Achievement Preparatory Academy (Achievement Prep), a public charter school serving 210 scholars east of the Anacostia River, is among the highest performing public schools in the city, according to 2011 DC Comprehensive Assessment System (DC-CAS) scores.
“Over eighty percent of our students come from low-income homes, 100 percent are African American and they are outperforming students citywide and even in upper Northwest D.C.,” said founder and Head of School Shantelle Wright. “All children, regardless of the color of their skin or the zip code where they live, can excel when provided with a high standards, high accountability setting,” she said. “We’re seeing outstanding results in our scholars because we operate Achievement Prep in a high-expectation, no-excuses culture. We challenge our scholars to dream big, and it works.” However, many of Achievement Prep’s neighbors are unaware of this high-performing school located right in their own backyard. As a result, the free, open-enrollment public school still has openings for 50 fourth and fifth grade students in the fall.
To spark new relationships with families and celebrate the East of the River Community, Achievement Prep is hosting its inaugural Achievement Prep Community Day, noon to 3 p.m., May 5 in Oxon Run Park, . The free event is open to all and will feature free food from Hill Country BBQ, music, games and activities for children including a moon bounce and face painting, prizes and give-aways, free patient care from the Children’s Hospital Mobile Unit, and other local social service resources.
According to a recent study, “Quality Schools: Every Child, Every School, Every Neighborhood,” commissioned by District of Columbia Mayor Vincent Gray, of the 60,000 kindergarten through 12th grade public school students living in DC, only one-third are receiving a high-quality education. This means that D.C. faces a shortage of 39,000 high-quality seats.
According to the study, this dearth is most acutely concentrated in ten specific neighborhood clusters, many of which are east of the Anacostia River. The absolute greatest need rests in “Cluster 39”—the Congress Heights, Bellevue, Washington Highlands and Bolling Air Force Base neighborhoods of Ward 8 – which is home to 5,969 public school children but lacks high-quality options for 5,532 of them.
Nestled in that very cluster is Achievement Prep. Wright said she and the board of trustees want the community to know what makes the school special, starting with the facts:
• On the 2011 DC-CAS, Achievement Prep students were more than twice as likely to be proficient in reading and math as other DC public school students.
• Achievement Prep is effectively closing the “achievement gap” for its scholars within one to two years. In 2011, its current 8th graders, 100 percent of whom were proficient or advanced on the DC-CAS, scored better on the DC-CAS than those at Deal, a more affluent and highly regarded DCPS middle school in Tenleytown in Ward 3.
“My dream is to be some sort of doctor,” said Jeanae Reid, an Achievement Prep sixth grader, “but I’m not ruling out becoming a lawyer.” According to her father, Demetrius Reid, Jeanae was simply getting by at her previous school but at Achievement Prep, she is “working a lot harder and achieving more. She has more of a desire to learn. She was always an adequate reader but now, they really push reading and she’s reading three to four novels a month.”
Before someone at his church mentioned Achievement Prep last year, Mr. Reid had never heard of the school, which opened its doors in 2008. But when he and his wife stepped inside, they were blown away by the “platinum” teachers, staff and parents. “I said to Jeanae, ‘you’re going to be there until the eighth grade. I don’t care where we move in the District, you’re going to Achievement Prep.’”
Dreams are a major focus at the fourth through eighth grade middle school, both in terms of college and career aspirations but also via its Be The DREAM character and leadership program in which scholars develop and practice the school’s DREAM values—Determination, Respect, Enthusiasm, Accountability and Mastery.
Be the DREAM is just one facet of the culture created by Head of School Wright. Her conviction that all children can learn is backed by a model program and teaching staff that are achieving results. Achievement Prep has both a longer school day and year to provide more instruction; this allows for double periods of math and reading and small group tutoring opportunities. Achievement Prep also focuses heavily on combating the ‘fourth grade slump,’ the critical point where many low-income children begin to fall farther behind their more affluent peers in reading.
Vernita Liverpool, a parent of two boys enrolled at Achievement Prep, said she was skeptical at first. “Because of our location, the school doesn’t have the best look.
But you can’t judge a book by its cover. I love this school. You just have to come inside and see everything they offer and everything they do.” Her son Jibril is a fourth grader who loves that “they have excellent academics and the whole school is smart so they teach me well.” Jibril is dreaming big, too. “My dream is to be a professional basketball player. Or I might be a sports announcer because I know a lot of facts,” he said.
Wright said Achievement Prep’s mission to create a school that changes the life trajectories for children in Southeast DC has attracted the best and brightest teachers, all of whom gather at the school-wide meeting that concludes each day to chant to their scholars: “When you go home tonight, know that you are smart, know that you are brilliant, know that we love you, we think about you all the time, we plan for you all the time, and know that you never, ever cease to amaze us.”
In response, teachers and scholars together chant, “Know there is no one better than you! No matter the color of their skin, no matter how much money they have, what kind of car they drive or how big their house is. There is no one better than you! If you want something, put your mind to it, go get it. Period.”
Wright, who is often the first person scholars see on the way in and the last person they see on the way out, says that “when everyone—scholars and teachers alike—hears the same message 9.5 hours every day, they can’t help but believe it.”
And they do. Scholars are dreaming of being meteorologists, lawyers and doctors. “My dream is to help make the world a better place by having equal rights for all. It should not matter your gender or the color of your skin to have equal rights,” said Jeanae Reid, the Achievement Prep sixth grader who dreams of being a doctor or a lawyer.