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Building Smart Education Systems

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Communities building smart education systems



Green Dot Public Schools
Los Angeles, CA
Parents, students, and community leaders work together to reform their schools

The Entry Point to a Smart Education System

We've gone from a model school system to a broken school system. So our job is to find a new model that is clearly different and successful and then create demand around the city that all public schools look like that. . . . When teachers, parents, students, and community leaders work together, bold reform can happen.
— Steve Barr, founder and C E O, Green Dot Public Schools

  View video [2 minutes]

Their Story

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, a district that graduates only half its students, Green Dot, a local nonprofit organization, has opened twelve Ánimo charter high schools to demonstrate a better way for high schools to prepare students for college, leadership, and life. In 2007, US News & World Report ranked Green Dot's first school, Ánimo Leadership, the thirty-first best high school in the United States.

Green Dot creates small high schools (with five more opening in the fall of 2008) that hold high expectations for every student. Families are encouraged and expected to participate in the life of the school, and school buildings stay open late for after-school and community activities. The model works. Green Dot schools graduate 80 percent of their students, and two-thirds of last year's graduating class were accepted to four-year colleges.

According to the organization's founder, Steve Barr, Green Dot's mission is “to take research and development from our charter high schools and couple that with political will to create systematic school improvement in Los Angeles.”

Creating Political Will

To create political will, Green Dot formed the Los Angeles Parents Union (LAPU) to enable parents in the city to organize and work collectively to demand a high-quality education for their children. The LAPU is now an independent grassroots organization that pushes educators, administrators, and public officials to improve schools. LAPU's current membership exceeds 4,000 parents in twenty communities--both working class and middle-class areas--in and around Los Angeles.

LAPU developed an innovative program called “Parent University” in which parents gain skills to communicate with teachers and administrators to advocate for their children and use organizing tools such as primers on graduation requirements and school-quality scores, among other supports. The effectiveness of Parent University and the sheer number of parents attending serve as examples of the changing face of human capital in Los Angeles education reform. Parents are gaining both expertise and a voice to push for positive changes for their children and their communities.

Building Partnerships

At one of Green Dot's high schools, a large proportion of students had parents who were members of Local 1877 of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). A partnership then evolved between Green Dot and SEIU's national organization, as well as its local affiliate. SEIU has embraced LAPU's reform agenda because their members' children are the main victims of failing urban schools. SEIU has provided LAPU with both funding and technical assistance from experienced organizers. In turn, SEIU is interested in exploring how Green Dot's model and LAPU's organizing efforts can drive school reforms in other urban districts across the country.

Work with the Annenberg Institute for School Reform

Green Dot leaders, LAPU Executive Director Ryan Smith, and the president of an SEIU local in Chicago, participated in the 2008 Emerging Knowledge Forum. The panel led a discussion of Green Dot's efforts and their implications for building smart education systems in other communities, and Steve Barr and Ryan Smith participated in a discussion of building grassroots power.

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