Below are excerpts from an article in today’s Los Angeles Times. The article highlights Stephen Strachan, principal of Jordan High School in Watts, a no nonsensene administrator who has an unofficial experiment going on in his school. It is his his all-male academy, which is in fact a group of young men who have taken all their classes exclusively together for the past three years. It’s only one part of Jordan High School’s program but it clearly has a special place in Strachan’s plans.

You can see many similarities to The Eagle Academy in this small program.


And when he needs to recharge his batteries, Strachan retreats to a classroom filled with boys: his all-male academy, a daring, unofficial experiment that he will not allow to fail.

We heard these statistics before.

AT Jordan, as at many urban schools, boys are more likely than girls to cut classes, fall behind, fail, drop out and wind up as adults in dead-end jobs — or, worse, prison cells.

David Banks returned to teaching when he read in the New York Times that Black Males were becoming an "endagered species."

"Our men are going to be extinct in the inner city if we don't do something," Strachan says. Prodded by his sense of desperation, he built his experiment on research that suggests boys can thrive in single-sex classes.

The Eagle Academy has the advantage of the kids wanting to be in a singler gender school.

His first year at Jordan, he picked 30 freshmen boys at random — half black, half Latino — and assigned them to take all their courses together, with no girls in their classes.

The boys were not happy. Some parents were wary, "but they were open to anything that would save their sons," Strachan says. "I got very little push-back when I explained what I was doing."

But a brewing culture of success seems to propel the group forward. Last spring, 85% of them passed the state's graduation exam, compared with 24% of Jordan's other sophomores. This year, their curriculum includes Advanced Placement courses and college-level math, science and literature.

"They're struggling, but they're beginning to see education as a tool, a ticket out of the inner city," Strachan says. "When there's a problem, they come to me. Some are thinking about college, [saying] 'Teach me how to study.' "

Eagle Academy hopes to become a 6-12 school with six to ten more like it in New York City.

Word of the boys' progress has begun to spread; the nearby King-Drew Medical Magnet began its own all-male classes this fall. And new rules, announced last week by the U.S. Department of Education, will make it easier for other schools to try single-sex classes.

"There are days when I walk this campus and I visit other classes and I don't see that level of expectation and engagement," Strachan says. "Then I get in that class and feel the energy…. We're doing things different, stepping out of the box."


He speaks bluntly to his all-boy class, not just about the challenges of junior year, but of his belief that "designed racism" threatens to keep them trapped. It's "cultural change" Strachan is going for, "trying to instill leadership values among them as men."

Sound familiar?

He gets groans when he suggests a new dress code: a collared shirt and tie one day a week, and blue Jordan High polo shirts the rest of the time.

Three years in, the boys haven't stopped complaining about the gender segregation. "I hear it all the time," Strachan says. " 'Can't we get some girls in here? Or at least a couple of cute female teachers?' They protest, and I listen. But I think adults need to make the decisions."

THIS year he's giving his all-boy class a chance to take one elective — with girls. The first week of school, he visits to talk about their schedules, asks if there are any problems with their new classes.

A hand goes up. Strachan braces for a complaint about lunch menus or polo shirts. Instead, the boy asks if he can change his elective from the computer class he had requested.

"I'm having trouble with math," he tells the principal. "Can I take another algebra class?"

Strachan swallows hard and smiles, but his voice never changes. "I think we can arrange that. An algebra class."