This article in The Nation by Casey Parks tells the story of Sci Academy in New Orleans and the lessons it learned over time about making bold promises.

The school pledged that all its students would go to college and encouraged them to apply to four-year colleges that were outside their comfort zone (not close by and predominantly white).

In 2012, almost all of its graduates were accepted to colleges. By 2019, only 18% had graduated from college.

Parks describes what happened to some of Sci’s top students.

Only months after starting college, some students dropped out.

Most couldn’t point to just one reason for their decision. Some missed their families or needed to find jobs to pay for gaps remaining after their scholarships. Students who enrolled in a North Louisiana university found that the food was too bland. No other place in America is like New Orleans—not even North Louisiana—and it hurt too much to lose the city again after they’d been displaced by the hurricane. Others grew unfocused after they left Sci’s scaffolds.

Some earned their first Fs, and the failures depressed them. Eddie Barnes had been one of Sci’s most celebrated students. He finished with the fifth-highest GPA and won nearly every social accolade the school gave out. He went to Middlebury College, a selective school in Vermont, where only 4 percent of students are black.

His Russian intro class was tougher than advanced Spanish had been at Sci, and he couldn’t always bring himself to trudge through the snow to his 8 am psychology class. But he spoke up in his romantic literature course, and he helped other students with their African American religious history papers. Still, none of that mattered after his grades came back lower than he’d expected. By his second semester, he was on academic probation. He dropped out during his sophomore year.

Sci Academy tried to help students as they struggled. Its founder, Ben Marcovitz, realized that he needed a more diverse staff to connect with students. He also realized that some of his students were not equipped to succeed in the nation’s most competitive colleges. He even realized that college was not the right destination for everyone, and that some would find fulfilling careers and vocations without a bachelor’s degree.

Only six of Sci’s first graduates finished college within six years, the federal standard for on-time graduation. Three others earned degrees this year. Though eight, including Pierre, are still working toward a degree, 32 of the 49 who enrolled in college have dropped out.

Collegiate Academies is the only charter network in New Orleans that has publicly shared its college persistence results. Most of the city’s charter high schools don’t track the number of alumni who go on to earn bachelor’s degrees, and KIPP New Orleans, the one network that does, declined to share its data. KIPP’s first graduating class from New Orleans has been in college for only five years, shy of the federal cutoff for on-time graduation. But researchers at the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans, a Tulane-based organization that studies post-Katrina education reforms, found last year that the new high schools have increased college graduation rates by 3 to 5 percentage points since Hurricane Katrina. None have come close to achieving the college for all they once promised…Over time, Marcovitz has hired a more diverse teaching corps. That first year, only one of seven teachers identified as a person of color. Today, more than half of the 140 teachers who work at his schools do.

This is not a story about charter failure, but a story about lessons learned.