Earning Their Keep

A new breed of urban Catholic high school asks disadvantaged kids to work for their tuition.

Laura Vanderkam from the August/September 2008 issue

(Page 2 of 3)

These start-ups are all committed to enrolling only low-income kids; network-wide, 72 percent of students qualify for the federal free or reduced-price lunch program. The schools are also committed to sending the vast majority of their graduates to college; of the 318 students who graduated from Cristo Rey Network schools in 2007, 316 were accepted to a two- or four-year college. That’s better than 99 percent. (Nationwide, just 67 percent of students who graduate from high school start college shortly thereafter, and in big cities that figure can be much lower. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley held a press conference last spring to boast that the Chicago public schools had sent almost half of the class of 2007 to two- or four-year colleges.)

Such statistics make the staff of Christ the King Prep optimistic, although they still face plenty of challenges. Few things work right in Newark. In April a jury convicted former mayor Sharpe James on five counts of fraud. The public middle schools that supply many of Christ the King Prep’s students are chronically failing; some Newark schools face escalating sanctions under the federal No Child Left Behind Act for failing to show adequate progress for seven years in a row. The district is neck-deep in improvement programs these days, and indeed 46 percent of 11th-graders passed the mathematics portion of New Jersey’s High School Proficiency Assessment (HSPA) in 2007, up from 29 percent in 2003. Yet 46 percent is still frustratingly low, and that figure doesn’t include the scores of kids who have already dropped out by the 11th grade. It is also averaged over a district that includes a few decent magnet schools. In 2007 only 14 percent of students at Newark’s run-of-the-mill Malcolm X Shabazz High School were deemed at or above proficient on the mathematics section of the HSPA.

Activists sometimes like to blame poor school performances on a lack of funding, but this argument is simply laughable in Newark. According to the Census Bureau report Public Education Finances: 2006, Newark spends $21,295 on each of its 41,857 pupils. Across America, the average school spends about half that. Costs are often higher in cities, but the New York City schools spend just $14,951 per pupil, according to the Census Bureau; Washington, D.C., spends $13,446.

Newark is dangerous too. In 1996 Money magazine calculated that Newark was America’s least safe city of more than 100,000 people. Crime rates have improved since then, but many Christ the King students knew the three college students who were murdered, execution-style, on a playground in August 2007. The school’s first benefit may be that it is safe and welcoming.

Such places are rare in inner-city children’s lives. Ed Glynn, the Jesuit priest who serves as Christ the King Prep’s president, chastised one student during orientation for untucking his shirt upon leaving for the day. The student turned around and told him, “I live in the projects. I’ll get beat up.” Another student’s mother called one day last spring and said to tell her son to go to his sister’s house after school; there had been a shooting outside his own house and the police were swarming.

Many of Christ the King’s 89 students arrived unprepared for high school work. James Cochran, a social studies teacher, assigned an essay about ancient Mesopotamia around the third week of school. “I got kids who gave me Wikipedia articles printed out,” he says. “They didn’t make any effort to conceal the fact that it was a Wikipedia article. It’s not like they were plagiarizing and trying to hide it. They just thought that was how you did a report.” They didn’t understand that they were supposed to generate original thoughts and analysis. “They didn’t know how to think,” Cochran says. “I had to teach them how to think.” By April, though, his ninth-graders were debating whether Emperor Augustus was better for Rome than the previous republican set-up. (Interestingly, most thought he was.)

‘They Don’t Treat Me Like a 14-Year-Old’

Placing high demands on kids reminds them that they are expected to do things with their lives. But talk to students at Cristo Rey schools, and they tell you that, for all their hours spent graphing algebraic equations, it is their jobs that get them thinking most about the future. In their gleaming office buildings, they see men and women who earn enough to afford nice, safe homes. They see how people set priorities and deadlines and execute projects. It’s easy to mock corporate America, but compared with the chaos of inner-city life, a cubicle with your name on it can seem like heaven.

“I like my job a lot, since when I grow up I want to be a defense attorney,” says Andrew Emanuel, a Christ the King freshman who works at the Newark branch of the law firm Kirkpatrick & Lockhart, Nicholson, Graham. “I really enjoy socializing and conversing with most of the attorneys at my job. I ask them what’s their motivation in life, and what keeps them going.” They in turn tell him to stay in school and do his homework. It’s standard advice, but it means more coming from people in his intended profession.

Cristo Rey students feel needed by their employers. When Christ the King Prep board chairman Neal Jasey goes around recruiting businesses to hire student teams, he mentions the P.R. and employee morale benefits of having young people around, but adds “I do argue that this is an economically sensible thing to do: $25,000 for a team of four kids—if you have that kind of [clerical] work—is a pretty reasonable cost.” It’s a win-win proposition; at full enrollment, earned income (which includes temp stipends and tuition) is supposed to account for 85 percent of a Cristo Rey school’s operating budget. That’s sustainable in a way that depending on church fund raising is not.

The kids are fully accountable for their performance at work. Christ the King Prep asked several students to leave this year because of difficulties with their employers. “They weren’t getting the job done at work,” says Principal Kevin Cuddihy. “And if you can’t work, you can’t pay the tuition, so you can’t come back. It’s that simple. Economic realities are harsh when applied to 14-year-olds, but that’s the market forces at work here.”

Largely because of these expectations, Cristo Rey kids are more polished and polite than even well-to-do teenagers. Each school holds a training camp in the summer to teach incoming freshmen how to behave in a professional environment. These young people shake hands. They look you in the eye. They know how to file and fax, and which fork to use if the boss offers to take them out to lunch.

They do a good job for their employers. Across the network, 92 percent of students receive an “outstanding” or “good” rating from their supervisors, and 87 percent of employers re-up. The employers also do well for the students, giving them contacts and experience that, unlike the McDonald’s-type jobs kids might otherwise hold, send résumés to the top of the pile. In Chicago, participating employers include Citadel Investment Group, McKinsey & Co., and the Office of the Attorney General. In New York, they include Ernst & Young, Goldman Sachs, and the New York Supreme Court. Abiezer Mendez, a recent graduate of the New York school, worked at JP Morgan Chase during the school year to pay his tuition. Last spring, the firm offered him a scholarship to Fordham University and internships for the duration of his college career. This package was offered with the understanding that this son of a building superintendent will most likely work for JP Morgan Chase after graduation. The connection between school and a future career can’t get clearer than that.

Even if students don’t plan to work for their employers or in a particular industry over the long term, the simple experience of being around caring adults helps kids have an optimistic outlook. Sol Mary Cotto, a Christ the King Prep student, works at Newark’s Broadway House, a residence for people with HIV/AIDS. “They don’t treat me like a 14-year-old,” she says of the staff. “They treat me like I’m supposed to be treated.” Rather than do another Secret Santa gift exchange this year, Broadway House’s employees donated the money to Christ the King Prep to buy books. Cotto was thrilled to learn her co-workers had done this. It showed she was part of the team. Even wealthy teenagers could benefit from this kind of self-esteem boost.

Of course, the Cristo Rey model isn’t the answer to all of America’s school woes. For starters, no one has to attend Cristo Rey schools. Given that school is compulsory up to age 16 or 17 in many states, requiring work from public school students brushes close to constitutional problems. After all, the 13th Amendment allows “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude” except as punishment for a crime—though it’s not clear that labor for a business is any more “involuntary servitude” than requiring students to come to school in the first place. Some public schools require students to volunteer for a certain number of hours in order to graduate. That has not been terribly controversial, but having students man soup kitchens is probably an easier sell to the public than asking kids to file and fax for a private employer.

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Washing My Hands « Incessant Dissent links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:

…government, reform our their terrible education system, and allow everyone to share the joy of marriage equally. We Maine is one of ten states that don’t allow charter schools, despite mountains of evidence that charters improve education across demographics, helps alleviate the black-white achievement gap, and lower costs.  The education monopoly is unjustifiable.  The teacher’s unions don’t serve…