School Puts Mexican-Americans on the Road to Success
Tough love and hard work is the prescription at San Jose's Downtown College Prep — and it's getting results.
“Ride the carrot salad,” said the ninth grader in the fall of 2000. The phrase on the reading test was “ride the carousel.” The boy, a Mexican immigrant, had enrolled at Downtown College Prep, a brand-new San Jose charter high school. The founders’ dream: recruit Mexican-American underachievers, work their butts off, and prepare them to earn college degrees. The reality: teachers talked of making T-shirts reading, “Downtown College Purgatory: Ride the Carrot Salad.” But they were too tired.
I wrote a book about the school’s struggles, Our School: The Inspiring Story of Two Teachers, One Big Idea and the Charter School That Beat the Odds. (I wanted to call the book Ride the Carrot Salad, but the publisher said it would confuse bookstore clerks. I should have held out: cookbooks get a lot better placement than education books.)
Ninth graders entered DCP with fifth-grade reading and math skills, on average. Most had earned Ds and Fs in middle school, where they’d avoided the epithet “schoolboy” or “schoolgirl” by doing little work. Many weren’t fluent in English; a few spoke no English at all. “We wanted Hispanic students who were failing in school but weren’t in jail,” said Greg Lippman, the co-founder and principal.
Students hated the school at first. They hated the uniforms, the eight-hour day, the homework, and the calls home to their parents if they didn’t do the homework. Nearly every student I talked to wanted to quit but was talked into staying a little longer, usually by their mother. After a few months or a few semesters, they started to catch on.
Of 102 students at the opening fiesta, only 54 graduated from high school in four years. Some transferred because the work was too hard; some left because their parents lost their jobs and moved back to Mexico or to the Central Valley. Several repeated ninth grade. A few were expelled.
All the ‘04 graduates went on to four-year colleges. To date, 75 percent of DCP graduates are working toward a four-year degree, a very high rate for low-income, minority students — or for any students. Most will take five or six years to finish, especially those at public universities.
Twelve graduates from the class of ‘04, the charter school’s first graduating class, earned their college degrees in ‘08. At a ceremony at San Jose’s Tech Museum last week, college graduates were called up to the podium with their families, the parents who’d forced them to stay at DCP, the siblings who now see college as a realistic goal.
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Joanne Jacobs is the author of Our School: The Inspiring Story of Two Teachers, One Big Idea, and the School That Beat the Odds. She blogs on education at JoanneJacobs.com.
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15 Comments
1. Kay:What’s a Mexican-American? Someone with dual citizenship??
Jun 28, 2008 - 7:48 am 2. LC:Most of us are native born US Citizens. Some, like me are first or first or second generation Americans. But, again like me, if we’re dark complexioned, or if we have an accent, or maybe follow futbol more than football, well then, we’re Mexican-Americans. (I suppose if I said rugby we might pass for Irish-American but they lost their hyphen many years ago).
Frankly I’ve declined to state my “ethnicity” or “nationality” on forms for years. I am a U.S. citizen, by common usage, an American. And being a mestizo who can pass for Mexican, Filipino, and sometimes Asian, you can’t really tell what I am when you see me, so let’s just leave it at American.
Jun 28, 2008 - 9:42 am 3. joanne jacobs:[...] and hard work is the prescription at San Jose’s Downtown College Prep ?? and it’s getting results.http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/school-puts-mexican-americans-on-the-road-to-success/Erie County Real Estate Transactions The Buffalo NewsFollowing are real estate transactions over [...]
Jun 28, 2008 - 2:08 pm 4. Allstonian:LC:
And damned if that isn’t how we all should be doing so. We’re American, no hyphen-anything.
Jun 28, 2008 - 2:15 pm 5. Lisa:Why is the public paying for the education of people who are here illegally?
“Veronica Lugo Perez’s admissions essay started, “Pulled by my mother’s dreams, I walked barefoot across the border from Mexico. I was six years old.””
Jun 28, 2008 - 7:41 pm 6. Dark Helmet:Mexican/ American…. hey pendaho , Mexico is a place not a race. Stop putting being something in front of being an American. It’s treason.
Jun 28, 2008 - 9:17 pm 7. Rachel:Why is the public paying for the education of people who are here illegally?
Because it makes those who risked their lives to come over here better Americans. Isn’t that worth something? Or do we want these people hiding in the shadows and/or become “those illegals” you complain so much about.
Look at where these kids are using their skills. In the US. I think that’s a major investment with some serious return.
If you want to be mad at the “illegals” be mad at their parents. But don’t condemn the kids to a subsistence future because you have an issue on how they got here
Jun 29, 2008 - 3:36 am 8. Lisa:Rachel..
the people who came here illegally are NOT Americans and at least one of those students you describe is an illegal immigrant.
Jun 29, 2008 - 12:38 pm 9. Lisa:Furthermore, there are MANY Americans who are living at a subsistance level.. shouldn’t we be helping them before we help people who broke our laws and should still be in Mexico?
Jun 29, 2008 - 12:40 pm 10. abu al-fin:Most of the people of the world would rather live in the US during a deep recession than where they are now, in terms of being well off.
In Mexico, drug gangs routinely round up local police and national security police and gun them down in cold blood. You wouldn’t want to be in Mexico and neither do these children–even those who fly the Mexican flag in misplaced youthful rebellion.
In Mexico a small elite at the top controls all the resources, to the point that nothing at all gets done unless you bribe someone to let you do it. Mexico is supposed to be well-off compared to most of the third world, but it is only a matter of degree.
Jul 1, 2008 - 7:59 am 11. hollywoodsux:abu al-fin:
Who’s fault is that? Mexico’s!!! There is no reason why Americans should have to pay for Mexico being messed up. Let Mexico deal with it’s problems and the US deal with our own problems. Fences make good neighbors.
Jul 1, 2008 - 10:44 am 12. Jim Stutts:“Rachel:
If you want to be mad at the “illegals” be mad at their parents. But don’t condemn the kids to a subsistence future because you have an issue on how they got here”
They are welcome to a bright future in their own country.
“Fruit of the poison tree” is a legal concept. They are benefiting from the commission of a crime. These kids are illegals. We have no duty to pay for them. If you wish to pay for them, do so with your own money. Don’t forcibly take ours to pay for the cuckoo’s young.
Deport them all.
Jul 2, 2008 - 7:34 am 13. Matt:Mexican-American? OK, the first way to give these kids a boost up is to stop giving them a diminished sense of their identity. If they’re born and raised in the United States, they are AMERICANS! Our failure as a nation to DEMAND that people who live in the US become Americans has led us to this bizzare, fractured state where we feel like our country is dissapearing. It is our fault! When I hear the guilty liberal morons talking in horrendous Spanish to a person because they have tan skin I cringe. Sorry, but I wouldnt want to assimilate into a country that treated me like I didnt belong there either. People ask why no one is assimiliating anymore? We’ve let them get away it! No more dual citizenship!!! No more Bi-lingual anything!!! This is treating people like they are beneath you; not a way to transform immigrants into loyal citizens.
Jul 2, 2008 - 9:28 am 14. deguello:Good God! Is that school insane or what? Don’t they realize that the reason illegal aliens are allowed here by the plutocracy, is so that they can be exploited, at slightly higher wage levels than in Mexico? The plutocracy is doing its best through free trade,to export professional and skilled work overseas,and here goes this lunatic school, encouraging poor kids, to have professional expectations,and to reach them through hard work and disciplined academics. Have they gone totally loco?We need semi literate maids,car washers,and grass cutters,not unemployed doctors engineers,and mechanics educated enough to plot revolution against the plutocracy.This school needs to follow the lead of government-run schools in LA and NYC where the hispanic dropout rate is over 50%, and where obscurantist failed”progressive ” curricula” graduate functional illiterates who can do scutwork for crap wages. The democrat party needs welfare dependent voters;the republicans,cheap labor to exploit. It’s only a matter of time before the dept. of education,Teacher’s colleges, the teacher’s unions, and the organs of state security,shut this evil place down!
Jul 2, 2008 - 9:40 am 15. TL Winslow:The age-old pesky U.S.-Mexico border problem has taxed the resources of both countries, led to long lists of injustices, and appears to be heading only for worse troubles in the future. Guess what? The border problem can never be solved. Why? Because the border IS the problem! It’s time for a paradigm change.
Never fear, a satisfying, comprehensive solution is within reach: the Megamerge Dissolution Solution. Simply dissolve the border along with the failed Mexican government, and megamerge the two countries under U.S. law, with mass free 2-way migration eventually equalizing the development and opportunities permanently, with justice and without racism.
Click the url above to read the details.
Jun 5, 2009 - 12:10 pm