While public schools have largely failed to narrow the gap in cultural capital, I have seen some very promising innovations that have come largely from the efforts of dedicated individuals. Many of these could be models for much larger efforts, perhaps on a national scale, if a foundation, individual or other philanthropic entity were to step forward with the means and commitment to see things through.

It takes at least four years to transform a hard-luck school.

Consider, for instance, Oceanside High School in Oceanside, Calif., a troubled school with excessive numbers of low-income students who benefited from one educator’s modest personal contribution. Oceanside proved that creating a college-going culture at a failing school is possible—and that it can be achieved relatively quickly and inexpensively.

The school had tried to avoid harsh sanctions provided under the federal No Child Left Behind law. To that end, school officials hired expensive consultants, paying them hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in hopes of raising test scores. When those short-term fixes failed, school officials were ready to try a turnaround campaign, and brought in Dayle Mazzarella, a teacher and athletic coach who, in his previous job at a nearby high school, had raised students’ academic performance and expectations in a program limited to a handful of classes. At Oceanside, he had a chance to implement his ideas for an entire school.

One day when I was talking to Mazzarella at his cramped office at the school, he mentioned that he and his wife were about to meet with his accountant to discuss what, for him, was a large amount of money—some $200,000 that the couple had personally provided for the Oceanside experiment. I was startled to hear he was using his own funds. But compared to what the high school had spent on remediation and test-prep consultants, his investment was inexpensive.

It also promised to be more effective than previous efforts to "fix" schools, because his objective was to create a college-going culture from the ground up—in short, to provide disadvantaged students with some cultural guideposts and tools that would help lead them to college. Improving students’ academic preparation was certainly one piece of the puzzle. But, just as important, the school had to instill in the students a larger sense of possibility. His program put a great deal of emphasis on allowing all students to take advanced placement classes and boosting student participation in the requisite college-entrance exams such as the PSAT and the SAT, as well as teaching them in class how to complete some of the college entrance requirements their parents might not understand.

Unfortunately, the money for the Oceanside project—meager relative to the actual need—ran out just as the experiment began to pay big dividends. After only two years, Oceanside doubled its number of college-bound students and recorded the largest two-year improvement on California’s Academic Performance Index of any school in the state. But along with success came a price that now puts the entire experiment in jeopardy. During Mazzarella’s first two years, Oceanside had about $600,000 a year in discretionary funds to pay for the intensive teacher training, curriculum development and other nuts and bolts that held the experiment together. No longer on California’s watch list of troubled schools, its extra state funding dramatically shrank, and federal Title 1 funds were pared down to just more than $200,000 a year.

Mazzarella says it takes at least four years to transform a hard-luck high school into one with a vibrant, college-going culture. Such turnarounds require relatively large up-front investments in the early years, with periodic checkups in subsequent years. For a school the size of Oceanside, with a student body of about 2,500, he says a proper four-year investment would require $1.5 million to $2.7 million.

We know it can be done, but the next chapter requires far more sustained efforts. For private change-makers serious about real reform, the possibilities are endlessly exciting.

Peter Sacks is author of Tearing Down the Gates: Confronting the Class Divide in American Education.