IDEA students achieve academic success

Just down the road from Lopez High School, the IDEA Academy School District is busy putting a different model of public school education into action, taking no excuses and getting results.

IDEA Frontier Academy and College Preparatory, 2800 S. Dakota Ave., opened in fall 2006 for kindergarten to second-grade and sixth- to eighth-grade students. It added two grades this year and will continue to do so until pre-kindergarten through 12th grade classes are filled.

Like BISD, it is building schools, just on a smaller scale. And that’s the whole idea.

IDEA Frontier operates in 22 portables but is building four classroom buildings — one for pre-K through second grade, and one each for third through fifth, sixth through ninth and 10th through 12th — and a cafeteria.

At IDEA, no grade level has more than 100 students, and no individual class more than 25. So when IDEA’s Brownsville campus is fully operational, it will have 1,300 students — a little more than half the size of an average high school in the Brownsville Independent School District and a little bigger than a middle school or elementary.

“In the Southmost area, some people harbor this belief that kids can’t learn,” said Rolando Posada, principal of IDEA Frontier College Prep. “Well that’s way off. Kids can learn and that’s what we’re all about.”

The numbers back him up. IDEA School District students passed the 2007 Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills at rates significantly higher than BISD, McAllen ISD and Donna ISD students.

In reading, 93 percent of IDEA students passed compared to 85 percent for BISD, according to the Texas Education Agency. In math, 87 percent of IDEA students passed compared to 75 percent for BISD. For social studies it was 94 percent to 88 percent, and for science, IDEA students passed 88 percent of the time compared to 65 percent for BISD students.

Based in Donna, the IDEA School District was founded in 2000 by two Teach for America teachers who taught there and saw the potential to achieve greater academic success by challenging students to reach their full potential. Their motto was “No Excuses.” Teach for America is a corps of recent college graduates who commit to teach for two years in high-poverty, low-achievement areas.

“We know that the way to transform our community is to create a core of high achieving, college bound students whose achievement levels far outpace local and state averages,” IDEA’s Web site states. “Over the past five years our students have demonstrated the power of high expectations, hard work, and a culture of individual responsibility.”

The district operates on 67 percent of the funding a regular public school receives. It also receives funds from the Texas High School Project, the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, Posada’s co-principal Roberta Harris said. Harris has responsibility for the primary grades.

There is no tuition and the district provides bussing throughout Brownsville. TEA granted the district its charter in 2000.

As its name implies, Brownsville’s IDEA school regards its mission as preparing students for college and beyond.

“Every child has the potential and the right to go to college and be successful,” Posada said. “We don’t just want to prepare the students for TAKS or to go to the next grade level or to get a high school diploma.

“To graduate, every child is required to get accepted to a four-year college.”

Harris said the IDEA model is to keep the environment small and “to know every single student so that no one falls through the cracks.”

She pointed out that parents and students are both required to sign contracts committing themselves to the level of hard work required for academic success.

“Part of that hard work includes a rigorous workload designed to help propel students forward so that they are prepared for the academic challenges of college,” the IDEA Web site states.

2007 TAKS SCORES

IDEA Donna BISD McAllen South Texas ISD

Reading 93 77 85 86 96

Math 87 66 75 76 86

Social Studies 94 84 88 85 98

Science 88 58 65 69 87

SOURCE: IDEA School District, Texas Education Agency