Posted on 05/07/2014 11:39:27 AM PDT by MichCapCon
DETROIT — Driving down Waterman Street in Mexicantown in Southwest Detroit you pass boarded up houses, closed down businesses, and other things that make up too much of the city.
Until you get to Cesar Chavez Academy. The school stands out like an island. No boards. No graffiti. No garbage in the parking lot. This is a place for learning.
And it's where Daniel Felix has excelled. He came to Detroit from Los Angeles as a child and lives a few blocks from the high school with his two brothers, a grandfather, and parents who speak mostly Spanish.
Felix with his high school principal, Juan Martinez. That's not unique in his neighborhood. What's special about Daniel is that he's headed to one of the top universities in the world later this fall.
He's not sure which one yet, and it's a tough decision, because Daniel has gotten into most of them. Acceptance letters have come from Harvard, Stanford, Princeton and the University of Michigan. He's still waiting to hear from Yale and Columbia.
Speaking with him, one is struck by Daniel's humbleness. He credits his success in school to his parents. His father works as a landscaper and his mother is a homemaker.
"Since early age, my parents motivated me to go to good schools," he said. "They encouraged me to try my hardest. Always told me education was the key to success and improving your life. They didn't really have much education when they grew up."
Daniel has a near-perfect GPA and achieved a 31 on his ACT, which is in the top 3 percent of students nationwide. Daniel also got a perfect score on the SAT-II Spanish and a 760 on the mathematics portion (top 2 percent). He is on the robotics team, in the National Honor Society, and participates with students from other high schools in the "Generation of Promise," a leadership development program. And he does this all while taking three advanced placement classes.
His high school principal, Juan Martinez, says Daniel possesses the most important thing of all: character.
"Daniel is like many of our students," Martinez said. "He's outstanding. He's courteous. He's kind. Respectful, as all of our students are. He is also special because he has set high goals for himself. He has many aspirations and he's pursuing his dreams."
One of those dreams is to become a doctor. Daniel said he became interested in a medical career when he helped translate for doctors when his grandfather had to spend time in the hospital because of health problems. That led to an internship at the Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit.
Now he is deciding between majoring in pre-med or computer science. Or, perhaps both.
Having a supportive family and the drive to succeed has certainly helped with Daniel's achievements. But there is another important piece to this journey: His school.
And it almost wasn't to be.
Half a mile away from Cesar Chavez is Detroit Southwestern High School where Daniel would have gone had the charter public school not been an option for him.
It is only in the past decade that Michigan began to expand its school choice programs, culminating in the elimination of the arbitrary cap on charter schools two years ago.
The differences between the high schools are stark.
Southwestern High was closed in 2012 for being continually ranked by the state among the lowest 5 percent of all schools in Michigan. The students were divided up and sent elsewhere.
Cesar Chavez Academy was ranked No. 2 out of 684 public high schools in Michigan on the Mackinac Center for Public Policy's latest "Context and Performance" report card, which looks at student test scores and growth and accounts for socioeconomic status.
In addition to offering lots of academic and athletic programs, Cesar Chavez has a graduation rate of 85 percent and 90 percent of students who apply to college are accepted. For the conventional schools in Detroit Public Schools, a report a few years ago found that students had less than a 25 percent chance of graduating.
“Students [at Cesar Chavez] were posting results far and above what we would expect given their backgrounds, and when we came here we saw that teachers had a great level of autonomy,” said Audrey Spalding, director of education policy at the Mackinac Center. "There was a focus on excellence and despite the fact that this is a high poverty neighborhood, they really fostered the sense of security and focus."
Daniel and his parents are happy about how things have turned out. All three Felix boys attend a Cesar Chavez school.
"I didn't feel a connection to Southwestern," Daniel said. "I was glad to have a choice."
Principal Martinez said he hopes Daniel's inspiration can be used by others.
"Daniel's success has lit a fire amongst his peers," Martinez said. "There are so many students who are excited about Daniel's success and the fact that he's been admitted to universities. I believe more students will be following that course in years to come."
That’s my old ‘hood. SO glad my parents got me out of there in 1952.
He's so special, he's average! They're all special!
All very nice, but I know plenty of less, umm, "diverse" kids with better SAT's and more AP courses who didn't get into a single Ivy-League. He's clearly smart and capable, but without his background and race, he's just an average Ivy-League applicant.
Ben Carson did it first.
Some of those white kids with higher SATs and ACTs didn’t get into Ivy schools because the schools would prefer to admit more minorities.
This year Harvard accepted 25% minorities. That’s not the counting Asians, only black and hispanic.
From Detroit to the Ivy League. There’s a difference?
Thus a large number of semi-intelligent blackamoors and Latinos who have a chip of grievance as big as a pound cake against the US and white Americans in general can be force fed into the upper levels of law and government. What sort of policies will this cohort propagate? White people in the US who are traditional and middle class better grasp quickly what the elites have planned. When race based militias are being armed and established by the state and called ‘Community Police’ the next step will be to unleash them to police your community.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.