The Green Dot Mission and Vision
Green Dot Public Schools is leading the charge to transform public education in Los Angeles and beyond so that all children receive the education they need to be successful in college, leadership, and life. Green Dot is achieving this mission in three ways. First, we create and operate high-achieving public schools where nearly all students graduate and go on to college. Second, we help parents throughout the city organize to strengthen their neighborhood schools. Finally, we push the Los Angeles Unified School District to move boldly to improve the city's public schools.
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.
School Model
All Green Dot schools have been opened using the same school model, which is based on Green Dot's "Six Tenets of High Performing Schools". The Six Tenets are: 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; and 6) Keep Schools Open Later. This model enables Green Dot schools to consistently outperform comparable schools on nearly every academic performance measure. Green Dot is achieving its results while serving similar student populations as the lowest-performing schools in LAUSD and without fundraising to pay for ongoing school operations. As Green Dot schools continue to improve, the Six Tenets school model is setting an important standard for urban public education.
School Transformations
Green Dot is focused on leading "School Transformation" projects in which it transforms large, failing schools into clusters of small, successful schools that follow the Six Tenets. Successful School Transformations will provide LAUSD with a model that the district can use to improve all of its failing schools. Additionally, School Transformations will lead to a groundswell of support from citizens, community groups and city leaders, which will put significant pressure on LAUSD to adopt the School Transformation model and implement it on a large scale. Green Dot intends to partner with LAUSD and the Mayor's Office on School Transformation projects rather than carry out the projects on its own. Green Dot launched its first School Transformation in September 2006 as it opened five new small charter schools within a two mile radius of Jefferson High School, the worst performing school in Los Angeles. Its second School Transformation is to transform Locke High School in Watts, including two schools opened in September 2007 and six more in fall 2008.
Background
Green Dot Public Schools was founded in 1999 by Steve Barr in direct response to the terrible state of public high schools in the Los Angeles area. LAUSD's high schools were not graduating over 50% of their students and those that were making it through were rarely prepared for college. The vast majority of the students falling out of the system were children from low income families. Mr. Barr started Green Dot with a vision of leveraging charter schools as a tool in order to show the school district and the public at large that there was a more effective way to provide public education to young adults in the Los Angeles area. He felt that opening small successful charter schools in which low income, high risk youth were succeeding would not only provide a quality education to the students those schools served, but would also influence LAUSD and other school districts in the Los Angeles area to adopt the successful small schools model for all of their schools.