Nationally, children growing up in low-income families are 4.5 times more likely to drop out of high school than children growing up in high-income families. The odds are even worse for homeless children, who are about 8 times more likely to drop out than low-income children, according to a recent study.

Friendship Public Charter Schools in Washington, D.C., is working to defy those statistics for homeless and other disadvantaged students in the nation’s capital. After almost two decades serving students in the economically depressed neighborhoods east of Washington’s Anacostia River, they are proving that their approach works: according to Friendship’s website, 91% of its students graduate on time, compared to 61% of students who graduate on time in Washington, D.C. According to Friendship, more than 80% of its students enroll in college, compared to 46% of low-income students nationally who enroll in college.

“We will see that you get what you need to be successful in school,” Friendship’s founder and chairman Donald Hense said, explaining that the school intervenes with whatever students need — whether that’s practicing reading and fractions or finding warm clothes to wear to school in the winter.

Hense founded Friendship in 1998, only two years after the D.C. School Reform Act was signed into law, which enabled the creation of charters in Washington, and long before charter schools were common in American cities. At the time, he was serving as executive director of the Friendship House Association, a century-old community organization for D.C. families living in poverty, and he believed better schools would help end the cycle of poverty. From the start, he said, he saw Friendship as a community-based alternative to local public schools, which were, at the time, mired in mismanagement and dysfunction.

This school year, Friendship opened its 11th campus — which will serve students in pre-kindergarten through the fifth grade — with support from the Walton Family Foundation. It was one of the approximately 100 new school startups the foundation helped get off the ground in 2015.

Hense, who is preparing to retire at the end of this school year at age 73, says Friendship succeeds because everyone on the team is completely focused on students and their needs. “We actually care,” he said. “We’ll chase you down. We’ll do every single thing to keep you in school, to assist you.”

Over the years, this has meant installing washing machines and dryers in schools for students who didn’t have a way to clean their clothes. It has meant hiring full time psychologists at every school, not just to support students, but to help families grappling with poverty, neighborhood violence and broken homes. It has meant home visits by principals seeking to address families’ problems.

Friendship’s curriculum is also designed to prepare students for success in college and the workforce. High school students can take college-level courses and “career academies” that allow students to hone interests like engineering, art and technology.

“We felt we needed to do more to make school relevant to students,” Hense said. “You have to show them what education can do. If it’s all theory then you are going to lose them, or certainly a large percentage of them.”