Green Dot Public Schools has set it sights on a much larger target and is going to use its Six Tenets of success on a Los Angeles school that has essentially left all of its students behind. Locke High School opened up earlier this month for the school year under new management and the sights are just one of the changes that students and parents will see. Uniforms have replaced gang attire. Private security guards have been hired to keep gang members out and students in. Lunch is privately catered. This is the first time in the history of the Los Angeles Unified School District that an outside organization is running the show. However, the move to let Green Dot run the show is more than just a bunch of fed up parents looking for a way to get their children to graduate. It is an experiment in seeing if this unruly mammoth school littered with gang activity and crime, huge drop-out rates and poor academic achievement can be transformed by an outside source. According to information on Green Dot's website:

About 1 in 9 Locke students scores proficient or better in English on state tests. In math, it's fewer than 1 in 25. And more students drop out than graduate

This experiment will be the benchmarking tool for their success, or failure. Green Dot uses a consistent model of Six Tenets as the foundation for its transformation of unsuccessful public schools: 1) Small, Safe, Personalized Schools 2) High Expectations for All Students 3) Locally Managed Schools 4) Increased Parent Participation 5) Maximum Funding to the Classroom 6) Keep Schools Open Later They take large failing institutions run by public systems and turn them into smaller, successful schools geared towards student successes and typically, parents have a choice in allowing their children to attend the charter option or not. In September 2006, they launched the first major transformation of Jefferson High School, the worst-performing school in LA by opening five small brand new charter schools within a two-mile radius of the academic cancer. Their successes have been worth the effort, according to their mission statement and vision:

Green Dot has opened eighteen successful charter high schools in the highest-need areas of the city, including eight as part of the rejuvenation of Locke High School in Watts. With Green Dot's success to date, we are demonstrating that public schools can do a far better job of educating students if they are operated more effectively. Green Dot envisions a public school system in L.A. made up of small, excellent schools that support teachers to teach creatively, encourage parents to be involved, and help students learn everything they need to know - no matter what their background.

Administrators can be hired and fired based upon performance, cutting through bureaucratic red tape. Teachers are held to the same "at will" employee status and are not provided protection just because they are tenured. A good teacher is a good teacher. A bad teacher doesn't get to teach under protected status just because she has time in service. Demographics show the 2,600 students at Locke High School are mostly Hispanic, with around 34 percent black and only .3 percent white. Over half of them qualify for free and reduced lunch, showing that the socioeconomic status as a whole is considered poor. So for things like uniforms, many students stood in a line to obtain donated gear during opening week. Some showed disapproval, making statements to the negative like "We can't show our gear anymore," while others actually abandoned the line in protest of wearing a uniform completely lending to the overall attitude that Green Dot faces as far as transformation. Those trying to leave, however, were met by the security guard and gently returned to get their uniform. Green Dot also got pretty creative with their academic program since a lot of the kids are from neighborhoods where crime and drugs are the norm. They have programs for kids in juvenile detention and for those who are falling well being in grades. Despite the ever critical public school supporter who wants to run the program from the passenger seat, the program boasts of self-paced computer labs to allow students to catch up academically. One may wonder where all this love for change came from? Back in 1999, Steve Barr founded his organization in response to the horrific state of public education in the Los Angeles, CA area. They were graduating less than half of their students and of those that graduated weren't prepared for college. You can read more on Steve Barr's take over of the LA school system by charter schools here. Now, Steve Barr is driving the test model after getting over half of the Locke High School faculty to sign a petition that eventually allowed the Los Angeles Unified School District to allow him to take over the Locke facility. According to an editorial in Slate that described last year's transition more like a war zone:

Last year was a transitional one for Locke, and it didn't go very well. Green Dot hadn't yet taken over, but the district had already more or less moved out. The result was a disastrous year for the students, culminating in a schoolwide brawl in May that involved as many as 600 students and brought dozens of police officers to the campus, some in riot gear.

Barr has it under control, now. Students are calm and the boundaries are clear. Students are free from arson, shootings and riots - at least so far. A report in the LA Times revealed the new and improved Locke as somewhat of a forced endeavor, however, claiming that students and parents had no choice.

But in Locke's Watts neighborhood, families weren't offered Green Dot as an option; Green Dot became the local public school. Unless parents were willing to send their children to more-distant campuses, Green Dot was what they had. And although the charter operator has done what it can to reorganize the school into smaller, more intimate "academies," Locke opens with 1,600 students.

But drastic times need drastic measures and with Barr and his company using Locke as a the test model for the public school system transformation, this so-called takeover could be just what is needed. It will be interesting to see where the "takeover" leads the district of LA.