At this Fort Worth charter school, Texas adults are getting a second chance at a diploma

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FORT WORTH — Tiphainne Wright tapped her foot as she flipped through her copy of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” the dystopian novel. To be dismissed from class that November day, Wright and her fellow students had to identify a metaphor or motif in that week’s reading.

“I’m never getting out of here,” Wright said, filling in the silence in the room, a nervous smile played on her lips.

Eventually, she thought of an example and jotted it down. She turned it in to her teacher, Mrs. Dory, and received a fist bump.

The 22-year-old dropped out of high school her junior year after having a baby. She never liked school anyhow. The hectic environment was not conducive to her learning, she said.

She’s trying again, four years later, so she can get a job that will support her and her son.

The flexibility of afternoon and evening classes at her adult high school “gives me extra time to spend with him and encourage him to finish school and push him to be somebody better than I was,” she said.

Wright attends New Heights High School, where adult students like her get a second chance to earn a high school diploma and a training certificate at no cost. The charter high school opened this year out of a Tarrant County College building. The school is part of a statewide effort to help those who dropped out of high school enter the workforce.

Students come to New Heights with a range of academic histories. Their previous high school credits will count toward a diploma — which on average takes about two years to earn and includes workforce training from the junior college.

About one in six Texas adults never finish high school. The main alternative is the General Equivalency Diploma, or GED. But the number of Texans taking that test has steadily declined in the past decade.

Not completing high school has reverberations on the wages Texans earn later in life. Adult workers who have a diploma see on average nearly 25 percent more earnings than those who don’t.

New Heights High School sits on the southeast fringes of the North Texas city, past the railroad tracks in a mostly Black, mostly low-income neighborhood called Stop Six. There’s no full-service grocery store, no anchoring place to gather, no major employers.

Dropping out of high school in this neighborhood can feed the cycle of poverty that has had a tight grip on Stop Six families – impeding employment, limiting salaries, and increasing the poverty rate of children.

When New Heights English teacher Schnique Dory was in school, her mom drilled into her that she would not become a part of the problems in the Stop Six neighborhood she saw nearly every day. Today, the streets are still dotted with abandoned houses. Unemployment rates are nearly triple the rest of the city.

Dory was the first person in her family to graduate from college. She has since returned home to teach in Fort Worth and Stop Six.

“Teaching my hood, teaching my community, investing in people who came from where I came, I’m hoping that it’s going to pay back generational change,” she said. “They can all increase their incomes, get better jobs, and have better lives.”

The first modern adult high school was opened 11 years ago. State lawmakers first created an Austin pilot program for 150 learners. About 48 students graduated in the first year, and 61 in the following year, according to the state’s evaluation of the program.

In response, the adult charter high school model was cemented into state law in the following sessions. Lawmakers added guardrails for funding and established accountability metrics relevant to adult learners coming in at a range of reading levels.

Like other charters, these schools receive public funding and do not charge tuition. While they operate outside the traditional school district governing structure, they must meet many of the same state requirements and accountability metrics.

During the most recent legislative session, lawmakers established a way for adult high schools to enter partnerships with nonprofits and community colleges. The Fort Worth school is one of the first adult high schools to team up with a community college, along with the Goodwill Excel Center. These partnerships allow the charter school to access additional funding and offer additional credentials that can be attractive to adults seeking a leg up in their field.

Charter schools across the state are starting to follow suit. An existing charter work network, ResponsiveEd, has already announced they are opening adult high schools in 23 cities across Texas.

Charter school critics say they take money from traditional public schools, which can translate to reduced services for students in the district. The adult model, however, taps a different population of learners, Traci Berry, the CEO of the New Heights argued.

“We're actually supporting their families,” said Berry, who had had a hand in the lawmaking effort. “And ISDs know that if the parents of their children are doing better, then their children are going to [do] better.”

Gustavo Mora, 36, has tried to get his GED, the high school equivalency test. He’s put time and money into GED programs but the classes in those programs felt too hands-off, Mora said.

“You still have too much space to think and doubt. Am I gonna make this happen? Is this really me?” Mora said. ”It came to a point where I couldn't really take time out of my day to do education.”

Mora was in high school when he became a father. His high school at the time kicked him out because he was missing too many classes to work full time.

The personalized attention and the traditional classroom setting at New Heights has made this time feel different. He can’t turn around a hallway corner without a teacher checking in on him, he said.

And this time, he’s been able to make school a priority. The technicians at the auto body shop he owns know to text three times if there’s an emergency on the days he’s in class. He purchased the materials for his class project on “The Handmaid’s Tale” at the Dollar Tree before fixing dinner for his six kids and he finished the project when they were asleep.

“It’s an all-day, everyday thing for me, Monday through Sunday. It's not a day off,” he said. “I want to be able to show my family, especially my kids, I have graduated.”

The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.