Our Mission and Vision
Green Dot Public Schools is the leading public schools operator in Los Angeles and an important catalyst for education reform in the State of California. Its mission is to transform public education in Los Angeles so that all young adults receive the education they deserve to be prepared for college leadership and life. Green Dot's work is directly focused on influencing Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) to transform its failing high schools into clusters of small successful schools and helping the district reinvent itself as one of the best school districts in the country. Green Dot has already opened twelve successful charter high schools in some of the highest need areas of Los Angeles; in doing so it has demonstrated that public schools can do a far better job of educating students if schools are operated more effectively. Green Dot has also launched two "sister" organizations, the Small Schools Alliance and the Los Angeles Parents Union, which are both focused on organizing communities and leaders throughout Los Angeles around dramatic public education reform.
School Model
All twelve 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; 3) Local Control 4) Parent Participation 5) Get Every Dollar into 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 up to five 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.
