News

School succeeds by keeping students, parents involved

December 17, 2007

Tech Charter High earns national honors

Imagine a high school with a graduation rate of 98 percent.

A school where 99 percent of the graduates go on to college -- and where more than half of them already have the equivalent of their first semester of college completed when the get their high school diploma.

A school where the parent volunteers serve lunch and run carpools because there are no buses and no government-subsidized lunch.

A school that earned a grade of excellent on its state-issued school report card and made adequate yearly progress under federal education law. And it did so with a student body that mirrors the district in terms of family background -- while spending $2,000 less per pupil than the district average.

It's no imaginary school. It's Greenville Tech Charter High.

And the education world is beginning to take notice.

Charter High, publicly funded but operated independently of the Greenville County school district, was recently named a Mentor School through the Coalition of Essential Schools' Small Schools Project, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

It is one of only 23 Mentor Schools in the nation and the only one in the Southeast.

It was also named a National Charter School of the Year by the Center for Education Reform, one of 53 chosen among the nation's nearly 4,000 charter schools.

Schools with such high performance levels usually can be picked out by looking at the socioeconomic background of the students. Not Charter High.

Nearly one in three of the students there qualify for free or reduced-price lunch based on family income. Nearly one in three is minority.

"Dr. Barton was very adamant in the beginning that this program not become a gifted and talented program," principal Fred Crawford said of Greenville Tech President Tom Barton's vision for the school. "We do have some students that are gifted and talented, but on the whole, we kind of reflect the community."

School officials say there's no magic to their method, other than creating an environment where it's almost impossible not to succeed.

"There's such a support system here for kids that you really have to work hard to fail," said world geography teacher Karen Kennedy. "I think they know that we're here for them and that we'll do anything to help them be the best that they can be and rise to their potential."

Crawford, who spent 11 years at J.L. Mann before coming to Charter High, said that means such things as keeping students for an extra period in the afternoon for tutoring if they make below 80 in a subject. They continue that regimen until they get their grade back to 80 or above.

The school day is longer here than in the regular high schools, even for students who don't get the extra period.

"The key to any of it is keeping the student engaged, whatever you do," he said.

Part of it is the small school environment. With just over 400 students -- about 100 in each grade -- nobody gets lost.

And each student has an advisor, either a faculty or staff member at the school, with a 12-to-1 ratio of students to advisors. Twice a year, the advisors meet with the parents for a conference, led by the student.

"We felt every student needed to have their own learning plan and their goals," Crawford said.

Each student must complete a senior project to graduate, and that requirement brings out their creativity as well as organizational skills, according to Mary Brantley, senior-projects coordinator.

One student this year is building a small golf course in his backyard. Another is building a submarine. One is publishing a sports magazine on Charter High's athletics.

"It's a journey for them, and it's a journey that culminates in a very worthwhile product and a big learning stretch for these children," she said.

But project learning isn't confined to this course. It's a part of every class, such as Brenda Britt's English III course.

Her students last week were finishing their mid-term exams, which consisted of writing, producing and presenting a computer-aided report that puts one of the works of literature they've been studying into context with their personal lives.

Andrew Baldwin, for example, was doing a project on "Nature," by Ralph Waldo Emerson. He showed his disdain for littering and pollution with his multimedia presentation.

"A regular exam, I would normally just cram right before it and after the test was over, I would forget everything," he said. "And this, you have to dig a little deeper in the story, and after the project is over, you've already done all the research and it stays in your mind a lot longer."

The school's family atmosphere creates a culture where people help each other in times of need, said Ellen Pourmand, director of development. Faculty and staff have pitched in several times to help pay bills of a needy student's family, she said.

And the business community has been generous, too, donating such things as interactive whiteboards for classrooms, she said.

The other big factor in school success, parental involvement, is through the roof here, too.

Laurie Johnson, mother of two sons at the school, volunteers up to 40 hours a week coordinating the efforts of the other 250 to 300 parent volunteers. She and her husband also established an endowment to help secure the school's financial future.

The partnership with Greenville Technical College is perhaps the biggest drawing card for students who are eager to get a head start in higher education.

That was the case with Johnson's sons, William and Charles.

"They both were very interested in the college classes," she said. "That was pretty much what brought us here -- the opportunity to take college in high school."

Charter High students get their first year's tuition at Tech free, and the high school pays for their books.

While the school doesn't have any athletic facilities, its students compete in the South Carolina High School League in cross-country, track, baseball, softball, golf, basketball, volleyball and soccer, using city, church and YMCA facilities and parks.

Roger Meek, a member of the Greenville County Schools board, said there's no mystery to Charter High's success compared to the average public high school.

"Every child that is there wants to be there," he said. "Every child that's in Greenville County Schools doesn't necessarily want to be there. They're not applying to come to Greenville Schools."

And that's one of the charter school's biggest problems -- too many students want to go there.

Last year, 380 students applied for 105 seats in ninth grade.

School officials considered enlarging the school years ago but didn't want to lose the small-school atmosphere.

"So we decided, let's take the program closer to the communities where the kids live," Crawford said.

That brought about the creation of Brashier Middle College Charter High last year. A third school of the same model is scheduled to open next fall on Tech's Greer campus.

Meanwhile, the rush to get into the original school of the franchise is set to begin soon.

Open enrollment begins Jan. 2 and runs through Feb. 1. If more students apply than seats are available for, as has been the case ever since the school's beginning in 1998 as the district's first and the state's largest charter school, a lottery will decide who gets in.

Greenville News
By Ron Barnett
STAFF WRITER