Parents at the Julian Nava Academy in South Los Angeles loved their middle school. They worried about their children moving on to a high school where they might get less attention, where the education would not be as good as it had been at Nava Academy. So the parents organized, met with the principal, met with the district administrator, and won permission to open a new high school, called Nava College Preparatory Academy.
The school opened this fall, and the parents remain engaged with it. Its first class has 300 students, and it will eventually grow to 1100 students. Note there was no parent trigger, no confrontation between parents and educators. The parents loved the school they had, they wanted more of it, they made their case, and they won.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What facility will they use for the high school and how was it selected?
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Isn’t Nava Academy a selective enrollment pilot? One of those hybrids that lausd and the teacher’s union created to “solve” the charter exodus problem? That’s no solution at all; it’s the same competitive model that syphons students from neighborhood schools–taking the more motivated, activist parents with them. Will we be cheering this school when Jefferson High is emptied of all but a few students who are all but forgotten? Why did these parents not push for and devote energy and activism to a greater Jefferson? I’m seeing this happen all over Los Angeles. Thankfully, some intelligent analysis is causing other schools to resist the pull to create something that only benefits a select few.
Until the district decides to reinvest in traditional, comprehensive schools, and gives local school sites some flexibility from the one-size-fits-all bureaucratic mandates, enclaves of motivated parents and teachers will think the only place to put their considerable resources is into some themed special school that pulls resources away from the neediest communities and schools. As LA School Board Member George McKenna often says, it’s fine to do what is best for only your child, but who is going to do what is best for those children left?
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They moved onto the campus of Jefferson HS…a struggling public school. It is a good example of informed activist parents creating a positive environment, but I wish that the info did not laud it as a parent trigger. It was NOT.
I would guess that as a successful charter, they will follow through and take over the current location in time.
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Looks like this is a “pilot school.”
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Its a marathon, not a sprint. Will the school be sustainable in the long run as activist parents follow their students out of the high school? What happens when the interest of parents and teachers collide as in the case of grades or behavior? Is this an example of skimming in that parents self select and involvement separates their students from those that will not or can not participate? In the last point, many of my students have parents too sick or disabled to be active – will they be welcome at the school? We can check back in a few years.
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All operant questions MV. What happens if future parents do not have the same interest? These activist parents will follow their children through high school, but then, will there be enough others to carry on…or will this charter then sink into oblivion?
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Most parents have a fervid interest in the schools that their children attend – but only for as long as they attend them. This tends to be a relatively brief period of time, which leads me to the conclusion that parent interest alone is not conducive to good schools. So who stays for a long time at a school? Teachers. I know this is heresy, but teachers, not parents, and not administrators, have the longest running commitment to excellent public schools – they stay in them for far longer than most parents and children, know the daily details on an intimate basis, and have the best insights for how to improve them in a sustainable way. And I write these words as a parent of 3 who attended public schools K-12, and as a teacher for 36 years.
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Perfect response Christina…thank you.
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One cheer, here from Chicago. Can these parents creating enclaves based on race, ethnicity, or economic class? Arne Duncan began approving these thingies ten years ago, and they all had some nasty characteristics which remain to this day.
So… What are the racial demographics before you go all “attaboy!” on this?
In Chicago, several of these “conversions” were racist. The high schools had too many black kids (or classist, lower class kids) so the “parents” and “community” wrangled a “new” small school just for their kids. The most dramatic are Hancock High School on the South Side (those families didn’t even want their kids going to Lindblom) and more than one north side school that suddenly got to be a small enclave for some middle class (or, in the case of Ogden, upper class Gold Coast) kids. At some of the “Southwest Side” schools there are no — as in NO — black kids. And the Gold Coast school (Odgen) recently had some nasty problems with student anti-Semitism.
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It really is tricky, even in much smaller systems. We used to have a “west side” elementary school and an “east side” elementary school. They both fed into the public jr high and high school. We had a superintendent who thought it was dumb, because the east side is lower income and this place isn’t big enough to support two schools where they have to replicate everything in each building. He split it up into grade levels, all the little kids go the west side and all the older grade schoolers go to the east side.
Many of the west side parents (I am one) were furious. It was pretty clear to me what they were mad about, because the schools are only +/- 4 miles apart and they’re in the same public system.
It’s a better system now.
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Great piece. What I read shows what happens when the politicians and oligarchs let the teachers, administrators and parents work together to create an educational environment—-and tell meddling Bill Gates and Arne Duncan to learn from this school and stay out of the way if he they are unwilling to support the replication of this model.
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Prefer your positive view Lloyd. Parents with this much focus will surely build a foundation, despite parent trigger, not with it. So Gates, plus Broad and Waltons will have no say….I hope.
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Real life is complicated, messy, and forever presenting new challenges.
Thank you to the owner of this blog and the commenters on this thread.
Lots to think about…
😎
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I agree: lots to think about and happy to have a forum to discuss it.
I guess my sadness is for the kids at the bigger high who don’t have the smaller school and one on one attention…it just seems like they are getting shafted: they obviously can see this preferential teaching/learning environment and I wonder how it’s justified to them?
Also who is not allowed to attend? Kids who are “those kids”…? Would love a follow up on the application process and expectations…
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I spent a fair amount of time searching the middle school’s website to find information on how to apply and came up empty. I sure hope it is a straight-up zoned school, not a place that requires parents to fill out a cumbersome application and then holds a lottery if there are more applicants than seats.
I did manage to find a 30+-page student/parent handbook with pages and pages of rules and expectations regarding student behavior, dress, and academic participation, with at least two pledges to be signed by the student and parent. No excuses.
The proposal for the high school — http://achieve.lausd.net/cms/lib08/CA01000043/Centricity/Domain/262/FINAL%20NAVA%20PLAN_Correct.pdf — aims for a 100% graduation rate, a 100% college attendance rate, and a culture of “high academic rigor.” Because it is a pilot school, teachers have to sign a special agreement that modifies the regular LAUSD contract: longer hours and added duties (for which extra pay is not guaranteed), a strict limit of 7 absences per year, and mandatory email communication with parents.
Diane, why is cream-skimming, “no excuses,” and making extra demands of teachers acceptable in some instances and intolerable in others? I mean, I’m pretty sure I know why, but I’d like to hear your explanation.
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It’s a pilot school, so it’s a choice school with an application process. Pilot schools seem to belong to “Zones of Choice” that are larger than neighborhood catchments, similar to how a lot of choice and charter schools work in NYC.
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Oh, choice.
Shouldn’t these parents be “fixing” Jefferson, as they would be advised to do if Nava were a charter school? Won’t siphoning off the better students destabilize Jefferson? Aren’t the behavioral and academic requirements racist and paternalistic?
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Probably. We know that the Fourth Law of Thermodynamics is that choice increases segregation. So I would not be surprised if this school is more segregated than the district in which it’s located and has a lower percentage of English-language learners and learning disabled students. But hey, there was no confrontation with teachers, so power to the people.
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For what it’s worth, Tim, I’m with you on this one. I don’t understand why this school is such a victory just because parents and teachers are working together.
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Sadly Dienne, me too:(
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Me three. What’s wrong with investing and fixing? ReduceReuseRecycle. 🙂 This sounds to me like a bunch of people who think the playground looks shabby so rather than revamp it they just take their own toys home and build another one in a different neighborhood.
That fourth law of thermodynamics (socialdynamics?) sounds spot-on.
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Jefferson Sr High is about 8% black, rest hispanic; Nava is about 5% black. Nava reports about 30% ELs and Jefferson about 33% …. so not wildly different, but these are middle vs senior HS. Maybe special ed? But Dataquest http://dq.cde.ca.gov/dataquest/ doesn’t have this sped info at the school level…
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