ALBUQUERQUE — Albert Aragon dreams of working in real estate one day, but the 29-year-old jail inmate is a high school dropout who believes employers don't hire people with general equivalency diplomas.

Now he's got a chance to get his high school diploma, thanks to a new Albuquerque charter school, one of a handful of charter schools nationwide serving current and former jail inmates the public school system failed to reach.

"When they see a high school diploma, they see that you stuck in through the thick and thin, through the tough times, and when you're out getting jobs, they don't want GEDs, they want diplomas," he said during a break in his language arts class.

The Gordon Bernell Charter School at the Bernalillo County Metropolitan Detention Center in Albuquerque and the Five Keys Charter School in San Francisco have turned their state laws on charter schools into opportunities to grant high school diplomas — rather than GEDs — to jail inmates regardless of their age.

"That sounds like a fairly unique approach," said Todd Ziebarth, a policy analyst with the Washington, D.C.-based National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, when told of the schools' missions. "I think it's yet another example of the different kinds of innovation we're seeing in the public charter school model."

Wearing orange jumpsuits, students in Albuquerque attend typical high school math and language classes and science labs in secure rooms next to their pod, which is segregated from the rest of the jail population. Visitors must pass through metal detectors and a series of locked doors to enter the classrooms.

Students are given homework to complete in their cells at night. They practice basketball skills in physical education classes held in an enclosed outdoor area surrounded by high walls. And they learn about how to make better moral choices once they are released in a day room surrounded by rows of fluorescent-lit jail cells.

San Francisco County Sheriff Michael Hennessey, who helped start Five Keys Charter School in 2003, says it was tough to get the school board to approve a charter school for inmates that was operated by the San Francisco County Sheriff's Department.

"After they got over the kind of shock of sanctioning a high school inside of a jail, they said they would be happy to support it," he said.

The school board eventually gave Five Keys unanimous support when its charter was approved in 2002.