Quiata Whaley, 13, marvels at the changes at the Shoemaker School in West Philadelphia.

The rooms and the hallways have been brightened with pastel paint. Students are wearing school uniforms. There are new rules and a new staff. No more food fights in the cafeteria, no scuffles in the hallway. And when it's time to change classes, students walk in single file behind a teacher who escorts them.

"As soon as I walked into the school, I knew it was different," said Whaley, who is in eighth grade. "I felt like they were watching out for us. "

For years, Shoemaker, on Media Street, was one of the school district's most troubled schools, plagued by low test scores and violence. This year, it has been reborn as the Mastery Charter School-Shoemaker Campus.

Because of Mastery Charter 's success the last five years with high school students at its Center City campus, district officials turned to Mastery to take on Shoemaker.

This isn't the first time the district has tried something new at Shoemaker. A company managed the school in 2002-03 but was fired after the district found little improvement. Test scores went up after the district regained control but remain low.

Scott Gordon, Mastery's chief executive officer, said the goal was to transform Shoemaker - whose assault rate of 8.1 per 100 students last year placed it among the most violent schools in the district - into a safe school where students want to excel and prepare for college.

"There is a sense of excitement in the community, in that it's something fresh, it's something new," said Robert Lewis, the principal, who has attended community meetings and visited students' homes.

"I'm impressed with how they are running the school and the curriculum they set up," said Dawn Nembhard, whose son William, 12, is in seventh grade.

She home-schooled him last year and would never have enrolled him at Shoemaker if it had not become a charter.

"It's 1,000 percent better than the old Shoemaker," she said.

Mastery's Shoemaker campus opened in September with 208 seventh and eighth graders. It will eventually grow to 714 students in seventh through 12th grades.

"They have a superb model," said Paul Vallas, district chief executive. "It's a college-bound culture. . . . And everything about the operation of the school reinforces that notion. "

Shoemaker is Mastery's second charter conversion, but it likely won't be its last. Last year, Mastery turned Thomas Middle School in South Philadelphia into a charter. The district is negotiating with Mastery to make Pickett Middle School in Germantown a charter next fall.

The conversions are part of the district's plan to phase out middle schools and create more small high schools, Vallas said.

He said he was impressed by Mastery's solid curriculum and its approach to learning. Students must show "mastery" by earning a grade of at least 76 percent before they advance to the next level.

The focus on academics has helped students at Thomas do better on state tests. Last year, the number of eighth graders scoring proficient or higher on state tests increased from 29.1 percent to 39.2 percent in reading and from 39.1 percent to 44.4 percent in math.

The Mastery program also includes a longer school day and school year, mandatory tutoring for struggling students, and smaller classes (no more than 25 students at the middle schools and 23 at the high school). Progress reports are sent to parents every six weeks.

The students sign contracts pledging not to engage in violence. And parents and the school sign contracts pledging to do "whatever is necessary" to help the student excel.

But Gordon, the chief executive, said the most critical ingredients were Mastery's focus on social and emotional learning and creating a positive school culture.