Teresa Watanabe wrote a wonderful story about kids in a public school in Los Angeles who are college-bound, despite their demographic profiles. They don’t have college-educated parents or SAT tutors. What they do have is a school—the DowntownMagnets High School— where the professionals are dedicated to their success. Read about this school and ask yourself why Bill Gates is not trying to replicate it? Why is it not a model for Michael Bloomberg or Reed Hastings or the Waltons? Why do the billionaires insist, as Bloomberg said recently, that public education is “broken”? Despite their investing hundreds of millions to destroy public schools like the one in this story, they are still performing miracles every day.
They represent the new generation of students reshaping the face of higher education in California: young people with lower family incomes, less parental education and far more racial and ethnic diversity than college applicants of the past. And Downtown Magnets, a small and highly diverse campus of 911 students just north of the Los Angeles Civic Center, is in the vanguard of the change.
Last year, 97% of the school’s seniors were accepted to college, and most enrolled. Among them, 71% of those who applied to a UC campus were admitted, including 19 of the 56 applicants to UC Berkeley — a higher admission rate than at elite Los Angeles private schools such as Harvard-Westlake and Marlborough.
This month, the Downtown Magnets applicants include Nick Saballos, whose Nicaraguan father never finished high school and works for minimum wage as a parking valet but is proud of his son’s passion for astrophysics.
There’s Emily Cruz, who had a rough time focusing on school while being expected to help her Guatemalan immigrant mother with household duties. Emily is determined to become a lawyer or a philosopher.
Kenji Horigome emigrated to Los Angeles from Japan in fourth grade speaking no English, with a single mother who works as a Koreatown restaurant server. Kenji has become a top student and may join the military, in part for the financial aid the GI Bill would provide.
“The main thing my kids lack is a sense of entitlement,” said Lynda McGee, the school’s longtime college counselor. “That’s my biggest enemy: the fact that my students are humble and think they don’t deserve what they actually deserve. It’s more of a mental problem than an academic one.”
What the students do have is a close-knit school community, passionate educators and parents willing to take the extra step to send them to a magnet school located, for many, outside their neighborhoods.
Principal Sarah Usmani leads a staff mindful of creating a campus environment both nurturing and academically rigorous; she has scrounged for money for a psychiatric social worker to help with mental health problems, an attendance counselor to stay on top of absences, an intervention counselor to monitor whether grades drop and an additional academic counselor.
And the students have McGee, who since 2000 has helped shepherd thousands to higher education.
On a recent morning, students lined up to see her in the campus College Center, an inviting space with comfortable sofas, a bank of computers, colorful pennants and stuffed toy mascots from dozens of colleges.
Never mind that it was Thanksgiving break. UC and Cal State application deadlines were just a week away, and McGee’s students needed her.
Ms. McGee, I need a fee waiver! I’m not sure about a major. How do I figure out my weighted GPA?
“I can say no to evening, weekend and holiday work, but that means someone won’t go to college,” McGee said. “There are too many kids, good kids who will take themselves out of the process, and they’ll go to a community college with a 3.9. I can’t carry that guilt.”
McGee keeps close tabs on as many students as she can, often suggesting they consider options other than “the religion of the UC,” as she says many parents, particularly Asian Americans, regard the renowned public research university system.
It’s all about fit, she tells them. If you like personal relationships with faculty, consider smaller private colleges. Think about leaving California to stretch yourself. She gently nudges students with low GPAs away from pinning their hopes on hypercompetitive UCLA and Berkeley and suggests well-regarded but more attainable alternatives: Cal State Dominguez Hills, Woodbury University, Mount St. Mary’s College, Dixie State University.
But she also needs to make sure her top students are aiming high enough.
The day before UC’s Dec. 1 deadline, McGee called Nick into the College Center to check in. The soft-spoken senior and his family live on an annual income of $30,000; at one point, when his father lost his job and the family faced eviction, they had to turn to relatives for help. His parents instilled in him an ethic to never waste — not money, not food, not college opportunities.
At Downtown Magnets, Nick entered the International Baccalaureate program, staying the challenging course when his friends dropped out. He tackled his weakest subject, English, by poring over Harvard professor Matthew Desmond’s exploration of evictions and poverty, to master academic language, text analysis and oral expository skills.
Physics is where Nick soars. His face lights up as he describes his hunger to unravel the mysteries of the universe: why it expands and whether it will stop; how stars become black holes.
Nick has earned a 4.47 GPA, making him the school’s fifth-ranked senior. He didn’t realize that until McGee called him in to tell him.
“You are in the top five, and this is a very competitive senior class,” she said. “If you want to apply to the Ivy Leagues, go for it! Know your worth, and give yourself the opportunities.”
Ivy League schools offer large financial aid packages that can make them cheaper than UC for low-income students, a point McGee amplifies by handing out lists of schools that meet full financial need without loans.
Nick had applied to UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC Irvine and UC San Diego, along with Stanford. But McGee’s encouragement expanded his thinking beyond top California colleges to the Ivy League.
“I didn’t think I could apply to the Ivy Leagues,” he said. “I didn’t have that much confidence. Hearing from Ms. McGee that I can, I’m going to try.”
The story goes on to offer many other stories of students who came from homes where money was scarce. At Downtown Magnets High, they learned to believe in themselves, and they had the support and guidance to make good choices.
Don’t write off public schools. They have been the gateway to opportunity for millions of students, and they still are.
Someone please send this story to Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, the Waltons, Reed Hastings, John Arnold, Laurene Powell Jobs, and all the other billionaires who waste their money on charter schools, instead of paying attention to successful public schools like Downtown Magnet.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s really something how successful or solid public schools are completely ignored in ed reform.
I think it calls the whole “movement” into question, as far as goals and bias and the validity of their policy advising.
It’s not consistent or coherent. If ed reformers object to a lack of transparency in public schools they shouldn’t be lobbying to exempt charters and publicly funded private schools from transparency regulation. If they object to school closures for covid they should also object when charter schools close for covid. If they object to schools not reporting or soft pedaling violent incidents with students that should also apply to the schools they promote and fund- charters and private schools.
Ohio gets more and more incoherent every year. The same people who are demanding public school students test more lobbied for and got an exemption to testing for publicly funded private schools. The same people who tell us they operate with “data” are more than willing to operate with NO data when funding private schools. It’s all about “great schools” until it’s not- then it’s about “choice” and quality goes out the window.
I think at some point they have to explain these blatant contradictions, which compound year over year and will only get more incoherent as they privatize more and more- because it sure looks like ideological, systemic bias against public entities and labor unions.
That first line you wrote is EPIC — especially after 20 long years of endless test-based reform invasions pushing anything but praise for public schools.
If your “movement” spent the last 6 months disrupting school board meetings and creating a panic around “CRT” can you really complain that schools aren’t focused on covid recovery? Should that lead to ANY examination or explanation? Or are we all just to pretend it didn’t happen now that covid is back?
A month ago these same people insisted that “CRT” was the top issue for public schools. I have whiplash. I can’t even decide why I should be bashing public schools today. For any and all reasons, apparently, depending on what the political operatives see as most effective.
How does this work advance the interests of public school students? That was the pitch at the outset, correct? That they would “improve public schools”. All we’ve gotten are fad driven gimmicks, testing, and a whole group of adults who work full time promoting, marketing and funding charters and vouchers. “Public school students” are rarely mentioned, unless it’s to tell them to switch to a charter or private school.
Can we please retire the negative connotation of “entitled”? People are entitled to things either because they are human (food, water, air, shelter, healthcare, education, etc.) or because they have earned/paid into it (livable wages, Social Security, etc.). This country would be a far better place if more people started demanding what they are entitled to.
Agreed.
Maybe we should use a different spelling for the negative connotation to indicate the difference between entitled (rightfully owed) and enTitled (believed owed because of ones family and other Titles)
Prince Andrew and his Queen mother are en-Titled , as are many of the folks who get into Schools like Harvard and Yale.
The person who paid into Social security their entire life is entitled to what they earned.
Throughout the country there are many public schools with teachers that believe every student deserves an opportunity to succeed. These teachers have close relationships with the students and many times their families, and they are responsive to the needs of the students. We rarely hear about it because teachers generally work behind the scenes. I was fortunate enough work in such a place.
One of the reasons I am so passionate about well resourced, professional public schools is that I know amazing outcomes are possible when the right, committed, caring teachers work together for the benefit of young people. It is not surprising that many of the achievers are immigrants. These young people have witnessed the horrors of political and economic strife that we can only imagine. Many of them understand they have been blessed with “a golden ticket,” and they want to make the most of their opportunity. Adversity is nothing new to them. They want to help their families both here and in their home country. It is no accident that a large numbers of small business owners are immigrants. Many of them know how to sacrifice, work and save for a better future.
I have seen many poor students overcome poverty in a single generation so I know it is still possible when students get the education and assistance they need. In addition to teaching, those teachers and some community members that spoke a foreign language and guidance counselors met at the high school with parents and students until 10 o’clock several evenings in order to fill out and file all the documents for college application, financial aid and scholarships. These teachers went above and beyond because they wanted to give these deserving young people every opportunity to have a better future. If you plant seeds, you may just get a garden, and we did. Defend and protect your public schools against corporate vandalism!
People like Melinda Gates and Bloomberg describe public education as broken for one reason, they want Main Street’s assets turned over to Wall Street and tech tyrants.
The overarching truth that Gates and Bloomberg don’t want told is that the public ed system produced a hard working, creative workforce that creates the GDP that Wall Street rips off for the richest 0.1%.
I’m sick of listening to Melinda Gates, who said not one word about her former hubby’s meetings with pedophilsnthropist Epstein until it came out in the news.
At which point Melinda claimed she had always had a problem with it.
I wish en-Titled clowns like Bill and Melinda Gates would just shut up.
And, slink away.
IMO, Melinda lives a pseudo version of an empowered adult. A case can be made that an authoritarian church and school that overtly discriminates against women results in women with odd behaviors e.g. snarky, childlike reactions to women with whom they disagree but, whom they see as equals in the 2nd class tier. In contrast, the women have timid or reverential reactions to men especially those that the church confers leadership status on, like husbands and men in the top levels of a hierarchy. Consider how long, how often and how visibly Melinda Gates and Maria Shriver suffered embarrassment and betrayal by their husbands while either defending them or remaining silent.
Fear of God’s disapproval is a potent deterrent to the expectation of both men and women that marriage should be between equal partners.
“Read about this school and ask yourself why Bill Gates is not trying to replicate it?”
I ask myself; “Why do people try to replicate educational policies and practices that are embedded in a localized context?”
Transplanting policy and practices from one locale to another most often leads to wasted time, effort and monies because the local contexts for each district/school is different. That fact also points to the importance of local control of schools and not state or federal control (in whatever fashion that may be).
That’s an excellent point.
The mere attempt to replicate something might actually miss the most important aspect, which might not be at all obvious and might actually reside in the community at large, as you indicate.
Replication is another one of those manufacturing ideas which, like standardization, should not be applied to education.
One could make a pretty good argument that the whole point of the school deform of the last two decades was to take a single idea (test driven schooling) and replicate it on a national scale.
Axis so often the case, I think the main problem is the terminology.
Rep!ication is the process of making copies.
It can be helpful to look at things that seem to work and to try to integrate those ideas into other
schools in other places, but that is quite different from “replication.
The polymerase chain reaction (pcr) is replication and I don’t think that is really what people want to do with schools.
I never understood why this would be newsworthy. There are brilliant or highly motivated low-income students in public schools everywhere. But the so-called liberal media bought into the false narratives pushed by charters that these students were virtually non-existent until the magic formula of charters created them.
I always wondered how much implicit racism plays a part.
When the media were fawning over lavishly funded and richly rewarded charter chains because of their test scores, I would point out that in the highest poverty-stricken Bronx school districts, 35% of the 3rd graders in public schools were testing at or above grade level, but those students were always invisible to reporters. Instead, those reporters wrote every story absolutely certain that a charter school that taught a tiny fraction of the students in a district was creating scholars that would not have otherwise existed.
I am certain that if a charter was serving white middle class students and had high attrition rates and was bragging about 99% proficiency rates on state tests, reporters would not embrace the lie that white students performing at grade level are so rare that this charter must have turned this group of students who would have been abject failures without that charter into “scholars”. The implicit racism of faux oversight agencies like the SUNY Charter Institute, and the reporters who cover education, is glaring.
So I am glad that finally these kinds of public magnet schools are getting some news coverage. They do good work. Unlike charters, they aren’t incentivized to lie and treat students poorly because “good results” will be magnified by a co-opted media and make the billionaires who generously subsidize their lavish salaries happy.
And it’s a shame that the discussions and public policy has been warped by the dishonesty and greed of the charters and their promoters.
NYCPSP, I well remember that you told us for years that there are brilliant children in every community, but they are ignored by the media, which was fawning over charter schools.
Diane,
It meant so much to me that you had this incredibly informative blog that also allowed me to mention those seemingly “invisible” students (and their dedicated teachers). I know I probably sounded like a broken record. But thank you so much for allowing me to express my views for all these years. And thank you for continuing this blog!
Here are the instructions on how to apply to the Downtown Magnets High School. (https://www.downtownmagnets.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=1039874&type=d&pREC_ID=2091442) The first step, of course, is to use your email address to create an account with LA Unified School District. “During the on-time application window, parents are awarded points based on numerous factors.” I could not easily find out how these points are awarded, but in any case the window to apply to the Downtown Magnets High School for September 2022 was October 1, 2021-November 12, 2021.
Would the folks here consider the requirement that parents have an email address, the early application deadline, and application process to be a substantial barrier to entry designed to cherry pick the best students?
Teachingeconomist,
Would you consider the similar requirements to enroll in charters to be a substantial barrier to entry designed to cherry pick the best students?
Every school with a lottery starts with an advantage. It is revealing to see what their lottery preferences are and whether – like Success Academy Charter Schools — that magnet school chose to drop priority for at-risk students because a questionable oversight board allowed them to change their location from an extremely poor district to one of the most affluent districts in NYC, and they wanted priority to go to the students lucky enough to live in that disproportionately affluent district.
I hope you will agree, Teachingeconomist, that if that magnet declared it necessary to reserve priority for the students who lived in that affluent district and specifically took action to go back on their previous promise to give priority to at-risk kids, that would certainly demonstrate what cherry picking is. Has any LA magnet done the same reprehensible thing a certain NYC charter school did when they located in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in NYC and dropped their promise to give lottery priority to at-risk kids?
Teachingeconomist, would you agree that if Downtown Magnets was claiming it was teaching the same students found in failing public schools but turning them into high performing scholars, and would you agree that if Downtown Magnets was lobbying to cut money from public schools that didn’t have lotteries and claiming those schools should be able to do what they are doing, it would be reprehensible?
Teachingeconomist, I wonder if nearly 50% of the 9th graders who began at Downtown Magnets have disappeared in 4 years and aren’t graduating with their class. Would you agree that is a red flag that the magnet is cherry picking? Would you agree that is a red flag that a charter is cherry picking?
Just trying to figure out whether you are a Liz Cheney (conservative but recognizes the difference between the truth and a lie) or a Jim Jordan.
Not enough attention is paid to the fact that it is the parents themselves that do the cherry-picking through self-selection….in effect, we allow those parents who know how the system works and are aware that Magnet classrooms run more smoothly to Choose into better education for their children….my question is Why?….I’m not saying we should to do away with all Magnets, but we would be better off as a Whole if worked together, learned together, and played together.
The main way to get points is to already be in a magnet. After that, demographic factors intended to foster integration are in play.
Two examples from my personal experience: When I was a student in the 1980s, from a relatively wealthy, white family, I attended LAUSD magnets in relatively non-wealthy, non-white neighborhoods. My classmates were economically diverse. Now, I teach at a school in an extremely wealthy, very white neighborhood. Some of my students attended Zoom classes last year from yachts in the Marina. My magnet students are diverse and from downtown, Inglewood, and South Los Angeles. LAUSD magnets are public schools that decrease segregation, in my experience.
This LA Times article is a rare gem about a fantastic public school. Don’t drink the Haterade.
Actually, a lot of our kids apply themselves, with the help of their middle school teachers. It’s an extremely simple form, and kids from the poorest performing schools have the best shot at getting in. The application is available in several languages, and until Covid, we had showcase nights where parents could attend and apply on the spot, plus we attended many of the local district “magnet fairs”. Until recently, we would always go into summer short of the numbers we needed to keep our staff, and scramble like mad to find kids in August. We still end up accepting kids who applied late. Every year. So my response to your comment is that yes, it’s definitely an imperfect system, but it’s not as exclusionary as it sounds.
I cheer for Nick, Emily, and Kenji, but can’t help think that they would also be successful at their neighborhood Public schools. And I wonder how much better our neighborhood Public schools would be if, instead of feeding into the idea that choice is the answer in Public education, we brought our communities together under one roof. I teach in LAUSD. Magnets are a more accountable and more transparent version of Charters; they are not the solution. They have grown in number to a point where it seems if we have a 2-track system of Public education in LAUSD. I believe this to be a zero-sum game, and I wait for the day when newspapers, politicians, and our new Superintendent Carvalho can talk about what a great job the neighborhood Public schools are doing.
Yes! Public schools deserve more support and choice is not support, but LAUSD magnets are public schools. They promote integration. Magnets are governed by the elected school board and collective bargaining agreements. Downtown Magnet High does not have selective admissions. I agree that there should simply be local, public community schools without adding to traffic and pollution by traveling across the county for specialized programs, but magnets are public schools that do not detract from the funds of LAUSD or UTLA.
I don’t necessarily agree with your view about magnets but thank you for this post because you bring up exactly the issues that should be discussed.
Magnets are not presenting themselves as the “solution”. But this country needs to have a real reckoning about how to address the needs of severely at-risk kids who don’t come to school “ready to learn”. Charters just dump them.
Every school has behavioral problems, even the most exclusive private schools. But the schools that work have a large critical mass of students who are ready to learn, and a much smaller percentage (in some charters a non-existent) population of students who need a lot of attention and intervention.
Even in a small class, if 5 or 6 students are acting out, the other 10 are going to lose out unless the students who disrupt their learning can be removed from the classroom. And if 2/3 or even half of the students are removed from the class, then what happens to them? In essence, you have just created a magnet school by different means.
And sometimes in those schools, the “good” teachers are those who are martinets and create enough fear to stop many disturbances, but don’t necessarily create an engaging and interesting learning experience for the students who don’t need that kind of over the top classroom discipline. Those students lose out on good teachers whose strength may be how well they get students to engage with the subject — but only if those students want to engage. If their parents seek out magnets, it isn’t that surprising.
I always wished large urban public schools would try this experiment: Any kid who really disrupts the class (not simply fidgets, but makes it extremely difficult for the teacher to teach the others) is immediately removed from class to sit in a different class with adult supervision. They would have access to on-line classes on the computer, which they may or may not take advantage of.
But my idea wouldn’t just warehouse those kids. Those kids would be told at the very moment that they were removed from the class that they would be welcome back to the class with open arms immediately as long as they didn’t interfere with the learning of other kids in the class. In other words, those kids would be told they could sit in the back of the room and not participate or do classwork or homework, but they were still welcome to be there as long as they didn’t disrupt the other kids. They wouldn’t be labeled, but all students would understand that the condition of their remaining in the class was to allow the students who wanted to learn to learn.
I suspect a surprising number of difficult students would want to return to class and would be willing to refrain from disrupting the class in order to remain. (They would be given multiple chances).
But there would also be significant resources to address the needs of those who could not remain in the class. Why couldn’t they refrain from disrupting the class? Were they suffering from an abusive home, or from severe anxiety or from a health issue or acting out because they were extremely hungry? Some of those could be addressed so those students could return to the classrooms without disrupting other students, while others might have difficulties that require something else.
That’s my pipe dream. Right now our system does a version of that through lottery/magnet/charter schools, where those students are rare enough to get attention or are simply asked to leave.
What was most evil about the charter movement, in my opinion, was their big lie that their “no excuses” discipline was all that was needed, even though it seems that “no excuses” worked best as the excuse for dumping the very same students that public schools have so much trouble figuring out how to teach.
Comprehensive high schools also have students that can achieve at high levels. They serve all students and have qualified teachers that can provide a variety of services from advanced placement to special education.
Those comprehensive high schools are also criticized because they don’t serve the needs of struggling learners — who are generally more economically disadvantaged — as well as they serve other students.
Comprehensive high schools are good but come with a different set of issues. They aren’t a magic bullet. The divide between “honors” or “AP” or “IB” students and those who are on a much less academic track often reveals socio-economic disparities as well. But these are all issues that are very important to discuss, and the lies promoted by charters make it virtually impossible.
Bill Gates and the other billionaire kleptocrats don’t care what works or doesn’t work in public education. All they care about is profiting from the public sector’s dollars. These greedy vampires only want more ways to increase their already bloated wealth and power. As long as they get what they want, they ignore all the suffering and destruction they’ve left in their wake.
I have a Dream today, as I read, “71% of those who applied to a UC campus were admitted, including 19 of the 56 applicants to UC Berkeley — a higher admission rate than at elite Los Angeles private schools such as Harvard-Westlake and Marlborough.” Berkeley is no longer requiring standardized tests for admissions, a win for public school students and for society on the whole. Public school students earn deserved privilege when the playing field is even. That is true meritocracy, not what MLK called socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for the poor. It is time for standardized testing to be cast aside so that this country can begin the work needed to revive and rebuild democracy and the American Dream.
Standardized tests mean nothing in the real world. It is what people do with their talents and skills and how hard they are willing to work that matters more.
When colonialism is the goal, the richest 0.1% scheme to shower advantages on schools that admit based on legacy.
From the very beginning , standardized tests were meant to separate and rank individuals.
Back in the old days, cave dwelling Neanderthals had a standardized test called the SGT, the standard grunting test (called that by later humans, not Neanderthals, of course), which alleged to identify the most qualified grunters in a clan for further gruntucation.
Some test advocates of today (most notably College Board head David Coleman) claim that the SGT (specifically the grunting analogies section of the test) was the primary thing that drove the development of language in humans.
Praises for Teresa Watanabe.
YES!!!
The most important thing you can teach to a kid:
Learning is something you undertake, not something you undergo.