Why Last Resort Programs Work: Stopping the Dropout Epidemic
It is amazing how "last resorts" programs sometimes enjoy success (and pick up the pieces) that other, better funded, better designed, higher-rated, programs (that are staffed by more highly-qualified folks) flub.
What can explain such success?
What can one person do?
Answer: That person can do plenty if they have vision, focus, commitment and charisma.
Idealism and credentials also help.
Case in point: Cristo Rey!
"Fr. Foley’s charismatic personality and infectious energy
have helped raise support and awareness for
Cristo Rey not only here in the Chicago area, but also
across the country. Locally, Cristo Rey partners with
over 90 businesses for the school’s Corporate Internship
Program, has raised nearly $30 million to provide
the school with a striking new infrastructure, and sent
82% of graduates onto college. If that were not enough
to keep Fr. Foley busy, he has also played a key role in
opening ten Cristo Rey replications across the country.
Fr. Foley is the Chair of the Board of the Cristo Rey
Network, the newly formed organization leading the
effort to spread this model nationwide."
Source:
Cristo Rey Newsletter
http://www.cristorey.net/assets/charitable/viva_newsletter/spring04web.pdf
Not bad for a program geared to help Chicago's central city (Mexican immigrants and minority students) escape from the "central city blight"…a deteriorated public school system, dropping out, gangs, drugs, teen-age pregnancies, learned hopelessness, defeat, despair, violence…even death.
Not a "Slam Dunk" on the "Court of Last Resort"
Success for the Cristo Rey program came with focus, dedication, sacrifice and hard work. Success didn't come easy.
Watch the video…
Great video. Heartwarming results. Lives saved. Students working in corporate America at 14. Students graduating from high school (the first in their families, ever), and and an 82% college completion rate for Cristo Rey program graduates!
What the Cristo Rey program lacked in advantages became a model for turning "disadvantages into strengths."
What's the secret?
Corporate Sponsors Help. The Power of the Jesuit Mind and 500 years of social activism Helps. But, what is the Independent Variable that is responsible for this program's success?
Real goals, educational credentials, and a huge dose of reality help the Cristo Rey Project. But, none of these variables explain the program's success.
Even the charisma of its developer and director, the publicity on the Public Broadcasting System (PBS), story publicity on National Public Radio (NPR) don't explain the success.
Time and Newsweek: Fr. Folley, or Newsweek: Daring to be Different
The real power of the program? Belief in students…
Don't Let Anyone Ever tell you that "Kids cant' Learn"
Here is the real secret to the success of Cristo Rey. The founders believed that students from the lowest strata of central city economic life can learn, can excel, can succeed, can create and can contribute to society.
The founders backed up this belief with a program that energized students and businesses.
Classroom Toolkit always promotes the belief that any school district that really educates its students enjoys sufficient monetary support to do whatever it takes to teach its students. And, this monetary support is unrelated to district wealth.
The results that the Cristo Rey program points to prove this assertion.
The program takes students that amassed marginal, mediocre and dismal performance records in the "barrio-centric" central city schools of Chicago.
In those schools the plethora of ills that plague lower socioeconomic kids prevail.
In Cristo Rey, hope, safety, zero tolerance and academic success prevail.
Which teachers go home at 3:00 p.m., tired, stressed, drained, depleted, desperate? That is if they go straight home. Maybe the "barrio boys and gals" make a pit stop to imbibe their socially acceptable drug of choice.
Which teachers go home at 6:00 p.m., or 7:00 p.m.; energized, confident, satisfied that they are making a difference in the lives of their students?
And, while money was available in partnership with local businesses. this money was not a handout to help poor, depressed, ailing, sorry immigrant kids with freebies and handouts. This money was an investment in high quality, productive, creative workers who are an asset to the company that sponsors them. This work-study program is a take-away for businesses and students, not a "give-away that enforces the expectation that "continued generations on welfare remains the fate of the central city poor."
And, count competent staff as a resource.
The $30 Million USD in corporate support, grants and the $2.2 million in eRate funding didn't just fall from the sky. The endless positive publicity for the program didn't just explode. Folks, competent folks, go out of their way to bring these resources into the organization.
The Real Question…
The real question is, "When are our public schools going to discover that our students have unlimited, untapped potential?"
Who will bring the type of success that the Cristo Rey program enjoys to the majority of our students?
We may not know who, but we know that this person (or group) will believe in the ability of students to learn…believe in the ability of students to excel.
And that charismatic student-focused leader will demonstrate that the learning performance targets, that educators and students shoot for and reach, exceed the "minimal skills targets" of state-sponsored, high-stakes tests.
Targeting education toward "tests of minimal skills" is deadly to the long-term success of our country…stagnation from within…resulting in the under-development of our greatest resource; the brilliant, talented, inventive, creative, dynamic minds of our students.
