The Academy at DPHS

Changing students’ lives

By Leah Etling on Jan 18, 2013 in Giving, People

A Dos Pueblos High School program that targets students at risk of dropping out of high school has proven its success, graduating 100 percent of the students who participated from 2009-2012.

As a result, The Academy at Dos Pueblos High School  is expanding, and the 32 students currently participating in the focused, supportive education experience will be joined by a second cohort of sophomores in Fall 2013.

More often than not, their school life was being made challenging by difficult home lives, lack of support for their studies and sometimes conflict.  Of the 32 students who were part of the Academy’s first class, most admitted they were at risk of leaving school altogether if they stayed on a traditional track, said Kelly Choi, Academy Director. Others were likely to have become involved with gangs or drugs.

“The idea was to embrace these kids and not let them fall off the radar. They need a connection here at school to make them interested in staying at school,” Choi said. The 32 Academy students stay with their classmates for all of their classes, and have the same teachers for their core classes (math, English, science and social studies) during all three years of the program.

The idea of sticking with the same group of 32 for three years is unique in a high school setting, where students typically bounce from group to group in classes, clubs, sports teams, and social settings.  The Academy’s “school family” brings support and accountability, which the students may not have at home. And it requires mediating past personality conflicts so that the group can stay cohesive, a valuable life skill.

For the recently graduated seniors, it was the part of the program “that they hated the most in the beginning, but loved the most by the end,” noted Choi, a math teacher.

The five teachers and one counselor currently participating in the Academy are led by Choi, who along with English teacher Heather Magner and counselor Scott Guttentag developed a plan to seek out students whose grades, attendance records and disciplinary infractions indicated that they were struggling as high school freshmen. Those offered the opportunity to join the program voluntarily decide to participate and embark on a high school experience unique to that of their peers.

They are mentored by older students who are excelling at Dos Pueblos, and often introduced to extracurricular opportunities by their mentors. Each Academy student participates in a sport or elective of their choice. A focused study period where they can get help with homework is part of each school day. Counseling is offered, both in a group setting and one-on-one with a licensed therapist. As they get closer to graduation, the students are introduced to vocational opportunities to get ideas about future careers. Team building activities help them trust one another.

The results are evident. Not only did all of the first class of participants graduate, but 88 percent are now pursuing higher education at Santa Barbara City College. A few turned internship opportunities they procured through the Academy into jobs. And with huge drops in disciplinary infractions and big jumps in GPA’s, data shows that the approach works. “The students’ grade point averages rose from a 1.41 to a 2.89, going from F’s to C’s and B’s, in more rigorous, college-prep classes.  Students’ scores on the California Standards Tests improved in all subject matters.  Discipline referrals have been reduced to 12, over a 95% improvement of their pre-Academy level.  All of the students attended school regularly,” Choi wrote in a grant proposal.

The Academy teachers see something equally meaningful, though harder to quantify,  in the attitude and behavioral changes of their students.

“It’s much harder for us to express in data what happens to the kids and how they have changed how they feel about themselves,” Choi said.  When it came time to recruit the Academy’s second class, the teachers made no pitch at all to the new class members – they let their first group of students do all the talking. Some of those students have already come back to campus to speak to the current sophomores about their experiences, and they also still use their teachers as resources and sounding boards. They have also acted as translators during parents’ nights when English to Spanish interpretation was needed.  Thirty-five percent of the Academy’s students live in a home where another language besides English is spoken, and 55% of the students are socio-economically disadvantaged.

As the program expands, Choi explains that the type of teacher ideally suited for the Academy is one who will go the extra mile to connect and support their students. It requires taking on an additional workload and spending more time building relationships with students than a typical class might. She would like the teachers involved to receive extra compensation for their efforts, but such a pay structure is not yet in place.

“I just felt like it was a much more purposeful way of being a teacher,” she said of her motivations for pursuing the program. “Math is really important, but I was going beyond that and thinking that there are other things for teenagers to learn, and I’m willing to be part of that and support them and help them.”

Not all of the expenses entailed in the program’s scope, including the therapy sessions and off-campus team building activities, are funded through the high school’s budget, so Choi has written grants to help offset those costs. Yardi is among the companies and individuals who have donated funds in support of the Academy.

The programs’ success thus far has brought it into the spotlight in the Santa Barbara Unified School District, which is looking at the model to see if it could be successfully duplicated on other high school campuses.