But it often takes just a little bit of money to encourage schools to be more than just a collection of classrooms. With effort and care, they can be both the repositories of community history and the places where new memories are created. Although we are just in the nascent stages, we are now much more in tune to the relationship between student work, classroom instruction, high expectations, and student achievement. In Manhattan, the John V. Lindsay Wildcat Academy, a New York Networks' school , offers a second chance to 125 former drop-outs, truants and other teens referred via the criminal justice system.
Students alternate a week in the classroom with a week of work.
Approximately 85 percent of graduates go on to college, and one was accepted into the highly competitive Navy Seals program. In Los Angeles, the Palisades Charter School Family has implemented mentoring, tutoring, parent education, and college awareness programs to help educationally disadvantaged students. Leadership school, posted impressive college admission rates among its first class of graduating seniors. In Chattanooga , a Public Education Foundation New Visions grant provided the faculty of Normal Park Elementary School with intensive professional development in writing instruction. Year-end fourth grade writing tests revealed that students performing at proficiency had increased from 24 percent in 1997 to 30 percent in 1998.