The weaker students still have difficulty, but because we're teaching differently they are getting much more of an education than they once did. In their parched and vulnerable desert landscape, these students have found ways to relate irrigation systems in Mesopotamia, for example, to the problems of greater Los Angeles. Student writing covers the walls. Each researches a community problem, then writes a proposal to alleviate it and works to help carry out the plan. A core team of teachers follows and advises every student.
Kids keep the same counselor for three years.
They give you a lot of challenges, but they help you meet them. The statistics seem to concur. When Lincoln students go on to Santa Monica's only high school, in recent years their writing places them disproportionately into honors classes, teachers observe. And though California's standardized testing scene has been in chaos lately, student scores have improved no matter how you look at them. Now it's in the 80s and 90s.