An Urban High School With No Violence

By Kitty Kelly Epstein

Oakland, Calif., has a high school where there are no fights, no security guards, no metal detectors, no guns, and the police department visits to ticket meter violators rather than to arrest students. California and several other states that earned an F in "School Climate" on Education Week 's latest state-by-state report card ("Quality Counts '98," Jan. 8, 1998) would do well to examine this school's innovations.

It is not a private school. It has low-income students and little technology, but it earned California's Distinguished School Award in 1990, and many students say it is the best school they have ever attended. A teacher who has been there for 25 years says she wouldn't teach anywhere else.

Asked to explain the difference in atmosphere at the Oakland Emiliano Zapata Street Academy, one student says this: "There was a fight a day at my old school. Here we are a family. Students will stop each other from fighting, because we don't want anyone to mess up the good...