Misguided in America

We've all heard the phrase, "It takes a village to raise a child." But three high school teachers took this message to heart when confronted with low test scores in their Los Angeles school.

In 2003, Andre Chevalier, Bill Paden and Fluke Fluker decided something drastic had to be done at Cleveland High School. "The African-American students were at the bottom of the list and they were even below students that had English as a second language," Andre says. These scores, Fluke says, were not representative of the kids he taught. "We have the conversations with the kids. We know that is not a true reflection of their intelligence," Fluke says.

The teachers decided to call an emergency meeting for all the African-American students in the school to address their below-average performance. "Sometimes the truth can be brutal and so the truth for them on that particular day was showing them their test scores, and they were shocked," Fluke says.

A student named Sally says there was one word to describe what they felt at that meeting: anger. Something needed to be done. "It was really important that we showed everybody that this is not who we are," says Chris, a student.