Incubator for hope

Houston has been a global leader in education reform during the past few decades. In 1994, Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin started KIPP in a Houston Independent School District classroom with 47 fifth-graders. Currently, 200 KIPP schools in 20 states and the District of Columbia serve nearly 80,000 students, and KIPP-inspired schools now dot the globe.

YES Prep, another well-known charter-school system, also has its roots here. The approaches developed inside these charter classrooms have not solely benefited these schools' own students. Some of the practices fine-tuned there have crossed over and are advancing student achievement in traditional public schools.

Now there's a new education-reform movement underfoot here in Houston that's worth watching. The three-year-old A&UP, a public school charter as of August, is located in the Museum District; it stands traditional education practices on their collective head.

For starters, the tuition-free charter doesn't rely on the brick-and-mortar classroom but uses community assets as the setting for learning. Students in A&UP in the Museum District, for instance, collocate between the Glassell Junior School and The Health Museum, while students in the new A&UP-University are headquartered in a community center operated by the neighborhood nonprofit, Change Happens!, across the street from University of Houston.

These students tap into free wireless networks and meet for class not only on the University of Houston campus but also in the Holocaust Museum Houston, the Asia Society Texas Center, the Houston Zoo, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, various parks and other public spaces around town.

Varying the site of learning is not the only fresh approach. Rather than expecting kids who can't read well to grasp traditional academic subjects, the schools allow students to move at their own pace, advancing in the curriculum as they demonstrate mastery.

The self-paced method may help solve a serious problem in our current educational system: How to help students who fall behind their peers. These students have less than a 1 in 3 chance of being ready for college or a career by the end of high school, according to a study by the national testing group ACT Inc. that focused on fourth- and eighth-graders.

Not only that, students who fall behind are more likely to drop out. While our high school graduation rate is improving, Texas public schools have lost a cumulative total of more than 3.5 million students from public high school enrollment in the past 30 years, according to Intercultural Development Research Association, a San Antonio-based nonprofit education think tank. Educated workers are the basis of economic growth, and persons without a high school degree are more likely to need public assistance.

Although the first cadre of students moving through this innovative school was small, the students - who mirrored the diversity of Houston's population - demonstrated an encouraging growth in academic proficiency. Students enrolled in the museum district school who entered below grade level in three years achieved 6.1 years' growth in math and 5.8 years' growth in reading. The average STAAR passing rates were high, as well.

Our philanthropic community has worked for years to help create an environment of hope and optimism around educational change. Arising out of this long-standing tradition, A&UP began as a pilot funded by A& Challenge Challenge, a Houston non-profit. It's possible that someday students around the nation will reap the dividends.