On the left side of the room, the I.S. 151 students swarm around the tables, screaming and y elling, their baseball caps turned backward, their high-tops unlaced, while a man with a bullhorn walks back and forth, futilely squawking at them. When a teacher wants their attention, he simply claps his hands once and everyone falls silent. They learn the multiplication tables as raps. In English, they read Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and then create their own fantasy factory with hand-wrapped candy bars. Despite all this remarkable stuff, there's something oddly mundane about the school.
Doubters say that the school maintains an unfair advantage in resources.
There is some truth to this. Because parents choose to send their kids to Kipp and sign a contract stating that they agree to the rigorous hours, the students ar e more likely to come from families with at least a vague commitment to education. One day after classes, I bump into a wiry kid from the Andrew Jackson housing projects who tells me that his mother has just gotten out of jail and that his father died before he was born. His pants hang down off his hips as he retreats back into the projects, where, he told me, he recently found an automatic hidden in the grass. Across the street, his friends are listening to music and shooting baskets in the dusk , and he looks toward them as if unsure whether to join in.