The Little Team that Could

This is the first post in a series about the Washington Irving High School Mock Trial Team

"I don't think you understand.  We goin' to Albany."

Geannie must have said this one hundred times over the past four months.  She is one of the newest members of the Washington Irving High School Mock Trial team, and was full of idealism and hope throughout the 2010 Mock Trial season.

Washington Irving High School is an overcrowded and persistently failing school with a chronic attendance problem located near Union Square in Manhattan. Over the past five years the graduation rate averaged out to around 36%, and the majority of students qualify for free lunch.  Each day, students must walk through metal detectors before heading to their classes for the day.  Currently, the school is on the Department of Education's list to be either closed or "radically changed" because of its dismal performance record.  Of the students who graduate, most will go on to the City University system, whose schools do not have a great graduation rate either. To put it plainly--the cards are stacked against the students who attend WIHS.

Still, there are glimmers of hope. There is a new and enthusiastic principal at the school, and there are several businesses and individuals in the surrounding community that are invested Washington Irving's success.  Cleary Gottlieb has been one of those entities since 1991.  In recent years, a small handful of students have been accepted into elite universities across the country and have started to inspire their younger classmates.  In 2010, the graduation rate jumped to 55%.  In the last two years, the school has received a C on its progress report after years of receiving Fs.  Still, even on the "C" report cards, the section that evaluates student performance is still an F.  Less than 2.7% of high schools city-wide received the same score on their student performance criteria.

Every year, lawyer coaches at Cleary Gottlieb have spent countless hours preparing the WIHS Mock Trial team.  The team competes in a city-wide competition sponsored by the New York State Bar Association.  There are eight rounds of competition throughout the five boroughs of New York City.  Private, parochial and public schools all compete in the tournament.  Every school competes in the first two rounds.  The top 17-64 schools from those rounds will compete in the third round.  The top 16 schools go directly to round four.

After the first two rounds, the tournament becomes a single elimination competition--if you lose, you're out.  The winner of the city-wide tournament travels to Albany to compete at the statewide competition. Despite several years of late hours and constant coaching by Cleary attorneys, Irving's team never made it past the second round of the competition.  They usually lost one round, and won a round, and didn't have enough combined points to push them into the third round.  Until this year.

Click Here to go to Part 2