%

MA. AVG. 49%

BOSTON AVG. 34%

==

ENGLISH

ROXBURY PREP 90%

MA. AVG. 75%

BOSTON AVG. 57%

==

SCIENCE

ROXBURY PREP 41%

MA. AVG. 39%

BOSTON AVG. 10%

These scores are not what might be widely expected for an inner-city school where, this year, 100 percent are students of color, 70 percent from low-income families qualifying for a free or reduced price lunch.

Of last year's 8th graders, 100 percent got accepted to college preparatory high schools and elite city exam schools like Boston Latin, and collectively, they won $300,000 in financial aid to attend private or parochial high schools.

"At this school they're trying to get us prepared for college,'' says 6th grader Phinix Knight-Jacks. "In other school probably, sixth grade or seventh grade, it's just try to get them prepared for high school.''

How much really can a middle school prepare students for college in five to seven years?

RPCS co-director Will Austin says, "You would never want to say that a student is not capable of succeeding, but each year after eighth grade, in particular especially for literacy skills, it becomes almost insurmountable to have a student prepared for college.''

After its graduates leave for high school, Roxbury Prep has two counselors keep working with them on college preparation. The school is nine years old, so its oldest graduates are now college juniors. Eighty percent of RPCS graduates who have gone through high school are enrolled in college, a number Lehman and Austin vow to get to 100.

"Roxbury Prep and other successful charter schools in Boston have shown that the achievement gap can be closed,'' Austin says. "The question that remains is: Will it be closed? Will there be the actual political will?''

Janaya Fulton, the eighth grader, is applying to boarding school in Connecticut and prestigious Groton School in Massachusetts, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's old prep school. "now, because I came to Roxbury Prep. I know I can go to those crazy-expensive private high schools, and I can get scholarships because i want to go there. I just thought I was going to be a normal person, but now I realize I'm destined to do greater things than that.

Howe: No school is ever going to look exactly like Roxbury Prep, and few schools may ever sound like Roxbury Prep when the bell rings between classes. But given what it's doing for kids' test scores and launching them into great high schools and colleges, you have to say every urban school can learn something from what Roxbury Prep is doing.