Mission High School in San Francisco has been designated as one of California's 'persistently lowest achieving' schools - among the lowest performing 5 percent in the state. When Mother Jones education reporter Kristina Rizga saw that designation in 2010, she was skeptical, and decided to investigate. She embedded at Mission High for four years, following teachers, students, and parents, and says she was surprised that what was labeled a ‘failing’ school was actually thriving on the inside. It depends, she says, on how you measure success. Rizga wrote a book about her experience, called 'Mission High: One School - How Experts Tried to Fail It, and the Students and Teachers Who Made It Triumph'.
Click on the audio player above to listen to her interview with Hana Baba.
