Word: teche
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Only a decade ago, Stonewall overlooked a two-lane road in a rural county of cattle farms and Civil War battlefields. Today, Manassas is a bustling exurb of Washington, and Stonewall abuts a shopping mall with high-tech neighbors such as Lockheed Martin. Commuters face a 90-min. drive to Washington, making attendance at concerts and teachers' conferences problematic. And high schoolers at Stonewall, like those everywhere, are prone to reply to "What happened at school today?" with a sullen "Not much...
...Tech had received Fs on the state's report card for four consecutive years. Three-quarters of the students who began as freshmen never made it to graduation. Fewer than 25% of sophomores passed the state's basic-skills exam in math. Failure had become routine, expected and excused. After all, three-fourths of Fox Tech students are poor enough to receive subsidized lunches. More than half the students work at night to help support their families. Nearly 100 have their own children to support...
Still, the district thought Fox Tech could do better, and unleashed what educators call the "neutron bomb" of school reform: it "disestablished" the school and forced all employees to reapply for their jobs. New principal Joanne Cockrell, an intense former math teacher and basketball coach, rehired a third of the faculty and brought in 70 new teachers. All had to be willing, she says, "to give up their private time." Cockrell instituted a strict dress code and in her first year dragged 250 kids and their parents into truancy court. She also split the school into four specialized programs, each...
...results have been dramatic. This year 92% of Fox Tech students passed the state's math exam--the best performance in the district. The dropout rate--15% in 1995--is down to 4%. The old Fox Tech literally smelled from garbage left to rot in corners and from homeless men who used the fountain as a toilet. Now the school is spotless. Open house, which used to draw perhaps 60 parents, regularly attracts 600--spurred, no doubt, by Cockrell's having dispatched faculty to knock on doors...
Cockrell has even managed to co-opt, through private meetings, the gangs that used to terrorize Fox Tech's hallways. Carlos Reyes, a self-described former hoodlum, credits Fox Tech with turning his life around. Now a junior and a B student, he encourages his "crew" to keep their feuds off campus...