I received an email from an educator in New Orleans who read my post about the proposal by a management consultant to require low-performing charter schools to post their grades on the wall and on their clothing. The informant said that the proposal to the Algiers Charter Schools Association was not merely theoretical. It was already imposed at the McDonogh #32 charter school. He or she sent me two photographs: One showed the school’s letterhead, declaring it has a grade of F, the other showed a public banner with the school’s F grade and its goals for improvement boldly displayed.
I think most educators would consider this practice of public shaming to be a barbaric remnant of another century, not even the 20th century.
What next? Dunce caps for the children? Public dunking for the teachers? Enforced silence for all? No breakfast or lunch until the scores go up? Or will the educators–teachers and administrators–have the school grade tattooed on their foreheads?
To think this came from a management consultant firm. I wonder where they have been successful in the past. Which corporations have they “turned around” with their strategy of public humiliation? Or is it reserved only for educators and schools?
Apparently, humiliating students is not all that unusual. A New Orleans contact sent me this 2007 story about a charter school where students are handed a sign that says “YET,” meaning they have not yet met expectations; for three days, they must wear the sign around their neck, are not allowed to talk to other students and must eat lunch alone. Apparently, shaming works.
Is this something that white college graduates do to poor black children? I can’t imagine that these teachers were treated this way when they went to school. I would not tolerate these techniques for a minute if it were my children or grandchildren.
Maybe their punishment could include recess on an asphalt parking lot in Miami like this charter school….
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/07/05/2883293/appeals-court-miami-dade-school.html
The good thing is that an appeals court overturned the decision by the state DOE to strike down Miami-Dade Schools’ decision to close this charter.
And here in CT we have the great Paul Vallas reeking havoc. Here is the most recent posting, but search this blog, there are MANY more.
http://jonathanpelto.com/2012/07/06/who-will-pay-the-price-for-what-is-happening-in-bridgeport/
Also, read this editorial written by a state college professor about the Vallas turn around plan titled: Educaiton is no place for a quick fix
http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Education-is-no-place-for-a-quick-fix-3679509.php
Money, ignorance and greed creates barbarians!
Wow. Left speechless by the idiocy of this deform idea.
Here in NYC we have “the burning of the witches” constantly in the media through one long perp walk of teachers. Regular front page stories of alleged perv teachers cascade the front pages of the tabloids. Regarding New Orleans, not surprised, since wasn’t it the Puritans who burned the supposed witches of Salem? Many of these Ed Deformers come from Ivy League enclaves , very white, that employ the same methods. Ivy League schools were employed decades ago to strike break against workers who went on strike.
However, in NYC, Bloomberg is quite selective as to who he closes down.
Mini-school grad rates and data in NYC are so bogus they can make you laugh…or cry.
Students who either missed many classes and/or completed little work, are allowed to take “credit recovery.” These are basically open book units delivered on computer. The student is allowed to take a unit UP TO TEN TIMES ! This is THE ultimate social promotion. STILL some students here can’t or won’t pass!
The worst part of this, of course, that this completely undermines the value of showing up at all and completing work on time. A mini school degree in NYC is often a complete joke….meaningless.
This is the improvement Bloomberg, Klein, Gates, and Weingarten have brought to these schools? It’s hogwash.
KIPP uses “miscreant” shame sign and shunning:
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2010/11/learning-about-kipp-lesson-3-social.html
http://normsnotes2.blogspot.com/2008_02_01_archive.html
Original article about New Orleans Charter Posting Shame Signs
http://bit.ly/MIKDWT
There is no place in education for these kinds of senseless and sinister practices. While we all focus on the policies of privatization of public education which is not supported by any research, can you imagine what the students are going through in these charter schools. These kinds of insane practices can damage children for life!!!!!!!!!!
Does anyone have photos of these shaming devices?
Let the litany continue. In Wisconsin, Gov. Walker is proposing legislation that posts a grade on the homepage of all WI schools based on various data outcomes.
http://oneteachersperspective.blogspot.com/2012/01/governor-walker-its-personal.html
This, of course, fits beautifully into Gov. Walker’s free market mentality to pit schools against schools in a competitive education model. In this fantasy land, the capitalist fairy descends with his invisible hand and sprinkles free market dust upon the defunct public education system making all well.
This is not free market economics. It is closer related to corporate fascism. The governor’s and others appear to have no understanding of our free market concept. Free marker is NOT taking what has been developed with taxpayers money and turning it over to private individuals, foundations and etc.; it remains under the control of the taxpayers. It does not destroy representative government principles.
The very idea of labeling, humiliating, degrading and the displaying of “failure” is absolutely deplorable. I have been aware of the Algier’s situation but not the McDonogh #32 charter. Thanks for bringing it to our attention. Entering a school to teach or learn in this environment is cruel and inhuman punishment. I don’t see this as a means to improve a situation. This is not innovative.
We need a walk of shame for these reformers….dunce caps, chains, red F’s and parade them down every Main Street, USA…Duncan, Bloomberg, Jindal, Rhee, Christie, White, insert a pompous know-it-all scamming lying reformer name here ____________.
Shame on you. Shame on you. Shame on you. Shame on you!
Canal is mighty long and would be a really hot place to parade right now! 🙂
To the “free market” people…competition really means monoploy. Only one or two large firms eat up the rest, and get the government contracts in the ed. game. I’d just lie to know why, in Bloomberg’s DOE, schools are paying up to twice the price, and more, for all sorts of items-computers, walkie talkies, video systems, etc.? I thought this great biz guru, Bloomberg, would get better deals for The People? Could this be the classic scam of overpricing items, so certain parties can skim off the top, AND the vendor gets overpaid? Jeez…I must be a conspiracy theorist…huh? I believe Bloomberg, or one of his thousands of shell corps, is skimming off the top, and depositing these taxpayer thefts far away in offshore accounts…at the click of a mouse. The only pol who has had the balls to stand against him is John Liu, the Comptroller. Suddenly now he has been destroyed in the press over an alleged administration issue regarding HIS CAMPAIGN IN THE NEXT MAYORALL ELECTION..Hmmmm…what a coincidence…
These are the results of Corporate Management of Educational Institutions; this is the web being weaved. It’s a sad state of events, hopefully this tragedy will end soon.
These so-called “reformers” are not reformers at all. They are just continuing the federally-funded programs (abuse heaped on inner city children and their parents) ever since 1965 ESEA when performance-based teaching (Skinner) became the teaching and learning method for the future. This abusive and non-academic Pavlovian/Skinnerian method has paraded under the following labels: Direct Instruction, Mastery Learning, Outcomes Based Education, Performance Based Education, Results-Based Education, Standards-Based Education, and Effective Teaching. The method has not helped students learn to read, write, or compute, or understand the world around them, but is that really the purpose? I wrote an article entitled “Experimentation on Minorities” which is a pdf at my website http://www.deliberatedumbingdown. The use of the Skinnerian/Pavlovian method 1965-2012 (mostly on inner city children) was necessary for the restructuring of the traditional American public school from K-12, A,B,C,D,F grading system, to a an individualized, non-competitive system using charter schools with their unelected councils. This revamp of our nation’s formerly highly successful academic education system was necessary for global work force training, being implemented as I write. The results were and are a catastrophe for inner city children across the country. The Chicago Mastery Learning results were discussed in an article in Education Week, March 6, 1985 entitled “Half of Chicago Students Drop out, Study Finds, Problem Called Enormous Human Tragedy”. When will parents and teachers ask WHY DO THE REFORMERS CONTINUE TO USE A METHOD THAT, ASIDE FROM ITS BEING ABUSIVE TO THE HUMAN PERSON, HAS NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH A STRONG ACADEMIC CURRICULUM? Doesn’t the fact that the tax-exempt foundations and corporations support this “training” method tell us something? Doesn’t the fact that this shift from academics to Pavlovian work force training using charter schools is supported by President Obama’s Secretary of Education Arne Duncan (who when in Chicago recommended “paying students for good grades); the neocon Heritage Foundation and other so-called conservative/libertarian supporters of tax-supported school choice; and the globalist Council on Foreign Relations tell us something?
The noted English writer, the late C.S. Lewis, put it well when he said: “When training beats education, civilization dies.”