After failing traditional learning, ‘Hip Hop High’ students fear their charter school will close 

By Mitchell Landsberg, Los Angeles Times, July 19, 2008 

HAWTHORNE, CALIF. — Students at "Hip-Hop High" know about adversity. For many, life has been a minefield of gangs, violence and family chaos. They were academic failures, many of them, kicked out of schools, allowed to fail their way from one grade to the next.