OpenEd Solutions | Downtown College Prep to Open Blended High

A look at the amazing success of Downtown College Prep in San Jose. Students must get accepted into college to graduate.

The bar is set very high: not only does every student need to successfully complete a rigorous college prep curriculum, every student must be accepted into a four year university in order to graduate.
They all leave prepared for and accepted to a four year university. They do it the old fashion way—relationships and hard work.
Teachers are there because they believe in the mission and support the culture: ganas, comunidad, orgullo (desire, community, and pride).
Like Summit Prep, DCP has developed smart people systems. A sophisticated hiring process screens a big pool of applicants and invites a qualified few to teach a lesson—not a favorite but the next lesson in a defined sequence for a specific group of students. Once hired, a rigorous staff evaluation process is accompanied by quarterly staff surveys and 360 degree evaluations of school leaders.
It’s interesting to note that they are all introducing blended learning models in September spurred on by catastrophic California budget cuts.
DCP and charter schools like it are changing lives. Maybe five or six out of a hundred poor kids from downtown San Jose finish college. DCP grads finish college at 10 times that rate—that’s an order of magnitude improvement in expected life outcomes
intentional cultur
igor, relevance, and relationships are likely to be key to academic success with teenagers for a long time.

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on Jun 07, 11