“The walk from my home in Worcester
to University Park Campus School takes 10 minutes, but the journey took
26 years. I think the years represent the longest pre-service training
in history but with not one day wasted in valuable lessons learned. As
planner and founding principal of UPCS, I made decisions that were
based on educational practices that I felt needed to change. Education
would be different for the children in this school.”
Donna Rodrigues works with the Early College High School Initiative to
help create quality schools for underrepresented students. She has
spent 35 years in education as a teacher, department chair of foreign
languages, professional development school coordinator, part-time
professor at Clark University, and, for eight years, the planner and
founding principal of University Park Campus School, a small Worcester
Public Schools/Clark University collaboration.
University Park, a start-from-scratch school for students from the most
economically disadvantaged neighborhood in Worcester, challenged dismal
demographics to achieve measurable student success. And through her
guidance of school principals and planners, Ms. Rodrigues has magnified
her influence far beyond the walls of the UPCS, transforming the
education of thousands of students throughout the country.
Stories about urban schools often tell of dismal levels of academic
achievement, decrepit facilities, insufficient resources, and pervasive
violence. UPCS defies this picture. Newsweek has ranked UPCS as the
68th best high school in the country; UPCS has the highest percentage
of students receiving subsidized lunches among the top 200 schools on
the list, and it is the only one in Massachusetts among the top 100.
With one class added each year since 1997, the first class graduated in
2003. The official dropout rate is 1.6%, compared to 5.1% for the
district as a whole. Operating at a cost comparable to other Worcester
high schools—about $8,600 per pupil—UPCS is also distinguished by its
attendance rates for pupils (95.2 percent) and teachers (99.6 percent).
The suspension and expulsion rates are close to zero.
Since joining JFF, Ms. Rodrigues has helped high schools throughout the
country to develop the characteristics of success that she built at
UPCS. She travels throughout the country speaking on how the
achievement gap can be closed and working with educators to help them
close it. She supports schools in the Early College High School
Initiative and is the founding director of the Clark/UPCS Institute for
Student Success, a training institute founded by Clark, UPCS, and Jobs
for the Future to train teachers and school leader in the methods for
success used as UPCS.
Ms. Rodrigues received her B.A. in English from Emmanuel College and
her first Master’s from Worcester State College and Universidad de las
Americas. She earned her second M.Ed. in Administration, Planning and
Social Policy from Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she was
honored as a Hiatt Fellow.
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No Rim, All Hoop
Send an email to: Donna Rodrigues
