How a Great School is Breaking the Cycle of Poverty in America's Poorest City
January 27, 2015
16,189
447
32
2.96%
Search the Record
IndexedEvery word spoken in this episode is indexed. Type any phrase to jump straight to the moment it was said.
Type any word or phrase that may have been spoken. Click a result to seek the player to that exact moment.
Try a name, a topic, or a quoted line
ReasonTV Episodes Around January 27, 2015
See what was published immediately before and after this episode.
5:37Now PlayingHow a Great School is Breaking the Cycle of Poverty in America's Poorest City
YouTube Description
as posted by the channelIn the early 1990s, Gloria Bonilla-Santiago hatched a plan to create an alternative school for families in the impoverished city of Camden, New Jersey, who were desperate to avoid sending their kids to the city's abysmal public system.
She became deeply involved in building political support to pass the state's first charter school authorization bill. In 1996, the charter school bill passed, and the following year she opened a new school called LEAP in a vacant lot on the Camden waterfront.
Today, the school occupies 5 buildings on Cooper Street, offering its students a cradle to college education, and it's the most successful school in the city. While the four-year graduation rate in Camden's traditional public schools is 61 percent, LEAP has a graduation rate of 98 percent, and every member of its 2014 graduating class got into college.
This profile of LEAP is the second in a three-part video series on Camden public schools.
Click here to watch part one
Click here watch part three
About 5:30 minutes.
Shot, edited, produced and narrated by Jim Epstein. Production assistance from Brett Crudgington.
Go to for downloadable versions and subscribe to Reason TV's YouTube Channel to get automatic notifications when new stories go live.
Links & Promotions
Guests & Subjects Covered
Sentinel Indexing in Progress
Metadata and chapters are available. Claim extraction for this episode is pending.
All video content is delivered via YouTube embedded players in accordance with the YouTube Terms of Service. Sentinel provides research tools that promote discovery and accountability across political media.