Looking to Reinvent Public Education?

All those looking to improve America’s schools should be required to pay a visit to YES Prep in Houston. The school, founded in 1998, represents everything that the American education system seeks to be; level the playing field for students from disadvantaged communities.

The Mission of the school is exceptionally complex. The goal is to not only increase the number of low-income Houstonians to graduate from a four-year college, the school seeks to prepare students to compete in the global marketplace even as they are taught to impact disadvantaged communities in America.

Unlike select private schools, YES is a free, open-enrollment public school system that seeks to work with low-income minority students in 6th-12th grade. The school demands that every student get accepted to a four year college - it is in fact one of the requirements for a student to earn their high school diploma.

The make up of the school is also everything the No Child Left Behind Act seeks schools to be yet fails to provide. Ninety-five percent of the student population is Hispanic or African-American and 86% of the students are first generation college bound. Furthermore, most students enter YES Prep lagging at least one grade level behind in math and English.
Students attend an extended school day, volunteer one Saturday a month doing community service and attend mandatory summer sessions.

Everything about the school is extraordinary; the school is a collection of old portable classrooms set up on a horse farm in southeast Houston. Basketball is played on an outdoor court since the school has no gym. In simplest terms, it is not the picture that one has of high-performing schools.

Even the title of the school is extraordinary. YES stands for “Youth Engaged in Service” and students at the school log hundreds of volunteer hours over their seven years at YES. And just like Teach for America, the school founder recruits recent grads to teach at YES schools.