Our Model

A school built on solid ground

The numerous challenges faced by schools in low-income urban areas are deeply entrenched. Most struggle to simply survive, much less thrive. With the generous support of donors who see education as a cornerstone of positive transformation and community members who share our vision, Rise Prep has built a stable, effective model that is already changing lives. Our model relies on three foundational principles:

01

Superb
Academic
Program

Rise Prep provides a superb academic program taught by exceptional, committed faculty that prepares scholars to attend a 4-year university.

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In our world, social and economic disparities are growing at alarming rates. Education is a key link in addressing this disparity. The Bayview-Hunters Point has seen a negative reinforcing cycle deteriorating educational opportunities for its students. It has become the least desirable zone for district hires, experiences high teacher turnover, and has the lowest test scores in the district or highest concentration of bottom quintile scores. Students often bus one hour away for better school choices, which has led to school closures within our neighborhood. Rise was born out of the need and opportunity for a school to provide excellent academics with committed, high quality teachers in the Bayview-Hunters Point.

The 8:1 student to faculty ratio, 9-5 school day with homework time embedded, and the 10+ years of teacher experience all serve to lay the foundation of this quality education for our diverse student body. Stable, loving, trusting relationships built between students during their formative years pay dividends in the long-term success of their lives and in the life of our community.

When students trust faculty and know that they are supported, they want to grow and learn even when expectations are high. And the results show. Even in the midst of the pandemic, Rise Prep students, in reading, language and science, achieved more than 185% of the pre-pandemic national average expected test score improvement for 2020 (the average student nationwide achieved 73% of the expected reading score growth for 2020). In math, Rise Prep students achieved 100% of the pre-pandemic, national average expected test score improvement for 2020 (the average student nationwide achieved 43% of the expected math score growth for 2020). These numbers are indicators that there is hope for our students, despite the odds and circumstances, that every dollar and every hour we spend incrementally lifts not just one person, but generations hereafter. We can think of no better investment.

02

Student
and Family
Flourishing

Rise Prep’s approach to learning and human development inspires student and family flourishing, as we all come to embrace our full identity as children of God.

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The intractable problem of education in urban areas results from a complex tangle of larger non-educational issues. On their first day at Rise Prep, many students arrive not only with academic aptitude levels several years behind the standard, but with problems that hamper learning that go beyond mere access to quality education. Some come from families that regularly experience food insecurity, others live in cramped quarters with many family members sharing the same room. Some have witnessed or directly experienced violence. Learning and healthy development are difficult in the face of trauma.

On top of this, we all find ourselves in a world where our identities are commodified, students lack a sense of their being God's handiwork, and lack a call to do good work (Ephesians 2:10).

At Rise Prep, we help students deal and heal from responses and behaviors that arise out of their trauma. We remind them daily that they are beloved children of God–his handiwork, his masterpieces. We guide our students to think beyond themselves, to their neighbor and community, so as to become fully human in the way that God has intended.

We do this work by sweating the small stuff, and addressing broken relationships and conflicts early and often. We foster different types of relationships (teacher, tutor, mentor, supporter, family) and different spaces (school, church, business, arts) for a student to experience the diverse ways that God has made them to be. By the time they graduate, every student feels known and advocated for by 5+ people in the Rise community (teachers to volunteers to community leaders to sponsors).

As students feel known and loved, and develop and are formed in the image of Christ, they will embody an understanding of and appreciation for what is good, true, and beautiful, exemplified by: senior leadership, peer-mentorship; diverse intellectual interests and articulated passion; and participation in extracurriculars.

Qualities of a Rise Prep Scholar

Analytical Thinker: asks productive questions, discerns crucial evidence, makes key connections, and joins in scholarly dialogue.

Imaginative Creator: cultivates a vibrant imagination, envisions bringing about good, demonstrates resilience in the process of conceptualizing, drafting, evaluating, re-designing, and implementing.

Humble Leader: welcomes responsibility, cares for others, practices integrity, models service, fosters relationships.

As the pandemic raged, we knew that getting students back to in-person learning as quickly as possible was fundamental to living out our identities in community. By March 2021, Rise Prep was able to re-open for a hybrid of in-person and remote learning, the only middle or high school in the Bayview District to have any in-person option during the 2020-2021 school year. The impact on student and family flourishing is clear. In our annual surveys, Rise parents give the school a 93 net promoter score. One parent writes: “All year my son has had excellent instruction from 9-3:30 daily at least. Sadly, in contrast my daughter in public school during that same time frame had instruction from 9:15-11:15. This makes a HUGE difference. This is justice and equity work— it doesn't get a ton of attention, but it is real.”

03

Beloved
Community

Rise Prep seeks to contribute and be enriched by the beloved community in the Bayview and beyond as an expression of God’s just kingdom.

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We are in a time of intense polarization, divisiveness, mistrust between people of different backgrounds. The Bayview is no exception.

The Bayview neighborhood is no stranger to being seen as a project to be implemented or a problem to be solved. “Reconstitution,” “dream schools,” “more tech,” have all promised lasting change to great initial hope and fanfare—potentially solving deep socio-economic and educational inequities. But the desire for unrooted, quick and dramatic change in the digital age of “Fail Often, Fail Fast” has resulted in just that: fast failures and deep disappointments. Perhaps the one change that has resisted failure is gentrification. Rather than solving the area’s problems, however, this shifts it outward as families are priced out of their homes and displaced from our neighborhoods.

We believe that our Bayview is not a problem to be solved, fixed or conquered. Rather, it is a blessed place with blessed people where God is actively at work through human relationships. One could say that Bayview is on the margins of power and influence, even left out of tourist maps. But we believe that it is exactly where we find Jesus at work. This is where truth is spoken to power. This is where the invisible is made real. This is where rooted neighbors can testify to God’s mysterious, steady and long-lasting work borne out of people loving God and loving neighbor.

Rise Prep is a demonstration of God's shalom and re-imagined world where space is created for families of different communities, ethnicities, and socioeconomic status to come together to unite in the common goal to grow academically, socially, and spiritually.

The ways that this is lived out is in our 80/20 admission model (80% of our seats are reserved for first generation to college, low-income, or Bayview resident scholar), and in our 90% fundraising model where families have access to this level of education and where supporters see the resources it takes to educate each and every child. Rise is embedded in this particular neighborhood (the Bayview-Hunters Point), and has deep relationships with churches and organizations here.

During the pandemic, many Bay Area churches came alongside our families to provide monetary support through their pandemic relief funds. Cross-cultural friendships exist and thrive across various demographic lines at Rise Prep. In our annual survey, 94% of parents AGREE STRONGLY with the statement: I feel like Rise is a place where people from all socioeconomic backgrounds feel welcome. Our students are key participants in community work by volunteering with SF Greenagers, SF/Marin Food Bank, San Francisco African-American Faith-Based Coalition, and other local organizations in our neighborhood. Together, we continue to practice and live out our calling to be a beloved community here in the Bayview.

Hope in God

Ultimately it is hope in our big, loving God that fuels everything we do and focuses us to where we are headed. His binding love compels us to reflect that love in our present time and place as His kingdom breaks in upon our sidewalks. Our vision is rooted in a Biblical sense of Jubilee, which is the undoing of gross inequities and reclaiming God’s good and bountiful apportionment to each community to flourish.  

Because our hope rests in God instead of ourselves, teachers and administrators know that we are here to join our students. Because we join God in His deep love for each child, working with parents and community to tend and nurture this young person with deliberate and measured steps that take time. Knowing that it is God at work through us and in our students liberates us from the burnout that often happens with educators in high needs schools. Our students begin to see that their lives are not predetermined by their place of birth or where they live, but their futures are open because God is at work in them, their teachers, and in this neighborhood.