The Accelerated School, Los Angeles’ first fully independent charter school, has been hailed as a living, breathing example of what education could be.

Its success seems to have as much to do with its freedom from LAUSD supervision than anything else.

“We have the latitude to try new things,” said Jonathan Williams, one of the school’s founders and co-directors. “The freedom is more important than the specific process.”

“I think the flexibility to quickly make improvements is the hallmark of charter schools; it’s critical to their success,” said Anita Landecker, executive director of Excellent Education Development, a non-profit charter school development and management organization. “They have the ability to improve all the time. They make mistakes and they change them.”

Along with that freedom comes responsibility, a factor that proves a deterrent to some teachers who have grown comfortable with the bureaucratic cover of the LAUSD.

“I think charter schools deter teachers who are interested in long-term security and tenure,” said Landecker. “They’re more entrepreneurial and operate more like a small business.”

Williams clearly thrives on that spirit. “We are willing to be 100 percent accountable for a child’s education,” said Williams. “And if we’re not, we know that we’ll be shut down.”

It’s no wonder then that the Accelerated School has made accountability a school-wide imperative. It does not just apply to Williams and his partner, Kevin Sved. Teachers are hired based on experience and are considered for raises based on evaluations and performance.

At the heart of the charter school concept is parental involvement, and the Accelerated School has incorporated parents into its program of ongoing teacher evaluations as well. Parents are required to sign a commitment letter agreeing to attend meetings, complete monthly volunteer hours and assist their child with homework.

For both parents and teachers, added responsibility is rewarded with a greater voice in school operations. The Accelerated School reserves one spot each on its board of directors for a teacher and parent representative. Williams estimated that any given meeting between parents and the school has around a 90 percent attendance rate.

Overall, the school has seen a 93 percent gain in scores from 1997 to 2000 and continues to outperform neighboring schools. “By far they’re doing better than a traditional public school of a similar demographic,” Landecker said.

The Accelerated School’s school-wide average reading score is in the 46th percentile nationally, a 35 percent increase over 1999. And in math, the school-wide average score is in the 59th percentile, a 28 percent increase over 1999.

From the inside out, the Accelerated School reflects the diversity of its programs. Nearly every wall is plastered with student work on subjects ranging from Black History Month to the constellations. The Accelerated School boasts everything from technologically equipped classrooms to an outside garden where students learn hands-on skills to supplement their classroom knowledge about basic biological and geological concepts.

The Accelerated School’s success story seems to be a combination of determination, tenacity and a little bit of luck. Williams and Sved, both teachers in South Central’s 99th Street School, first started talking about forming a charter school in 1993, shortly after the state Legislature agreed to allow 100 public schools to operate outside the public school system that is, free from the 8,700-page State Education Code.

“We wanted a middle school and elementary school together,” said Williams. “We were doing a good job, so we wanted to keep the kids longer.”

That led to the original plan of converting the 99th Street School into a charter school. After a school-wide vote, in which only six teachers including Williams and Sved opted for fully independent charter status, the pair decided to start from scratch.

They wrote more than 300 grant requests and searched over 50 square miles for potential sites. They also wrote and submitted a school charter to be approved by the Los Angeles Board of Education, and went door to door recruiting students. With the aid of $207,500 from Wells Fargo & Co., the Accelerated School opened its doors to 50 students in 1994.

Determination and high standards have turned the school into a model for Los Angeles charter schools, and community support has been a big reason for that success.

In 1997, clothing designer Carole Little and her then-husband (and current business partner) Leonard Rabinowitz donated a $6.8 million warehouse south of downtown at 116 E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., which now houses the school. That donation was reported to have been the largest ever to a local public school.

Today, TAS is formulating a plan for finally realizing the dream originally set forth by the school’s two founders, building a pre-K-12 academy for as many as 900 students.