YES students include those who, had the school not nabbed them first, could easily have joined a gang. Even though the drab campus consists only of several nondescript modular buildings scattered across an asphalt parking lot, there is a long waiting list of children whose parents want them to go there. The school teaches fifth through 11th graders and, based on Texas Academic Assessment Standards test results, is doing a good job of it. Barbic proudly displays the 1998-99 scores that show all 43 tenth graders had passed the math and writing portion and 95 percent had passed reading. Nine students got at least 95 percent of the questions right on the reading test, and 14 did the same in math.
Scores are similarly stellar among the sixth through eighth graders.
But parents tend to change their minds as their child is transformed from mediocre to high achiever. YES College Prep is held out by charter school advocates as a model, especially now that the Renaissance era has collapsed. But the qualities behind the success of YES are tough to bottle. The school began in 1995 as Project YES, a middle school affiliated with the Houston Independent School District. For three years, it operated under HISD's wing and was able to take advantage of numerous administrative benefits of the relationship, such as being able to use the district's contract services for transportation and food.