Nurturing Seeds of College Success

What child would give up a short walk to middle school and gladly ride a bus for 15 miles each way? Hugo Castrejon would. And what student would willingly tack an extra 30 minutes of classroom time onto his day--plus that round-trip bus haul? John M. Kennedy Jr. would.

These two San Diego boys are eager to sacrifice time that might otherwise go to playing video games or shooting baskets to become part of an ambitious experiment on the campus of UC San Diego.

They and 148 other low-income students across San Diego County were chosen by lottery to become seedlings, as it were, in an unusual sort of educational hothouse that will sprout Sept. 7 amid the seaside campus’ abundant eucalyptus trees.

The hothouse is the Preuss School, a new university-sponsored charter school designed to groom needy middle schoolers--and eventually high school students--for the rigors of California’s elite colleges.

“We’re trying to deal with a seemingly intractable problem,” said Cecil Lytle, a provost at UC San Diego and a driving force behind the on-campus school.

The problem has been the inability of California’s public schools to bring disadvantaged and minority students up to speed academically so that they can secure spots at the increasingly competitive University of California campuses and other prestigious institutions. When it comes to admissions to University of California schools, low-income, urban students have never approached parity with their more affluent peers. Since the mid-1980s, the percentage of low-income students who have enrolled in and graduated from UC schools has steadily declined.

In 1998, the first year in which the UC system banned race and ethnicity as criteria for acceptance, admissions of disadvantaged minority students to UC San Diego plunged by more than one-third.

Meanwhile, competition for freshman seats has grown apace. UC San Diego turned away 19,000 applicants for this fall’s freshman class. The average SAT score for those admitted jumped to 1,303, and the weighted grade-point average (with extra credit for Advanced Placement courses) rose to 4.05.

The University of California Board of Regents has encouraged campuses to reach into middle and high schools to help prepare students so that the UC student body can better reflect California’s racially and economically diverse population.

That has given rise to a variety of efforts to identify promising students and shepherd them into enrichment programs. The system’s eight undergraduate campuses are spending $140 million annually on outreach--more than double what they spent when affirmative action was firmly entrenched.

University administrators have been slow to recognize that one way to ensure a strong pipeline of qualified candidates is to get involved during students’ younger, formative years. That realization is translating into a number of innovative efforts to mix primary and secondary school education with a rich university culture.

Innovative Efforts in a University Setting

According to UC San Diego’s proposal for the new college preparatory school, more than 100 universities throughout the country have sponsored schools with similar purposes. Most serve prosperous students, often the children of faculty, such as those at the University of Chicago and Hunter College in New York City.

Others, however, are aimed at helping the less privileged. Frustrated with the mediocre results coming from Detroit public schools, Wayne State University created a middle school that was Michigan’s first charter school. San Diego State is a partner in a charter school opening next month that eventually will attract students in kindergarten through 12th grade. USC is also exploring the feasibility of launching a charter school.

The University of Pennsylvania is backing a public school (not a charter) that will serve its disadvantaged neighborhood of West Philadelphia. The school, set to open in 2001, will eventually draw 700 students in pre-kindergarten through eighth grade. The university is committing to an annual operating subsidy of as much as $700,000 for at least 10 years, said Nancy Streim, associate dean of the college’s Graduate School of Education.

UCLA has a laboratory school on campus with a diverse mix of students in kindergarten through sixth grade, but that school, the Corinne A. Seeds University Elementary School, charges tuition. Tuition is charged on a sliding scale, with some disadvantaged youngsters attending at no cost to their families.

Lytle, a music professor who in his spare time records Beethoven piano sonatas, views the Preuss School as a remedy and a model. In addition to helping prepare students for four years of college, a key goal is to identify teaching methods that work for disadvantaged students and then to share them with other teachers and principals throughout the San Diego area.

To be eligible to attend Preuss (which rhymes with Joyce), students must meet three requirements:

* They must qualify for the federal program that offers free or reduced-price lunch in public schools.

* Neither parent can have graduated from a four-year college.

* They must demonstrate academic potential and community involvement.

Students, who will wear a uniform of khaki pants and maroon or navy polo shirts, were nominated for the lottery by parents, teachers and principals. John M. Kennedy Sr. heard about the school while working as a cook in a UC San Diego cafeteria and urged John Jr. to apply. He was among more than 500 who did.

“It’s a great opportunity on a college campus,” said Kennedy Sr. “Just to be in that environment would help a lot of kids.”

Students and their families will get a taste of campus life when they attend an orientation this weekend.

The school was named in recognition of a $5-million gift from Peter Preuss, a member of the UC Board of Regents, and his family. Preuss, a native of Germany, made a fortune in technology in the San Diego area. A $2.5-million donation came from the Walton Family Foundation, which was created by Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton and his wife, Helen. Additional funds have come from other prominent businesspeople and philanthropists. Lytle said the school is $1 million shy of its $13-million start-up goal.

UC San Diego donated the land for the new school complex. The San Diego Unified School District will provide bus transportation and the usual per-student allotment of funds.

The school will open in temporary classrooms but is scheduled to move next fall to an eight-acre parcel on the East Campus, east of Interstate 5, where construction has begun on a permanent complex.

Students and grades will be added each year until Preuss reaches its capacity of 700 students in grades six through 12. The first graduating class will finish in 2004.

The school day and school year will be longer than in district schools. Class periods will be extended to allow more in-depth instruction.

Excited, Scared, Happy, Relieved

That suits 12-year-old Hugo Castrejon, an accomplished artist and math whiz who has been attending Wilson Middle School in San Diego. Facing the prospect of going into seventh grade with a group of 50 strangers, Hugo professes to be excited “but also kind of scared.”

His mother, Arva Reinicke, couldn’t be happier or more relieved. To put him at ease, she told him: “Can you imagine going to a school where the kids want to be there, there are no gangs, and everything is state of the art, where you don’t have to worry about being shot or your lunch money being stolen?”

A mother of three teenagers, Tina Smith views the new school as a way to engage her bright 13-year-old son, Lamar.

“Lamar has to be challenged,” she said. “If not, he’s bored. I hope this school gives the kids a broader sense of what they can accomplish.”

In the early 1990s, Lytle and a UC San Diego colleague, sociology professor Hugh Mehan, began discussing the notion of a school that would enrich the lives of disadvantaged youngsters. Both men were opposed to school vouchers, which allow the use of taxpayer funds to cover tuition at private and parochial schools. Instead, they backed charter schools, helping to write the state Charter School Act, which became law in 1992.

Mehan is now director of UC San Diego’s new Center for Research in Educational Equity, Assessment and Teaching Excellence, established to coordinate the university’s efforts in education for kindergarten through 12th grade.

The charter school law allows schools to be freed from the burden of most education regulations in exchange for accepting greater responsibility for student achievement.

In informal gatherings, Lytle and Mehan talked up the idea of an on-campus charter school to the San Diego community. But when the school was proposed formally to the faculty, it was voted down, in large part because some thought it wasn’t the college’s job to educate middle and high school students. Lytle resigned in protest.

UC San Diego’s chancellor, Robert Dynes, urged a task force to revise the proposal. The new version passed muster, and Lytle agreed to stay on as a provost and as chairman of the new school’s board.

Now, professors and researchers from many disciplines, from linguistics to supercomputing to social science, are offering their support and expertise.

Recognizing that students might well be years behind when they arrive, the Preuss School plans to keep classes small (20 to 27 students) and match pupils with mentors chosen from among UC San Diego students. The school’s eight teachers, who were recruited locally, will develop lesson plans and supervise the tutoring.

As the school grows, Principal Doris Alvarez plans to launch national searches for teachers. Alvarez, a longtime educator who most recently was principal of San Diego’s Hoover High School, was named National Principal of the Year in 1997.

Located in City Heights, Hoover drew unwelcome attention that year when it was designated one of 20 low-performing schools in San Diego. But in her 12 years there, Alvarez was credited with enormous progress in helping low-income students succeed.

The biggest challenge at Preuss, said Alvarez, sounding a bit like a kid in a candy store, will be “trying to marshal all the resources we have on this campus and make everyone think they have a part.”