Houston Charter Sends 100 Percent of Grads to Four-Year Colleges
When Hurricane Ike struck Houston in September 2008, it dropped another hurdle in Samantha Marquez's path to college. Her mother lost her job at a storm-shuttered business, forcing Marquez to get a part-time job at Chuck E. Cheese's to help the family's finances. "We had to use the money we had been saving for college for just starting over," she says.
The late hours at the pizza parlor ate away at her time to study for the three Advanced Placement courses she was taking at YES Prep, an innovative Houston free public charter school that requires students to attend longer school days (7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.), take some Saturday classes, and do community service. Marquez could have gone to a less demanding school, but YES Prep's track record made it worth the sweat. In the past 10 years, 100 percent of its graduates have been accepted to four-year colleges. Marquez was not about to break that track record. "I'm going to college," says the freshman at Austin College in Sherman, Texas. "A lot of my other friends can't say that."
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The success rate would be remarkable for any public high school, but the composition of YES's student