It's heartening to know that saints still walk among
us. One of them is Chris Bischof,
who by his lifework has once again shown us that children who likely would
become castoffs from our society can be guided to full participation in it and
full fruition of their talents.
His devotion to his calling is nothing short of transcendental.
This was Bischof's grim starting point: East Palo Alto, adjacent to but
"on the other side of the highway" from its more well-known and
affluent neighbor, has had no public high school since 1976. All its teen-agers, predominantly from
minority groups, were bused to high schools in more-prosperous neighboring
towns. Because their
elementary-school education was usually below par, most were tracked in high school into
the lowest-level, non-college preparatory classes; and because they were bused
to unfamiliar communities, they became increasingly alienated. Sixty-five percent of them ended up
dropping out, and of the remainder fewer than 10% went on to a four-year
college. That's shocking: in a Bay
Area city right next to Silicon Valley, only one in three youngsters completed
high school and only one in thirty went to college! In effect, they were being consigned by neglect and
isolation to society's dust bin.
That was intolerable to Bischof. As a Stanford undergraduate in the late '80s and early '90s,
he started an after-school program for East Palo Alto elementary-school
students, linking basketball with tutoring, hoping that this intervention would
improve their chances when they went to high school. But he soon realized that ever so much more was needed. So, in 1996, soon after getting
his Master's degree in education from Stanford, he recruited fellow graduate
Helen Kim to help him start a new high school in the city—not just a
garden-variety one, but the incredible Eastside College Preparatory School.
As Bischof says, they started Eastside before they were ready,
but eight youngsters who had been part of the after-school program for five
years were about to enter ninth grade.
They had put their faith in him to help them do better than being bused to
another town for a second-tier high school education. "Sometimes," he says, "you just have to take
a leap of faith, and trust that either there will be a net to catch you, or you
will learn to fly." So Eastside started with those eight
freshmen, two teachers, and an old van to pick up the students. Until some catch-as-catch-can classroom
space was found, their "schoolhouse" was a picnic table under a tree
in a park.
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The Original "Schoolhouse"
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All of those eight freshman graduated four years later as Eastside's Class of 2000 and went to four-year colleges. By that time, Eastside had moved into a donated house, had taken in three new classes of freshmen, and had achieved its goal of full accreditation by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, an indispensable imprimatur.
Fast forward to the present, Eastside's 17th
school year. It now includes a
junior high school, so it covers grades 6 through 12. It has a beautiful campus on 5.5 acres, currently with about
325 students, all from minorities—63% Latino, 34% African American and 3%
Pacific Islander. The graduation rate is 85%, and every graduate has gone on to a four-year college, over
half to the most selective colleges and universities in the country. Ninety-eight percent have been the
first in their families to go to college.
Eighty percent of graduates finish college (compared to 11% nationally
for first-generation college students).
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Eastside's Campus Today (Source: Google Earth)
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Students with Chris Bischof (left) and Helen Kim
(fourth from right)
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As a lifelong educator myself, I have participated in minority-outreach programs since the 1960s. Those programs, usually underfunded and understaffed, have had varying degrees of success, sometimes impressive but nothing like what I heard about when I was first introduced to Eastside six years ago. In a state of disbelief, I went to the campus to visit classes and speak at length with Bischof, faculty members and students. I was completely convinced: such a transformative education was really taking place there.
And there's more.
Until a few years ago, enrollment consisted only of day students. Some who scarcely had homes to return
to at night were taken in by Eastside's incredibly dedicated faculty to live
with them. Today, Eastside has
dormitories—the block of buildings on the right side of the quadrangle in the
aerial view above—that will eventually hold half of its students. (About 90 live there now.) They have allowed Eastside to draw 18%
of its students from other minority communities around the Bay Area, as well as
made it possible for students to continue at the school when their families
have had to move away.
Remarkably, all this is done completely with private
donations through a combination of annual fund raising and income from
endowment—not a cent of public money is involved. The budget this year is $6.2 million, or $19,000 per
student, which is more than twice what California spends per student in its
public schools, but much less than other private schools. And what a difference that expenditure
has made over the years: so far over 750 Eastsiders have been lovingly and
painstakingly guided away from the fate they might have had as society's castoffs
and to lives taking full advantage of their innate talents.
What are Eastside's "magic" ingredients for taking
minority students with huge education and resource gaps and getting them to the
level of college graduates? There
are many. Among them:
• A rigorous, demanding schedule, far beyond what the students have experienced
before. The school day runs from 8
a.m. to 5 p.m. The curriculum is
what one would find in the best college preparatory programs in the country, in
no way watered down.
• The most accomplished teachers, as committed as Bischof to the school's
mission.
• Personalized instruction: During the school day and extending until 10 p.m.,
time is scheduled for one-on-one tutoring, especially for students who are
falling behind. No student is
allowed to drop through the cracks.
• An esprit de corps that tangibly infects the campus, students and
faculty alike. Despite the onerous
schedule, the students find the emotional support from it to persevere.
• Sponsored learning experiences every summer for each student, throughout the
country and the world.
• Guidance throughout the college years, especially to make sure that the transition to
college is successfully navigated.
From my own long experience with
outreach programs, I know that every one of these ingredients is
essential. Drop one or two of
them, and the chances of overcoming the obstacles these students face would
plummet.
In my eyes, Eastside—Bischof's brainchild, his passion, the whole of
his existence—is a full-blown miracle.
That's why I look on him as a modern-day saint. I apologize if I embarrass him by this
accolade, for he is a modest man, but I must say what I feel.