Unlocking the Story of Locke High School

Don’t miss Steve Lopez’s column today on the changes at Locke High School.

This is absolutely, positively the best education story in town, and one of the most watched education stories in the nation. If anyone had any sense, there would be a reporter at Locke during the entire messy transformation to do a long multi-part insider piece about the rich human—and institutional—drama that accompanies the unprecedented struggle to try to turn a large, violence-plagued and failing inner city school into a successful charter.

And no one’s doing that story. Not the LA Times. Not Los Angeles Magazine. Not the Daily News (which used to have good education coverage). Not the LA Weekly.

(Maybe everybody’s still tied up researching surfing fashion.)

I really, really wish I could do it. (But I’ve got a book to write, a blog to run, an MFA to complete, and classes to teach at 2 universities—plus there’s that sleep thingy.)

Kudos to Lopez for at least doing a thorough column. Here are some clips:

It’s almost 8 a.m. on 111th Street in Watts, and here’s a scene that could make a cynic faint:

A teenage boy is hustling across the street toward Locke High School while tucking a white shirt into his khaki uniform pants. He wants to pass inspection at the gate.

I’m visiting what might as well be called Dropout High to see if things have changed in the early going since Green Dot Public Schools took it over from Los Angeles Unified. Too soon to tell, for sure. We’re only into the third week of summer school, which tends to be mellower than the regular school year and serves only 700 kids instead of the usual 3,000.

The first thing I see after I park and walk onto campus are roughly three dozen tardy kids lined up against a fence just a couple of minutes after the hour, with Assistant Principal Charles Boulden giving them what for. On a megaphone, no less.

[SNIP]

Zeus Cubias, who has taught at Locke for 14 years after graduating from the school and going on to UC Santa Barbara, says the early indicators are encouraging. There were skeptics who said the uniforms alone would doom the experiment. Not only has there been compliance, but only a couple of the boys seem to feel bold enough to test the ban on sagging pants.

But will higher pockets mean higher grades?

“Part of it is setting the right tone,” says Cubias. Right off the bat, you step onto campus knowing there’s control, discipline and high expectations, and the reality is that’s something most kids wanted.

“We had to step up our game, too,” Cubias says. “I’m wearing a tie every day now.”

Cubias is one of the Locke teachers who originally felt insulted by Green Dot chief Steve Barr’s claim that he could do a better job than L.A. Unified. Cubias spoke up about it, telling Barr he and other teachers had made strides despite great challenges.

“Steve Barr’s response was that that was exactly the kind of passion he was looking for,” says Cubias, who became a convert during the long, acrimonious battle that ended with Green Dot winning support for a takeover.

When school starts in September, only 40 of last year’s 120 teachers will still be there. Some left of their own accord; others weren’t hired back.

[SNIP]

In many ways, it’s the antithesis of L.A. Unified, the listing Battleship Bureaucracy, with its staggering dropout rate and glacial pace when it comes to change.

Locke High represents Green Dot’s biggest risk and greatest challenge yet.

It didn’t start a new school with students who chose to attend, as it has in the past. It adopted a massive dysfunctional mess, and if it can turn things around, maybe the lessons can be broadly applied.

[SNIP]

While Cubias is escorting me across campus, he suddenly stops and points to something that can’t be seen.

“Serenity,” he says.

That’s something new. Teachers are letting students out for brief breaks, but the uniformed kids are orderly and quiet. Teacher Tobin Paap says this is a dramatic difference from his Locke teaching experience from 1999 to 2001, after which he left the profession, burned out and demoralized.

“I felt like it was at the height of the craziness,” says Paap, 34, who briefly went home to Boston to work for a suburban YMCA. He needed to decompress after the madness at Locke.

“There were hundreds of ditched kids who’d hang out. They’d sit right here,” he says, showing me the ramp to the bungalow that was his classroom back then. “They smoked weed, played radios, spray-painted the walls and climbed on the roof.”

I figure he’s kidding, or at least exaggerating.

Not in the least, Paap says. He documented and reported all of it, but nothing ever happened to the young thugs.

Read the rest. It’ll cheer you up. What has happened thus far ain’t no guarantee. Right now there are 700 kids on campus. In the fall the student population will jump to nearly four times that number. But everybody I talk with seems to see big glimmers of progress wherever they look….and that is very good news.