Whatever Happened to The Class of 2005?

Many students, reached over the past few months, link their current situations to what happened to them at Cardozo -- both good and bad.

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A Guatemalan immigrant said he survived only because a counselor stayed after school to teach him English. A former honor student who dropped out said it was her desire to fit in at the school that kept her from studying.

"I would pretend I didn't know certain things," said Ayana Butler, who left Cardozo during junior year.

The 'One Percenters'

Reginald Ballard, who was principal while the Class of 2005 moved through Cardozo, said he was not surprised that some students found themselves blindsided or unprepared for college or the application process. "It was hard for us to get kids to understand how much it would take to get to college," he said. "Everyone who walked through that door did not necessarily want what we were giving."

Administrators were challenged by demographics alone. About 60 percent of the students were poor enough to qualify for free or reduced-price lunches. Forty percent spoke English as a second language, and many of them were recent immigrants who would attend for a time, then leave when their families returned to their native countries. Tensions broke out between blacks and the growing number of Latino students.

One reason why Cardozo's test scores fell below citywide averages may be because the school enrolled a higher than average number of students with special needs when a nearby special education center closed in the 1990s.

Still, Ballard said, the school tried its best with limited resources. Cardozo offered 10 Advanced Placement classes -- rare for a D.C. public high school -- and a "construction academy" to teach building skills. One of Ballard's teachers created a legal-aid program to help students, including immigrants who wanted to become U.S. citizens.

Students with a 2.5 grade-point average or better could join the school's "TransTech" program, which offered higher-level classes and internships and helped students with college applications.

When the school was built in 1916 as Central High, all of its students were white. Enrollment declined as the neighborhood integrated and the white students left for other schools. In 1950, the Board of Education reassigned the remaining whites, moved in black students and renamed Central for their old, deteriorating school, Francis L. Cardozo.

Half a century later, when the Class of 2005 arrived, Cardozo's enrollment had dropped from nearly 1,800 in 1950 to about 770. Apartment buildings were being converted to upscale condos, forcing low-income families to move. And the growing number of publicly funded charter schools was pulling away dozens of students.

Once again, the Cardozo students were trying to learn in a crumbling environment, a point mentioned frequently in their interviews. The school's swimming pool had long since closed. Lockers were rusty. The school won two city basketball championships while the class was there but the team couldn't play in its own gym because it was not regulation size and the floor had buckled under a leaking roof.

English teacher Frazier O'Leary said the building forces unacceptable choices. If all the air conditioning units are running, the power inevitably goes out, crashing computers while students and teachers are in mid-task.