The Answer - A blog about Education, Preparation, and Commitment.

CW-39 Features YES Prep

October 13, 2010 by Jeremy Jones

HOUSTON - Justice Hoyle is a student at the YES Prep School's Gulfton campus. The ninth grader said she escaped the dangers of her old public school in Southwest Houston where not much was expected of her and she feared being shot. "You had a choice: You can not go to school [or] you can go to school; You can not go to class [or] you can go to class," Hoyle said. "It was all up to you."

Students like Hoyle are a focus of the new documentary Waiting for Superman. It is directed by David Guggenheim who was behind An Inconvenient Truth. The buzz surrounding the film promises it will do for education what Al Gore's project did for the environment.

Charter schools like Houston's YES Prep are spotlighted in the film as the answer to many of the educational system's problems. The eight-campus Houston program randomly admits students in a lottery system. Potential students do not take an admissions test or have to go through a behavioral background check.

The school said its waiting list is as large as its overall current enrollment. That is due in part to a high graduation and college admittance rates for students. The school has received lots of attention in its 15 year run. Most recently it received a $1 million donation from Oprah's "Angel" giveaway.

YES Prep classes are more rigorous than average with longer school days and more time at school for students. Teachers are expected to be available late into the evening. "The requirements of a teacher [are] very different," sixth grade teacher Ashleigh Fritz said. "I know at YES, I have a cell phone and my students can call me up until 9 p.m. every night." Meanwhile Waiting for Superman takes a very hard line against public schools. Critics say the film is written to play on audience emotions and is not based in reality with its attacks on the public system.

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