When School Works

Laura Vanderkam:

Michelle González has an impressive résumé. She has worked at Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting company; and Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, a law firm; she starts a job at the architecture firm Arquitectonica this month. Even more impressive? She's only 17 years old. "Every year there's a new profession thrown at me," she says.

That's because she's a student at Cristo Rey New York High School (CRNYHS), part of a new national network of 19 urban Catholic schools that combine on-the-job work experience with rigorous academics. Five days a month for the past few years, González has traveled from her Bronx home to Manhattan offices. She has answered phones, written letters and filled in Excel spreadsheets. Three other classmates have shared each job with her.

(Illustration by Sam Ward, USA TODAY)

In exchange, her employers have paid $27,500 for each full-time equivalent position to CRNYHS, as do the 80 other companies that employ González's 300 fellow students. These payments keep tuition at $2,000 a year. That's important because the majority of students at this East Harlem school, and its sister schools with similar work-study programs in Denver, Los Angeles and elsewhere, come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at September 11, 2007 12:00 AM
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