Some of the YES Prep Secrets

According to the school’s founder, Christopher Barbic, instead of warehousing children for grades K-12 as most public schools do, the YES Prep school seeks to provide students the rationale behind getting an education and then engage them in real world learning. The school offers a rigorous curriculum and as we noted earlier, students must be accepted at a four-year college or no high school diploma is forthcoming.

The school also offers extended hours for students including Saturdays and one month in the summer. The result, YES Prep students spend 65% more time in school than other Texas public school students.

Students who maintain a 75 grade point average receive rewards including the opportunity to go on a trip in the spring of each year. Though called a reward, these trips are hardly junkets. Instead, the primary purpose of each spring trip is to create the opportunity for students to visit college campuses. And not just any campuses, students visit the likes of Harvard, MIT, New York University, and Columbia.

The primary message over and over again to these children from deprived neighborhoods is that anything is possible if you get a good education. Anything. Students end up visiting 22 different campuses before they ever begin the application process.

But in addition to showing students what is possible, another critical focus of the school is where these children are coming from. The school is seeking true, lasting change by transforming a community as well as the individuals form the community. YES College Prep alumni sign a contract stipulating what they will do to improve their prior neighborhood after they earn their college degree.

Barbic says he has a phenomenal staff that loves kids. They also appear to understand one of the critical educational terms in existence, to teach with a sense of urgency.

The results are astonishing. Students have been accepted to Smith, Cornell, Stanford and the superb, in-state Rice University. Most importantly, the school epitomizes what our forefathers had in mind as to the purpose of public schooling.