 It takes a Village to raise results Program encourages building of community By Rachel Uranga, Staff Writer
LA Daily News RESEDA - Like too many other African-American students at Cleveland High, Brae Brown was a slacker - ignoring teachers, cutting class, failing subjects.
Then came the day a dedicated group of educators pulled Brown and his friends into the auditorium classroom for a reality check - dismal test scores, high dropout rates and a bleak future as adults.
That first session two years ago shocked Brown and moved others to tears. It also spurred them to action.
"I got more serious when I saw the dropout rates and talked about how we were doing," said Brown, now 16 and earning average grades as a junior. "I said, I don't want to be one of those people. I didn't want to be a statistic."
The program known as The Village is one of the success stories in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Targeting the 300 black students among the 3,700 teens attending Cleveland, the monthly workshops seek to understand the connections between culture and academics.
During the monthly meetings, held during school hours, students are free to discuss any topic - from test-taking skills to the use of the "n-word." But the common denominator is race - whether it's the 43 percent dropout rate among black students in Los Angeles Unified, the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., or the Supreme Court ruling that desegregated schools nationwide.
And that has been the key, reaching beyond academic studies and speaking to students in a language they don't often hear in the classroom. "It's not that these students are dumb or they can't achieve, it's that sometimes they don't see the significance of these tests," said Andre Chevalier, Cleveland's dean of students and co-founder of The Village. "Our initial idea was to affect their academic achievement score, but these students tend to respect us more (if we talk about anything) than if we just talk about grades."
Chevalier, life-skills coach Fluke Fluker and nearly a dozen African-American teachers work hard with the students without sugar-coating the information. The straight talk presented by guest speakers to The Village - named for the African proverb, "It takes a village to raise a child" - reached Brown and others in a way only a family member could.
Since the program began, standardized test scores among African-American students at Cleveland have shot up 100 points.
Cleveland's success has prompted other schools to consider addressing academic performance in a culturally specific way, instead confronting the problem among all students as they usually do.
El Camino Real, Chatsworth and Crenshaw High schools are looking to replicate The Village. Other school officials hope to create a Latino version of the program.
"It is probably one of the most impressive stories regarding student achievement in the country," said Bob Collins, LAUSD's chief instructional officer of secondary education and recent architect of the district's anti-dropout program.
"It represents some breakthrough work on the part of teachers and administrators in changing the achievement level of African-American students. The teachers, it is their commitment, their willingness to take ownership for those students. The results have been dramatic."
Fluker and the educators say there is no big secret to their success, no fancy academic formula or costly book that makes the program - rather it's honest people who care.
And for many of the students, it rings true.
"The teachers in this room demand a certain respect," said Travis Wallace, a 17-year-old senior. "We need somebody to tell us to get our grades together, to get ourselves together. And when you get out of here, you are energized."
John Rogers, associate director of the Institute for Democracy, Education and Access at University of California, Los Angeles, said it does not necessarily take a black teacher to reach black students, but it helps to provide a role model that is easily accessible in a student's mind. "One of the things it's addressing is that young people are often seeking to create identities that are powerful. Too often in our public schools we don't create space to have an identity that is culturally attuned and that embraces deep appreciation of academic work."
This program does, said Cleveland Principal Robert Marks.
As importantly, the idea builds on a larger trend in education to build small intimate "communities" in which teachers and students know each other well and feel connected to their school.
"Any time you can bring young people together to believe in themselves, you will have a better attitude, and it translates in the classroom," Marks said.
On a recent weekday meeting, one college counselor talked about growing up in the projects and struggling to get into college while a master's student spoke about the draw and pain of the motherland - Africa.
Fellow students came up to read poetry about Black History Month and the voice of a new generation of blacks. And even though it's never stated, they all talk about taking responsibility for their own actions.
Chris Cheronke read his own poem, and the auditorium fell silent.
"Our history's a beautiful thing. But while ya'll watching the past I'm making black history now. Cause this time won't last. So whether past, present or future, their time, my time, our time, it's deeper than 28 days, black history lifetime."
Applause erupted. And at least one student said under her breath, "That's right." Rachel Uranga, (818) 713-3741
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