From Worst To First

By Andrew Goldstein

You see it in the sweat of former dropout Ernest Chavez, 17, hunched over a computer, intent on making up enough courses to graduate with his class. It's there when Sergeant Jose Campos, 62, who has been teaching Junior ROTC for 24 years, brags that this year he has "87 young ladies in my program"--the most ever. And you hear it in the school's mariachi band, practicing before sunrise. A visit to Louis W. Fox Academic and Technical High School in San Antonio, Texas, shows how far the school has come. Just five years ago, it was the worst school in Texas.

By 1996, Fox Tech had received Fs on the state's report card for four consecutive years. Three-quarters of the students who began as freshmen never made it to graduation. Fewer than 25% of sophomores passed the state's basic-skills exam in math. Failure had become routine, expected and excused. After all, three-fourths of Fox Tech students are poor enough to receive subsidized lunches. More than half the students work at night to help support their families. Nearly 100 have their own children to support.

Still, the district thought Fox Tech could do better, and unleashed what educators call the "neutron bomb" of school reform: it "disestablished" the school and forced all employees to reapply for their jobs. New principal Joanne Cockrell, an intense former math teacher and basketball coach, rehired a third of the faculty and brought in 70 new teachers. All had to be willing, she says, "to give up their private time." Cockrell instituted a strict dress code and in her first year dragged 250 kids and their parents into truancy court. She also split the school into four specialized programs, each with a guidance team that would tightly track its students until they graduated.

The results have been dramatic. This year 92% of Fox Tech students passed the state's math exam--the best performance in the district. The dropout rate--15% in 1995--is down to 4%. The old Fox Tech literally smelled from garbage left to rot in corners and from homeless men who used the fountain as a toilet. Now the school is spotless. Open house, which used to draw perhaps 60 parents, regularly attracts 600--spurred, no doubt, by Cockrell's having dispatched faculty to knock on doors.

Cockrell has even managed to co-opt, through private meetings, the gangs that used to terrorize Fox Tech's hallways. Carlos Reyes, a self-described former hoodlum, credits Fox Tech with turning his life around. Now a junior and a B student, he encourages his "crew" to keep their feuds off campus.

While high-stakes tests like those in Texas have propelled some schools to ditch art and music and "focus on the basics," Fox Tech has expanded its cultural offerings--a move that has kept students such as Reyes interested in school. Test prep is confined to half-hour "blitz" classes during the five weeks leading up to the state exams. Entering freshmen get to choose which of the four schools-within-a-school to enter: Internet Design (where students can earn coveted Adobe certifications), Career Studies (auto shop, construction, cosmetology, food services and welding), the Law and Research magnet program (courses include constitutional law) and Universal Global Studies.

Concerned that Universal Global risked becoming a depository for the least motivated students, the district paid $8,500 in 1997 to bring in an acclaimed, privately developed program called AVID. It places C students in the most rigorous courses available, then gives them the support necessary to succeed, including an extra class period each day devoted to individual tutoring. All of Fox's 90 AVID students now plan to go to college. Senior Precious Wright, 18, was forced to move to Kansas after her grandmother, with whom she had been living, died last year. Wright was afraid that without the help of AVID, she wouldn't get into college. So she bought a bus ticket back to San Antonio and lives on her own, working eight hours a day after school to support herself. Last month she was accepted by Texas Woman's University.

A tired Cockrell, 57, plans to retire at the end of next year, satisfied that Fox Tech has lighted a path toward success for disadvantaged students--and for other schools that teach them.