Though they enter ninth grade with the skills of sixth-graders on average, Sutton says test figures show they advance a year and a half for every year they spend at Manual. But there's also no doubt in her mind that when the state ranks schools for the first time in June, based on the CSAP tests students are taking this month, Manual will be portrayed as one of the worst high schools in Colorado - perhaps the worst. She blames squeamish white parents and school bureaucrats for gerrymandering an attendance zone in 1997, after 22 years of busing ended, that instantly turned Manual into a ghetto school. Of 1,112 students enrolled this year, maybe three-quarters come to school on any given day. Only half have parents able or willing to sign off on homework Thirty-five students are white English speakers.
Many students are undocumented Mexican immigrants.
She has to pay some parents to come in and do the kind of busywork that, at most schools, is considered volunteerism. These are the students whose CSAP scores will be plugged into an equation in the school-accountability legislation Owens drafted, known as Senate Bill 186, to determine which schools may keep doing what they've been doing and which will be handed over to new managers. Sutton wants to be held accountable, sure. But only after getting a shot at doing things her way. That's where the charter comes in.