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<H4>THE STATE</H4>
<H1>This King/Drew, a Magnet School, Is a Robust Success</H1>By Mitchell
Landsberg<BR>Times Staff Writer<BR><BR>April 27, 2005<BR><BR>It is the holy
grail of urban education: an inner city public high school that works. A school
where students, most of them poor, almost all of them black and Latino, learn
together in safety and harmony. Where almost no one drops out. Where an
overwhelming majority of students go on to four-year colleges, and where at
least some make it to the most prestigious and selective
universities.<BR><BR>Few such places exist.<BR><BR>One that does is located in
one of Los Angeles County's most impoverished and dangerous neighborhoods, and
takes its name from an institution better known these days for scandal than
success.<BR><BR>But then, King/Drew Medical Magnet High School has always prided
itself on exceeding — no, <I>shredding</I> — expectations.<BR><BR>"Everybody has
a stereotype that if you grow up in Watts, you're not going to succeed," said
senior Omunique Falls, who applied to 12 colleges this year and was accepted at
11. "That just motivates me to do better. I use it to my advantage."<BR><BR>That
attitude and smart, dedicated students such as Falls are among the reasons that
King/Drew routinely sends more African Americans to UCLA than any other high
school. This year, 20 King/Drew students were accepted at the Westwood campus,
eight of them black, the rest Latino. Students were also accepted by Harvard,
Stanford, Princeton, Duke, Cornell and four other University of California
campuses.<BR><BR>King/Drew was second only to Garfield High School in East Los
Angeles for having the most Latino, Chicano and African American students
accepted by UC Berkeley, according to Richard Black, assistant vice chancellor
for admissions and enrollment.<BR><BR>"King/Drew is just this jewel," said
Phyllis Hart, a UCLA official who works to encourage qualified minorities, in
the post-affirmative action era, to select UCLA over other schools. The school
is, she said, "this wonderful place where you see all the things that people say
you can't get done, getting done."<BR><BR>Hart led a delegation of nearly a
dozen UCLA officials to King/Drew on Monday to meet the students who were
accepted to the university — and to practically beg them to attend.<BR><BR>"We
would love to have you walking around our campus, making it a more flavorful
place," said Soncia Lilly, an assistant vice chancellor.<BR><BR>King/Drew's
principal, J. Michelle Woods, said the secret to the school's success was
simple: a relatively small, close-knit group of students (King/Drew's enrollment
is a little less than 1,700, compared to 4,000 or 5,000 at many high schools);
staff that didn't let youths slip through the cracks; and high
expectations.<BR><BR>At a time when the L.A. Board of Education is considering
whether to require a college prep curriculum for all students, King/Drew is
already there.<BR><BR>It demands that students take the rigorous courses meeting
UC and Cal State system requirements. That means, among other things, four years
of math, two years of science and two years of foreign
language.<BR><BR>King/Drew actually goes further and requires a third year of
foreign language and four years of science.<BR><BR>The campus in Willowbrook,
just south of Watts, isn't alone among Los Angeles public schools in making
tough demands on its students. It has, in fact, a mirror institution: Francisco
Bravo Medical Magnet, near County/USC Medical Center, which also requires all
students to meet the UC entrance requirements and sends a similar percentage of
students to college.<BR><BR>Still, Hart, who has been tracking how well schools
prepare minorities for college, said such campuses were exceptions.<BR><BR>In an
interview, she cited high schools in L.A. and Pasadena where fewer than a third
of black students took a college-entry curriculum. At some, she said, less than
10% of African American boys were on a college track.<BR><BR>Board of Education
President Jose Huizar and trustee Jon Lauritzen introduced a motion Tuesday that
would make the college prep curriculum a graduation requirement throughout the
Los Angeles Unified School District, beginning with the freshman class of
2008.<BR><BR>As a matter of equity, Huizar said, the district should set "high
expectations for all our students, not just some."<BR><BR>Anticipating an
opposing argument, he added: "A lot of people think that if we set a higher bar,
we will have higher dropouts because our children cannot perform. That is false.
Our students can perform if we give them that opportunity in our
schools."<BR><BR>For years, that opportunity has been available at
King/Drew.<BR><BR>The school began life in 1982 in a few bungalows on the campus
of nearby Jordan High School in Watts. Like so many institutions in South L.A.,
it was the fruit of a struggle by local activists, who saw the need for a place
that would encourage minorities to become doctors and nurses. Many of
King/Drew's graduates have done just that.<BR><BR>In 1999, it moved to its
current campus, centered around an airy, curvilinear, brick-and-glass building
at 120th Street and Compton Avenue, directly across from Martin Luther King
Jr./Drew Medical Center and next door to Charles R. Drew University of Medicine
and Science.<BR><BR>The high school is affiliated with both institutions,
particularly the hospital, where students participate in medical research and
learn the workings of various departments. <BR><BR>While the school has soared,
both the county-run medical center and the university have struggled, with the
hospital blamed for a series of deadly errors in the last two years. Students
and administrators at King/Drew High said the troubles didn't directly affect
them.<BR><BR>Principal Woods said her main problem was one of perception. As
people in the community have heard of the hospital's troubles, she said, they
have sometimes called to ask if the school is at risk. She ruefully remembered
the calls received after the medical center lost its national
accreditation.<BR><BR>"I had to tell them that we received a six-year
accreditation," she said. "Our flag flies every day."<BR><BR>King/Drew may be,
as its advocates say, a model for other public schools, but it enjoys advantages
that others don't. As a magnet, it receives additional federal money and has
greater power to select its teaching staff. It has a spacious building with
well-equipped labs and an abundance of textbooks and other teaching materials.
<BR><BR>It also, perhaps oddly, has twice as many girls as boys — a result,
administrators say, of its lack of a football program. College administrators
say girls are more and more likely than boys to qualify for college
admission.<BR><BR>Finally, and perhaps most important, as a magnet school it has
a self-selected student body — and active, engaged parents. Magnets were created
as part of a court-ordered desegregation plan to draw together students from
diverse neighborhoods. Some of the schools have entrance requirements, but most,
like King/Drew, accept a random share of those who apply.<BR><BR>"Our mom let us
choose our high school — thank God," said Tiffany Russell, a 5-foot-3-inch
bundle of intellectual energy wrapped in cornrows. She lives within three blocks
of Washington Preparatory High School, among the city's lowest-performing
schools. <BR><BR>She finds King/Drew an oasis where an academically driven
student is accepted. That isn't always the case outside, she said. "It's hard
sometimes, because you want to be yourself but you don't want to be disconnected
from the rest of your community," she said.<BR><BR>Tiffany, who wants to be a
physician or a veterinarian, said she was admitted to several colleges,
including UCLA, USC and Cal State L.A. Although she said her mother thought Cal
State L.A. would be more affordable, Tiffany was leaning toward UCLA after being
assured — and reassured — by the university's scholarship coordinator, Mary
Horne, that she would receive enough financial aid.<BR><BR>"Everybody's in
competition for you guys," Horne told the King/Drew students. "You guys are so
blessed, because everybody wants you."<BR><BR><I>Times staff writer Erika
Hayasaki contributed to this report.<BR></I></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>