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| 283 13 What It Takes to Transform a School inside a Juvenile Justice Facility The Story of the Maya Angelou Academy David Domenici and James Forman Jr. “Do you want to apply to run the school inside Oak Hill?” The question came from Vincent Schiraldi, the new head of Washington, D.C.’s juvenile justice agency, in November 2006. He wasn’t making any promises— there would be a formal Request for Proposals before any decisions were made—but he wanted to gauge our interest. Schiraldi was not a typical juvenile justice administrator. He was a former social worker who had spent the bulk of his career as a critic of the way our nation treats incarcerated youth. Schiraldi understood education’s transformative potential, and one of his first priorities was to improve the school at Oak Hill, the city’s facility for juveniles who had been adjudicated delinquent. Incarcerated teens suffer tremendous educational deficits: they disproportionately have attended failing schools, typically read and do math at the elementary school level, and often have dropped out or been kicked out of school before being arrested (Sedlak and McPherson 2010; Balfanz et al. 2003). In theory, commitment to a state facility offers them an opportunity to receive an education. In practice, however, most schools in correctional facilities are woefully inadequate (Dohrn 2002). In a typical facility, academic expectations are low, the curriculum is not rigorous, special education services are wanting, and the teaching staff is underskilled and demoralized. What Franklin Zimring said almost thirty years ago is still largely the case: “the training school neither trains much nor schools effectively” (Zimring 1982, 72). Oak Hill was no exception. The all-male facility had long been a horror show—assaults were commonplace and drugs and weapons were easy to find. The Washington Post warned that it had become “little more than a 284 | David Domenici and James Forman Jr. warehouse that rehabilitates no one” (“DYRS” 2010). The school within Oak Hill—then called the Oak Hill Academy—was little better. Everything about the place told the young men incarcerated in Oak Hill that education was not a priority: guards sat in classrooms with walkie-talkies blaring, students came, went, or slept without interruption, and fights were routine. Schiraldi was determined to change this. In an innovative move, he solicited proposals from successful educators to run the Oak Hill Academy, which until then had been part of the D.C. Public Schools (DCPS). Schiraldi called us because since the late 1990s we had run two charter high schools that worked with some of the city’s most underserved kids. Our schools— both named after the poet Maya Angelou—are open to any who apply, but we actively recruit teens who have dropped out or been expelled, have truancy issues, or have been arrested. We also serve a higher than average number of special education students. Despite our background, we had serious doubts about taking on the challenge of running the school at Oak Hill. After all, we had never operated a school inside a prison. The list of possible pitfalls was long: Would qualified teachers apply to work in a juvenile facility? How would we manage discipline ? Could we create a school that felt special and welcoming, or was it naïve to think we could establish such an atmosphere within the confines of a jail? Considering how far behind the students would be academically, could we help them make significant progress when we would only work with them for about nine months? We eventually overcame these doubts, submitted a proposal, and were chosen to run the school, which we renamed the Maya Angelou Academy. We launched our program in the original Oak Hill compound, but after two years it was relocated to the New Beginnings Youth Development Center, a brand-new facility that replaced Oak Hill. Three years after it opened, the Maya Angelou Academy is far from perfect, but outside evaluators have been impressed with the speed and extent of the turnaround. In July 2010, the monitor overseeing the court-ordered reform of Washington, D.C.’s juvenile justice agency called the school an “extraordinary educational program” (Special Arbiter’s Report 2010). The educational expert the monitor hired reached a similar conclusion: The Maya Angelou Academy at the New Beginnings Youth Development Center is one of the best education programs in a confinement facility I have had the opportunity to observe. Scholars in the model units are receiving an excellent education...

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