A Tale of Two Students

By MIRIAM JORDAN

OKLAHOMA CITY

Corbis

Railroad tracks in Oklahoma City's South Side neighborhood, where Ivan and Laura grew up.

In middle school, Ivan Cantera ran with a Latino gang; Laura Corro was a spunky teen. At age 13, they shared their first kiss. Both made it a habit to skip class. In high school, they went their separate ways.

This fall, Ivan will enter the University of Oklahoma, armed with a prestigious scholarship. "I want to be the first Hispanic governor of Oklahoma," declares the clean-cut 18-year-old, standing on the steps of Santa Fe South High School, the charter school in the heart of this city's Hispanic enclave that he says put him on a new path.

Laura, who is 17, rose to senior class president at Capitol Hill High School, a large public school in the same neighborhood. But after scraping together enough credits to graduate, Laura isn't sure where she's headed. She never took college entrance exams.

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Ivan Cantera and Laura Corro

The divergent paths taken by Laura and Ivan were shaped by many forces, but their schools played a striking role. Capitol Hill and Santa Fe South both serve the same poor, Hispanic population. Both comply with federal guidelines and meet state requirements for standardized exams and curriculum. Santa Fe South enrolls about 490 high school students, while Capitol Hill has nearly 900.

At Santa Fe South, the school day is 45 minutes longer; graduation requirements are more rigorous (four years of math, science and social studies compared with three at public schools); and there is a tough attendance policy.

This year, the majority of Santa Fe South's graduates will attend a vocational, two- or four-year college. About one-third of the graduates from Capitol Hill plan to get a higher education.

While neither school is allowed to select students, Santa Fe South can turn them down if it's full. Capitol Hill must welcome anyone who wishes to enroll. Santa Fe South, whose teachers are on a one-year renewable contract, can remove incompetent instructors more easily than Capitol Hill, where teachers are unionized.

Backed by Wall Street bankers, Hollywood moguls, philanthropists and the Obama administration, the charter-school movement is booming as an alternative to underperforming public schools. The publicly funded, independently run charter schools are open to any student, often through a lottery. About 5,000 charter schools now serve more than 1.5 million children across the country.

Advocates champion the potential for charter schools, which control their own budget, personnel and curriculum, to narrow the achievement gap between poor and wealthy students. Critics point to studies that suggest many charter schools aren't producing better educational outcomes than traditional public schools, based on standardized test scores, and claim that some are performing very poorly.

"We play by different rules," says Alex Souza, who took the reins of Capitol Hill as principal last year. "Our goal is the same." That goal is to put students from a challenged socioeconomic background on the road to success.

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Laura Corro and Ivan Cantera in downtown Oklahoma City.

Ivan was born in Oklahoma City in 1992, the third son to Paula and Sergio Cantera. The Texas transplants had recently settled on the South Side, a working-class area that was blossoming into a bustling Hispanic neighborhood.

Mr. Cantera, a Mexican immigrant, worked as a carpenter. His wife, a Mexican-American, juggled jobs at a school cafeteria and as a cashier. "Every day, grandma picked me and my cousins up from school," recalls Ivan.

In sixth grade, Ivan began attending Jefferson, a local middle school. He started wearing baggy low-rider jeans and T-shirts inscribed with SSVL, for the South Side Varrio Locos gang.

"Every single morning on our way to school we'd smoke weed," Ivan says. He frequently slipped into class after 10 a.m. and snuck liquor into school.

"He was doing bad," recalls his mother, who had little time to supervise him. Ivan's oldest brother, Marty, became a father at 16 and dropped out of high school.

Mrs. Cantera learned about a new charter school, Santa Fe South, which had a firm policy of expelling students who fought or carried drugs on campus. It also enforced a dress code: jeans without holes and black or yellow polo shirts with the school's logo.

Santa Fe South was headed by Chris Brewster, now 41 years old. In 2001, he was assistant principal at a public high school in an upscale suburb when he was approached by a community group interested in starting a charter school on the South Side. Mr. Brewster, who had taught at Capitol Hill, says he was enticed by the challenge to "do a better job with the same kids and fewer resources."

In August 2001, he opened Santa Fe South in a church basement with 120 students and seven teachers. There were no computers or phone lines. Mr. Brewster borrowed folding tables and chairs.

In its third year, Mr. Brewster leased a dilapidated building that the school district had vacated. As the school grew, he sought to focus resources on instructional staff while keeping the administrative layer thin—something the school had the flexibility to do as a charter. Word spread that Santa Fe offered a safe option. A waiting list developed. Ivan's middle brother, Anthony, had been going there for three years, and the school gave priority to siblings.

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Laura with English teacher Shelly Jarvis in front of Capitol Hill.

In the fall of 2006, Ivan stepped onto the Santa Fe campus. His gang buddies had enrolled at public high schools. "I was still drinking and doing my drugs," says Ivan, who also still wore baggy pants, though now with the requisite school shirt.

As part of the school's attempt to cultivate ambitious students, Santa Fe South assigns all freshmen to a "team," a daily advisory group. Each team is led by a teacher who follows their academic performance, attendance and general progress. Ivan was assigned to the team led by Kim Pankhurst, an English teacher who had recently left a public school in rural Oklahoma to be closer to an elderly parent.

At Santa Fe South, 95% of the students are poor enough to qualify for a free or discounted lunch. Ms. Pankhurst has students who work eight-hour shifts into the night and students whose parents have had to return to Mexico.

If Ivan missed school, Ms. Pankhurst called home. If he was disruptive in class, she ordered him to do pushups. His parents didn't show up for parent-teacher meetings. His report card was fair—As, Bs and Cs. "I could tell he was smart," says Ms. Pankhurst. But "he was just a brat. He didn't have a goal."

His sophomore year, the Canteras drove to Mexico to visit Ivan's ailing grandmother. She died while they were there. On his return a week later, Ms. Pankhurst "handed me all the work I had missed," Ivan says. "I could tell she really cared."

Ms. Pankhurst started planting the idea of college. She'd tell the team class, "You better think of college if you don't want to work at a dead-end job all your life."

Ivan says, "I started thinking I don't want to be this low-life working with my dad…living at home like my brothers." One day he told Ms. Pankhurst that his goal was to make straight As. Ivan took to wearing straight-leg jeans and fashionable glasses.

At a town-hall meeting held at school after Oklahoma passed a law to crack down on illegal immigrants—many attend Santa Fe—300 students and parents heard from elected officials, law enforcement and clergy. When community members rose to speak, Ivan took the stage, trembling.

"I started talking about Latinos in gangs, Latinos without education…These are things we have to give up," Ivan recalls. He urged people to stand together. He quoted Martin Luther King. He cried.

He completed his second semester of 10th grade with all As, except for a B in chemistry. He joined the football and soccer teams, eventually becoming football team captain. He became involved in Latino and community organizations.

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Ivan with teacher Kim Pankhurst in between classes at Santa Fe South.

In October 2008, some Oklahoma lawmakers convened to discuss the performance of local schools. Ivan, in a striped shirt and tie, told the committee: "Back in middle school, people wouldn't see me alive now." He credited Mr. Brewster and Santa Fe South with changing his life.

Santa Fe South was thriving, and in 2009, it broke the 1,200-student mark, for kindergarten through 12th grade. In November, Mr. Brewster won a national Milken Educator award, a $25,000 prize given to 51 teachers nation-wide.

Ivan's class was the first to benefit from a seminar to guide seniors through the college-application process. "Their parents aren't telling them to register for college-entrance exams," says Lindsey McElvaney, who teaches the class. "I made every one of them apply to college."

One of the biggest obstacles is that most parents assume college is out of reach, she says, sitting in her classroom, where felt pennants for several universities are pinned to the wall.

Out of 71 seniors at Santa Fe South, 62 will attend a four-year university, two-year college or vocational school in the fall.

Ivan received a handful of scholarships that likely will cover tuition, room and board. "If it wasn't for Ms. McElvaney, honestly, I would not have heard about a lot of these scholarships," he says.

When a recruiter visited from the University of Oklahoma, Ms. McElvaney told her that Ivan would be a strong candidate for the President's Leadership Class, a $2,250 scholarship awarded to about 100 incoming freshmen. Recipients are invited to meetings with the university president, as well as with national, state and other dignitaries.

The day Ivan heard that he had won the scholarship, he says, "I showed Ms. Pankhurst first. Then I told my parents."

Ivan pinned the acceptance letter on the red wall in his bedroom. "Every morning when I walk out of my room, I kiss that paper," he says.

Laura Corro was born in Tacoma, Wash., the daughter of Mexican immigrants. Her father left home when she and her brother, Richard, were toddlers. After a stint in Kansas, Laura's mother, Ana Cervantes, moved the family to Oklahoma City, where they had relatives. She found work at a plastics factory. Laura was 9.

At Jefferson Middle School, where she met Ivan, Laura regularly played hooky. "You walked out of school and they didn't see you," she says.

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Ivan and his mother, Paula, after graduation ceremonies.

Laura thought Ivan "was a cute guy," while Ivan remembers Laura as being "petite and funny," with "attitude." They flirted across the room in math class. They became a couple.

At 13, being boyfriend and girlfriend amounted to holding hands on the way to class. "I was doing a lot of drugs, but I had never kissed a girl before," says Ivan.

One afternoon, the third week in their courtship, they were standing at the bus stop. "I went for a kiss, and I hit her with my nose!" Ivan says. That was the end of their romance.

In ninth grade, Laura—who some friends nicknamed "Pocahontas" because of her long, black hair, tan skin and large brown eyes—enrolled at Capitol Hill High School. About 96% of the students are eligible for a free or reduced lunch. Two police officers are assigned to the school, which was once featured on the History Channel series "Gangland."

Mr. Souza, a seasoned public-school administrator, is the seventh principal to head the school in the last decade. Since arriving in 2009, he has been trying to turn it around. Administrators are listening more to students and teachers are receiving additional training, he says. All ninth graders enroll in groups in "Academy," four core classes taught by teachers who meet regularly to review student progress.

Capitol Hill was removed from the state's "needs improvement" list for the first time in five years in 2009. Violence at the school has diminished. One of Capitol Hill's instructors, biology teacher Meredith Wronowski, was named Oklahoma City Teacher of the Year in May. "You'll see kids asleep in your class and then you realize they're living in a car," says Ms. Wronowski.

During her first year at Capitol Hill, Laura began dating an 18-year-old. "Basically, I ditched all ninth grade and tenth grade," she says.

A counselor showed up at her house one day. "She said she wanted me to graduate on time, go to college and be all those things," Laura recalls. The counselor left the school shortly after that, she says. "I always thought, as long as I am passing, I'm good. I'll make it to the next year," says Laura.

She began working nights as a cashier and bus girl at a restaurant run by a relative.

Her life at home was chaotic. Her brother, Richard, who is a year younger, ended up at a reform school for troubled youth. Laura and her mother argued a lot. After one particularly acrimonious exchange, Laura went to live with her grandmother. "I would get home from school and she would ask how my day went," says Laura of her grandmother. After a few months, Laura moved back in with her mother, stepfather and stepbrother, Valentin.

In early 2009, Laura's grandmother, grandfather and uncle died in a car accident on their way to Mexico. That same night, Laura and her family headed to Mexico.

When Laura returned a month later, one teacher asked her sarcastically where she had been. "I told her my grandma died and she said, 'Your grandpa died too?'" The teacher later apologized, Laura says. She asked teachers for makeup work. "They thought I wouldn't be serious because I had ditched a lot." She ended the semester with Ds and Fs on her report card, she says.

One of Laura's favorite teachers is Shelly Jarvis, who teaches English. Sitting in the rowdy school cafeteria recently, Ms. Jarvis said that students like Laura "don't get [enough] positive reinforcement.…She looks for it from everybody."

While Laura didn't strive for academic success, she helped organize school festivals and a blood drive. She volunteered at the Salvation Army. She was voted senior class president.

In October, she asked her distant cousin, a junior at Santa Fe South named Jasmine Davis, about college applications and entrance exams. "She wanted to do it, but she needed someone to push her to do it," says her cousin.

Laura sought advice from her middle-school friend, Ivan. She had seen him occasionally since bumping into him during a soccer game in 11th grade. On a road trip over spring break, Ivan told her it wasn't too late to take the exams and advised her to look into scholarships.

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'We call, harass, pursue and pick up at home to get kids here,' says Santa Fe South principal Chris Brewster.

When one of Laura's teachers distributed forms for a $1,000 Hispanic Chamber of Commerce scholarship, Laura took one.

The night before the application was due she went to work at Old Chicago, a pizza restaurant, where she is a hostess. She happened to greet David Castillo, executive director of the Greater Oklahoma City Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. When she realized who he was, Laura told him that she was hoping to complete her application after getting off work.

"Her managers came up to me, one by one, to say what a great employee she is and how she worked hard at two or more jobs," says Mr. Castillo. "It really touched me." About five weeks later, Laura learned she had won a scholarship and attended a banquet for the 10 winners.

Sitting in Capitol Hill's counseling center recently, senior class counselor Ashlie Wagner says, "We have a hard time getting our parents involved." She remembers that Laura won one scholarship. But she doesn't know whether Laura has taken college-entrance exams or completed any college applications. (She has not.)

Ms. Wagner says that her job would be different "if you had more time to devote one on one. I have so many other responsibilities," including managing special-needs students and helping homeless students find shelter.

She estimates that about 50 of the 147 graduating seniors will enter a vocational school or college in the fall. "It's the culture," she says. "A lot of them plan on working."

Capitol Hill's principal, Mr. Souza, 44, grew up in poverty in Brazil. He understands the students' challenges, he says. The school is fighting an uphill battle to change an ingrained "mentality among lower socio-economic [students] who believe they cannot make it," he says.

He feels it is unfair to compare Capitol Hill to a charter school like Santa Fe South. For one, Mr. Souza says that he doesn't have the flexibility to discipline employees or teachers like a charter school. Capitol Hill must also enroll "anyone who walks in," he says.

Budget constraints and bureaucratic, political and legal hurdles are another reality, while charter schools operate free of many of the regulations that apply to traditional public schools. "In a perfect world, education would be directed by educators," he says. "When the law, budget and everything else is designed by legislators, this increases the challenges."

On Friday, Oklahoma City's teachers' union, the American Federation of Teachers Local 2309, said no one was available for comment.

A few weeks ago, Laura and Ivan reminisced about their middle school days at an Italian restaurant. Over pasta, they erupted in laughter. Then Laura blurted out, "Ivan, will you marry me?" He didn't respond.

At her graduation on May 18, Laura delivered a speech as class president. That same day, she started on an application for an art school with rolling admissions in California. Over the summer, Laura plans to work every day at Old Chicago, the pizza place, she says.

In addition to his parents, Ivan invited Ms. Pankhurst, his teacher, to walk beside him when he received his diploma on May 22. Two old gang buddies, who dropped out of school years ago, cheered for him in the audience.

Write to Miriam Jordan at miriam.jordan@wsj.com