Green Dot Public Schools takes a holistic approach to educating each student. While the overall goal is to graduate and prepare students for college, leadership, and life, Green Dot recognizes that different students have different needs. We work hard to provide all students with individualized resources needed for real and measurable success to occur, our efforts guided by the Six Tenets of High-Performing Schools, the set of core principles which each Green Dot school must abide by. In addition, our Recommended Practices aim at guiding each school through best practices associated with curriculum, operations, professional development and interventions.
The Six Tenets of High-Performing Schools
1. Small, Safe, Personalized Schools
All Green Dot schools are small (no more than 560 students when fully developed), ensuring that each student will not go unnoticed. In addition, small schools are safe and allow students to receive the personalized attention they need to learn effectively. Classes at each school will be kept as small as financially possible with a target student to teacher ratio of 27:1.
2. High Expectations for All Students
Green Dot schools are centered on high expectations for all students and the belief that every student is capable of meeting these expectations. Each school offers a rigorous college-prep curriculum that meets the University of California (UC) A-G requirements. Green Dot believes that all students should be prepared to attend a four-year university after high school. Extensive intervention and support programs are offered to help students master the challenging college-prep curriculum.
3. Local Control with Extensive Professional Development and Accountability
Principals and teachers own critical decisions at their schools related to budgeting, hiring and curriculum customization. While the Home Office provides Recommended Practices to schools, principals and teachers are granted "earned autonomy" to decide whether to follow these Practices or to take a different approach. Local control has proven to be an effective component of the Green Dot model as school personnel and stakeholders are held responsible for student results.
Comprehensive professional development is delivered to principals and teachers to ensure that they make effective decisions related to instruction and management. Green Dot schools invest far more time and money into quality professional development than traditional public schools.
4. Parent Participation
Green Dot is committed to actively integrating parents/guardians into all aspects of their students’ educational experiences. Parents are required to give at least 35 hours of service annually at all Green Dot schools and a wide variety of service opportunities are made available.
5. Maximize Funding to the Classroom
Green Dot’s organization is centered on getting more money into the classroom to enable principals and teachers to effectively serve students. Green Dot’s Home Office incorporates best practices from the private and public sectors to maximize efficiency and drive dollars towards activities that directly impact kids. Each school keeps 94 cents of every dollar of public funds allocated to it. The remaining 6% is paid to the Green Dot Home Office as a management fee for providing back-office support functions such as finance & accounting, facilities & operations support, and data & knowledge management.
6. Keep Schools Open Later
Green Dot schools are kept open until at least 5:00 pm daily to provide students with safe, enriching after school programs. Keeping schools open later accommodates the schedules of working families and allows them to know where their children are until they get off work. Green Dot also allows community groups to use school facilities after school hours. This helps ensure that the local neighborhood takes ownership and responsibility for the school.
Recommended Practices
Recommended Practices are Green Dot sanctioned best practices for designing and implementing curriculum, carrying out operations, and investing in professional development tools. Schools receive comprehensive, year-round, training in these practices. Based on Green Dot's aforementioned policy surrounding Local Control at each school site, schools are not required to follow these practices unless student performance indicates a need for intervention. Site walkthroughs, standardized tests, interim assessments and stakeholder feedback surveys are all used to detect early warning signals of struggling schools so that appropriate supports can be provided.
The Home Office provides all Green Dot schools with Recommended Practices in order to ensure a consistent level of quality and standardization. Green Dot is continually updating its Recommended Practices through innovations from within Green Dot’s own network and from best practices developed by other school operators.
