By STEPHEN MOORE
The 40-minute cab ride from the airport to the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy in Northwest Detroit isn't pleasant. Nearly every other home is boarded up, abandoned, dilapidated, with rusted-out cars in the front lawn on sale for as little as $300. Some of the houses can be snatched up for as little as $5,000, and the main commerce visible are liquor stores, auto-repair shops and seedy bars. "You may have noticed," says Jalen Rose, "there aren't any Ritz-Carltons here or five-star restaurants, or even many businesses at all." Welcome to the land of broken families and bankrupt businesses.
And school reform. Every weekday, 120 high-school freshmen from these neighborhoods attend Mr. Rose's academy, some arriving after two bus trips and all before 7:30 a.m. Located in a former public school building, the school has spartan facilities—a science lab with almost no equipment, cracked windows—and few modern frills, though every student is given a computer.
As you approach and knock on the front door (the school is always locked to keep troublemakers away), you cross over a blue line. "When you cross that blue line," explains Mr. Rose, "you have to agree to leave all your troubles behind for the next eight hours." This is a sanctuary—and "one of the most promising school reform initiatives in the state," according to Michigan's Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Detroit Mayor Dave Bing has also offered praise.
For non-sports fans: Now a regular commentator on ESPN, Jalen Rose was a member of the University of Michigan basketball team's controversial and multitalented "Fab Five" from 1991-93. He joined four other high-school all-Americans—Juwan Howard, Jimmie King, Ray Jackson and Chris Webber—who became the first major team to start five freshmen. Not only did they start, but they won and won, going to two straight national championship games. In the process they became a cultural sensation with their yellow jerseys, baggy shorts, black socks and brash, trash-talking style of play. Fans either loved or hated them.
After skipping his senior year to enter the pros, Mr. Rose played 13 seasons in the NBA, earning millions in salary and endorsements—and getting his college degree along the way. On this drizzly and cold December afternoon, he could be living the good life in Palm Springs or South Beach.
Instead he's here building a school, work for which he takes no pay. And he doesn't just lend his name to the letterhead—he's often in the building for 20 hours a week, he says.
At 6 feet 8 inches, he towers as we stroll down the halls of his school at midday. "Do you notice that?" he whispers. "Listen to how quiet it is." He's right—the school has a serene quiet that suggests kids may actually be learning.
Since the Leadership Academy is a charter school free to set its own schedule, the students spend 20% more time in the classroom than they would in Detroit's traditional public schools. The school day runs from 7:30 a.m. until 4 p.m. and the school year is 211 days, not 176. Only one student has dropped out since the school opened in August.
"We didn't cherry pick these kids," says Mr. Rose. "They chose us," he notes, through an oversubscribed lottery system. He adds: "Did you ever see the movie 'Waiting for "Superman"?' The excitement and the joy of families that got in here was similar to that." As the kids scurry past us between classes, they're in crisp uniforms. Several I spoke to exuded confidence—plus awareness that being here could be a life-altering experience.
Mr. Rose plans to start with this freshman class and add a new grade each year until there are some 500 kids in grades 9-12. "This is college prep. We expect 90% to 100% to go on to college"—no mean feat when many students are entering ninth grade with only fourth-grade levels of reading and math proficiency.
The youngest of four kids, Mr. Rose was raised by his mother and never knew his biological father, former NBA player Jimmy Walker. ("The only time we were in the same place at the same time was in 2007 at his funeral," he notes with obvious regret.) He was driven to pursue of his dream of playing in the NBA, he says, "to try to help take my family out of the financial situation we were in."
Mr. Rose's Fab Five days ended badly, with the team losing the 1993 national championship when Chris Webber earned a technical foul in the waning seconds by calling for a time out the team didn't have. ("Coach told us five times in the huddle we had no more time outs," says Mr. Rose.)
Then a federal investigation found that a Michigan booster had paid Mr. Webber, who was indicted for perjury in the case. Mr. Webber eventually pleaded guilty to a criminal contempt misdemeanor and performed community service. The scandal landed Michigan basketball on probation—leading the Fab Five's Final Four banners to be removed from Chrysler Arena.
Mr. Rose staunchly defends the team's legacy. "Michigan has only been to the Final Four five times ever, twice with us. Now they act like the Fab Five never happened, even though we made tens of millions of dollars for the university and they're still making money off of us." He fervently denies that he or Mr. Webber ever violated NCAA rules on payments from boosters. "Chris was my childhood friend. If he was getting that kind of money, we wouldn't have been still driving our mother's cars," he laughs.
Despite the scandal, Mr. Rose is at peace with the university's administration and is hopeful the banners will be returned to the rafters after the program's probation ends in 2013. He also sponsors an academic scholarship at the university, part of his charitable efforts beyond the Leadership Academy.
Those efforts drove him to start the school in the first place, since he saw many promising high-schoolers who had earned straight-As but couldn't score higher than a 14 out of 36 on the ACT. "What were they teaching these kids? There are just so many poor-performing schools here, and there are so many kids in our city that want to do the right thing, and families that want to put their kids in a quality school. But they can't."
So he threw out a life raft by starting his academy. "Only 28% of ninth graders in the Detroit public schools are graduating high school," he notes. The rest "become the statistic you read about in the newspaper. They are the people that are robbing you at the ATM machine."
Why's the situation so bad? "It starts at the top. A lot of the schools are poorly managed," he says. "Some of them have models that aren't set up for success. The kids have no interaction. They get lost."
At the Leadership Academy, "we have a 20-to-1 student teacher ratio and 10-to-1 in math and English. We want to invest in every young man or woman who comes here." That means tailoring achievement standards for every student. "There may be a kid reading at a fourth-grade level [when he enters ninth grade] who when he graduates is reading at a tenth-grade level. That's a victory."
His school also doesn't have tenure for teachers. "I hate tenure. Tenure allows teachers to put their feet up on the desk and possibly have a job forever. That's why I got turned on to charter schools. It's a business model. Every employee and every teacher will be monitored by performance."
Kids too: "We have a code of conduct here. If they act up, they're suspended. They come back with a better attitude."
What about the risk that setting up a high school means intervening too late in kids' lives? "I feel like the eight most at-risk years for young men or young women are the four they're in high school and the four they should be in college. You ask any adult whose dreams didn't come true or goals they didn't get accomplished, they point back to that eight-year period when they started driving, their hormones started taking over, they started having sex, they started partying," says Mr. Rose. "That's when you're in a position to make those poor decisions and actually execute them. That's why I really wanted to influence this age group."
He also wants to influence parents—empowering them to demand better schools for their kids. The rigid system of school boards telling families where their kids have to go to school perpetuates poverty and a sense of entrapment, he says: "Forty-seven percent of Detroit area parents are functionally illiterate. So that puts their kids at a real handicap. Say my mom is one of those 47%. That doesn't mean that I shouldn't have a fair opportunity for a quality public education. But since my mom is functionally illiterate and we grew up on the west side of Detroit, I'm forced to go to this school that has been a poor-performing school for 30 years."
"There should be parental choice," he says clearly. "Schools should be open. If it's a public education, and the school in your district is poor-performing, you should be able to put your student or kid wherever you want."
Choice could be relatively easily implemented, he says. "I'm a taxpaying citizen, right? So if I'm paying $4,000 worth of taxes and I don't want my kid to go to this school, why can't they give me my $4,000 and allow me to pick where I want to put my kids?"
Mr. Rose wants to end this injustice by starting small, with 120 students, and then scaling up—but it won't be easy. His top administrator totes around a nearly three-inch-thick binder of charter-school regulations and bylaws that he must comply with.
Parents at the Leadership Academy pay nothing, as 70% of the school's funds come from the state and the rest from private donations. The school is in the midst of a $5 million capital campaign that has included fund-raisers with other NBA celebrities like Isaiah Thomas, who donated $100,000 to the cause.
The school spends about $10,000 per student, a bargain compared to the roughly $14,000 average in Detroit's public schools. Mr. Rose's aim is to "keep the costs down, but yet still have an educational model and a facility that compares to Country Day," one of Detroit's most prestigious private schools.
Mr. Rose is no saint, and for much of his life the outspoken personality has been surrounded by controversy. In August he served jail time for drunk driving. "That was a terrible choice I made—a dumb decision, and at least I only put myself in harm's way," he concedes with seemingly genuine shame.
Some months before, he earned criticism for appearing in an ESPN documentary and calling a former college hoops rival, Duke University's Grant Hill, an "Uncle Tom." Mr. Rose explains: "This was what we thought about these middle-class black kids. We came from the inner city and had nothing and were jealous of their jerseys, their shoes and nice hotels—all the things they had that we didn't. We thought they were spoon-fed. I wanted what they had. I was jealous. The term 'Uncle Tom' was an ignorant term, but that is how we felt."
He continues: "I apologized—because I like Grant and we get along. And he owes me a visit to the school. He promised me that."
At the end of our interview, Mr. Rose says that most former athletes have voids in their lives after they leave center stage. They often can't find a new mission in life. But he has the Leadership Academy: "I just really felt I had to help the community I came from. I know how hard it is to make it out of here."
Mr. Moore is a member of the Journal's editorial board.
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