By the end of the 2012-2013 school year, the Aldine ISD and YES Prep Public Schools boards approved a collaboration between the two organizations. Aldine is a public school district serving over 70,000 students, and YES Prep is a charter school management organization serving nearly 10,000 students. In 2010 and 2014, YES Prep received Charter Schools Program Grants for Replication and Expansion of High-Quality Charter Schools from the United States Department of Education. Aldine and YES Prep have both won the Broad Prize in education and are based in Houston, Texas. Instead of competing for students, Aldine and YES Prep formed a collaboration to combine effective education strategies. As Superintendent of YES Prep Mark DiBella says: “There is more common-ground than there is battleground” between charter schools and traditional school districts.
The following five-part documentary showcases the collaboration’s goals, successes, lessons learned, and plans for the future. We visited Hoffman Middle School and Eisenhower Senior High School in Aldine ISD, as well as YES Prep Brays Oaks. Brays Oaks has for many years offered the seminar college-prep program YES Prep began offering at Eisenhower in August 2015.
Access the video case study here. Safal Partners worked on this as part of its contract to operate the National Charter School Center.