The following post was written by Amy Frogge, an elected member of the Board of Education in Nashville. Frogge is a lawyer and a strong supporter of public dchools. She was elected in a campaign where corporate reformers outspent her 5-1. She has been openly critical of “no excuses” charter schools, especially Nashville Prep, founded by Ravi Gupta. inthis post she responds to a post written by Gupta, accusing her of wanting to censor a book used in his school in seventh grade. Gupta has plans to open more charters in Mississippi.
Amy Frogge writes:
WARNING: THE CONTENT OF THIS POST IS NOT APPROPRIATE FOR CHILDREN.
Today I was attacked (again) by Ravi Gupta, the head and founder of RePublic Schools, which operates several schools in the district, including Nashville Prep. This time, Mr. Gupta was upset about a private email I’d written to MNPS administrators (the email was forwarded to Mr. Gupta) in which I reported that young students at his school are reading a wildly inappropriate book. In my email, I commented that Nashville Prep should be closed. Mr. Gupta has now sent out a blog post trying to focus attention on me and detract from the issue at hand; he contends in his post that I am trying to conduct a “book burning.” In response, I feel the need to explain the full context of my email. Anyone who knows me understands that I am not a fan of corporate education reform or of so-called “no excuses” charter schools.
However, Nashville Prep stands out in its treatment of children. The book at issue is quite stunning in its rhetoric and descriptions of explicit sexual encounters; I will detail that below.
However, complaints forwarded to me about this school over the last two years are even worse. Here, precisely, is why I have become very upset and frustrated about Nashville Prep:
Nearly two years ago, a parent approached me after a board meeting, crying. She had come to our board meeting as a last-ditch effort, because she had been unable to help her daughter, who was a 10-year-old student at Nashville Prep. She told me her child had become depressed and anxious because of the extreme no-excuses disciplinary procedures at the school, and she needed help removing her child from the school. She had tried to bring her concerns to the attention of the Office of Innovation (which oversees charter schools), but she said her concerns were ignored. She maintained that she had trouble navigating the withdrawal/enrollment process because no one seemed to be in charge of process for charter schools.
Shortly thereafter, three additional parents stepped forward to raise more disturbing complaints about Nashville Prep. The complaints, which were all very similar in nature, primarily centered on extreme, militaristic disciplinary policies, which parents contended affected students’ well-being.
Complaints from the parents included the following:
-Students at Nashville Prep are not allowed to use the restroom when needed (even young girls just starting their menstrual cycles). They are punished for simply asking to go the restroom off-schedule, for spending more than 2-4 minutes in the restroom, or for looking at themselves in the mirror.
-Lunch is taken away from students as punishment.
-Students are punished for even mentioning being too cold in the classroom in winter.
-Students are “inspected” when they enter the school each morning, and students have been forced to wait in line in the pouring rain while teachers stand under the front school awning to “inspect” them.
-Students are punished for not “eye-tracking” the teacher (keeping their eyes on the teacher at all times).
-Students are taken off school grounds without parental consent.
-Administration of the school is poor. Students are marked absent when present, and report cards often contain incorrect grades.
-One student received a demerit for saying, “bless you” when a classmate sneezed. He also received detention (1) for saying “excuse me” while stepping over another child’s backpack and (2) for picking up a pencil for a classmate.
-Another student was punished for “egregious” behavior, and when the parent inquired about the behavior, the teacher said the student “laughed out loud” during class.
-Students are told not to talk to students on in-school suspension because administrators want “student[s] to feel like they are in jail.”
-Students are punished for expressing any emotion at all when they receive demerits. Even when they don’t understand why they are being punished, they cannot inquire about the punishment. If students are not completely submissive and unquestioning, they receive a second demerit. One parent compared this treatment of children to a “slave code.”
-When students are allowed to go outside during lunch, they are not allowed to sit and talk. They must move around, as one parent put it, “like what one would see in a prison yard.”
-Nashville Prep has refused to allow some students to withdraw.
-Nashville Prep uses shaming measures to control students: Children who receive a certain number of demerits are required to wear tags on their clothing as a shaming measure so that other children will laugh at them.
-According to one parent, demerits are so common that on one day, about 100 of the approximately 300 students were on some type of suspension. Also, appeals of demerits are no longer allowed, so students who are corrected inappropriately are not allowed to voice their concerns.
-Students are not allowed to participate in enrichment activities, such as art or music, unless their standardized test scores are high enough.
-Parents have claimed their children have undergone personality changes as a result of the “no excuses” discipline. One parent claimed that her child, who typically was outgoing and outspoken, became very withdrawn and stopped communicating or expressing herself, even at home, for fear of being punished. The parent complained that “kids don’t have a voice” and “kids can’t be kids” at Nashville Prep.
Another parent went so far as to claim that some students at Nashville Prep are “suicidal.”
– School staff members are not held to the same standards at students.
According to one parent, teachers and administrators sometimes are disheveled, arrive late, and act in a disrespectful manner toward parents.
-Middle school children must do homework until 9 or 10 pm each night.
Nashville Prep parents have used extreme language in describing treatment of students at the school:
One parent described school leadership as a “dictatorship . . . like Hitler.” Multiple parents referenced jail and prison when describing the school. One parent said students there are “denied any form of autonomy and independence, . . . denied any right to think or have independent opinions, and denied . . . use [of] their cell phones on the bus even when the bus [is] running very late.” A social worker who was a parent at the school said that the treatment of students at the school amounted to “abuse” and “neglect” under her professional standards.
Another parent wrote this account of what happened to her daughter after the parent questioned the school’s discipline policies:
“The very next day after I made my phone call expressing my opinion that I didn’t agree with many of the disciplinary tactics incorporated by the school because not all children respond to negative reinforcement, and that [my child] in particular responds better to some positive reinforcement, the unthinkable took place. When I picked my child up from school that evening she was brutally broken, broken down and crying as she reached her hand out to me in a tear soaked face and shaking, she stated ‘mommy I made a terrible mistake by picking this school.’ I have never seen [my child] in crisis mode, ever. Gravely concerned I asked her to truthfully tell me what happened. She proceeded to tell me that she was cited for ‘no grit’ and ‘demerited’ repeatedly because she would not sit erect with the bottoms of both feet planted on the ground. This situation quickly snowballed as she was then cited [for] ‘lack of grit’ and multiple demerits for ‘not tracking.’ Eventually instead of recognizing they were breaking down my child, they intensified the corporal punishment (which is illegal) by pulling her out of the classroom for nearly the ten hour school day and isolating her. When the teachers walked in to check on her in isolation she was finally so broken she had put her head down on her desk. The teachers interpreted this as disobedience and then made her STAND UP FOR FOUR HOURS. I remind you that my child had never been in trouble previous to this and had all ‘A’s and ‘B’s’ on her report card, as well as many high compliments written from the teachers.”
Another child fell on concrete at the school, sustaining a severe concussion. He asked to call his parent, but the school would not allow him to do so. He was finally allowed to get an icepack from the front office, but was so frightened of the disciplinary tactics at the school that he sat through the rest of the school day with a severe concussion. The parent was never notified.
I tried to address these complaints through appropriate channels and informed the MNPS administration and specifically Alan Coverstone, who oversees our charter school office, of these parent complaints. The complaints were dismissed in strange ways. When I asked for an independent investigation, the investigation consisted of allowing Ravi Gupta to write a lengthy written response discrediting all of the parents. MNPS administrators did not visit the school as part of the investigation, nor did they interview teachers, school administrators and others involved.
Then last spring, Teach for America, operating under new leadership in Nashville, terminated its contract with Nashville Prep, alleging that the school was bullying teachers. However, TFA needs charter schools to survive in Nashville, because the district is cutting the ranks of TFA in half this year. The new head of TFA was subsequently fired (presumably for terminating the contract), negotiations ensued, and the TFA contract was ultimately reinstated with some concessions. Meanwhile, in the midst of controversy over TFA (which the school has kept carefully hidden), a former Nashville Prep teacher came forward to raise more concerning allegations about the school, which I won’t detail here because they are currently under investigation.
And all of this leads me to the book. This week, another parent came forward with allegations about poor student treatment which were similar to those raised by the other parents who have contacted me in the past.
However, she also raised a new allegation. She told me that Nashville Prep is requiring twelve-year-old students to read the book, City of Thieves, aloud in class. The book contains lengthy passages which are crass and, frankly, pornographic in nature. The book contains explicit descriptions of sexual acts and includes language like this: “c*nt,” “f*ck,” “c*ck,” “p*ssy,” “a*s,” “s*ck me off,” “whoresons,” “sprayed a liter of c*me inside her,” “sh*t,” “b*tch,” and much more. (Believe me, I’ve left out the worst parts.) Whoever assigned the book made a half-hearted attempt to censor some of the foul language, but left plenty of bad language and details intact, including passages that degrade women and glorify casual sex. For example, words like “f*ck” are still included throughout passages distributed to students, and one passage (which students apparently read out loud in class) contains this line: “You two about to f*ck in the bushes?” Here’s another passage that was left in: “Have you ever been with a redhead? Oh wait, what am I saying, you’ve never been with anyone. The good news is they’re demons between the sheets. Two of the three best f*cks of my life were redheads. Two of four, anyway. But the other side of the coin, they hate men. A lot of anger there, my friend. Beware.” The parent who raised this complaint said that teachers ask the students to read this book out loud and skip over the bad words in the process, so clearly, teachers are aware of the content of the book.
I am not easily offended, and I’m not opposed to older students reading more adult books that have been carefully vetted, if parents are informed and provide permission. However, I can’t imagine who, for even a moment, would believe that this particular book is remotely appropriate for twelve-year-old students. Furthermore, the school has both photocopied and edited the book, which appears to be a clear copyright infringement. Many charter schools do not buy books and use photocopies instead, I suppose to save money.
Once again, MNPS’ Office of Innovation dismissed these complaints, even those regarding copyright. I am, frankly, angry that our own Office of Innovation thwarts parents and does not take seriously even allegations of this nature. Nashville Prep is protected because it produces high test scores. I believe the higher test scores are due primarily to the increased amount of time students spend in class (extra hours each day and three hours daily in summer) and teaching to the test.
But one must ask:
What’s the real cost of these test scores? And then, of course, there’s the political angle. Folks like Gupta are good at raising money and are eager to attack those who question their practices.
If this were a zoned school, our board could monitor and correct problems of this nature. But we have no oversight whatsoever of these matters when it comes to charter schools. Charter schools have full curriculum autonomy (they can teach anything they want) and autonomy over all disciplinary practices. This is a case of incompetent leadership coupled with zero oversight. Is this really such a great idea?
Wow.
The mandated corporal punishment, and hyper regulated behavior policies whereby students must obey mindlessly and fully, are similar to the cult like policies and behaviors I witnessed at a KIPP charter in an inner city LA. The students behaved like outer controlled zombies.
This is an example of what goes on at Nashville Prep and the other RePublic schools run by Ravi Gupta: (from the official Nashville Prep YouTube channel)
This is the educational equivalent of an old-style Soviet gulag, or perhaps a Scientology RFP camp. It represents the death of childhood, and the end of education that has any real human value.
Seriously, if Campbell Brown and her allies think this garbage is so great, then why do they send their own children to schools (Heschel… for Campbell Brown) that are run in way that is diametrically opposite of the video above?
It’s basically one type of education for the elite 1%, and one for the rest… you know, what the 1% views as “other people’s kids.”
One more thing to keep in mind: this is secret videotape that was smuggled out and leaked on YouTube. No, Mr. Gupta IS ACTUALLY PROUD OF THIS, AND IT’S ON DISPLAY ON NASHVILLE PREP’s YOUTUBE CHANNEL. They actually think that this is the way children should be taught.
The video is marked as private. Any way to find it elsewhere?
I will post the video this week.
How is this not treated as child abuse? And what does this mean exactly???: “Nashville Prep has refused to allow some students to withdraw.”
I guess it’s only child abuse if it’s in a public school. Talk about your double standards.
This is what I want to know. How is this not child abuse? Punitive, militaristic disclipine is totally inappropriate for children.
Good question. Pretty horrific. And this is what we know about. I would be very concerned about something bad happening soon. Organizations that start playing victim, hiding from the outside, and attacking transparency should be under heightened scrutiny. The organizations begin to descend and a moral relativity sets in. They become disconnected with the outside norms.
I’m sorry but if some moron tried to tell me I couldn’t withdraw my child. I would gather my child’s things and take them to another school and enroll them. It is not in the control of a school whether a child stays.
Shame on the parents for allowing it.
Unfortunately, schools hesitate to enroll a student if they have not been formally withdrawn the one they are leaving.
Why aren’t parents suing? If any of this were going on in a public school, the lawsuits would be flying. Are there no lawyers in Nashville? Are charter school parents just too passive? What gives?
These charter schools do not want the student to withdraw because they will lose funding for the next school year. I worked for a charter school recently and was told that each child is worth $10,000. There is a cut-off enrollment date that determines how much funding the school will get based on the number of students enrolled on that date.
First let’s put the blame where it belongs, the parents. They chose to enroll their kids in this school. Did they do any type of due diligence in investigating this school before they put their child there? Now that they know this school is not good for their child, get out. Go over the administrTion’s head to get your kid out. Parents are so quick to leave public schools, they assume all charters are betters and they are not. Parents, stop whining and take action. Direct your child’s education experience and opt out before the system labels you child a failure before they even get a fair, equitable start.
This.
Paula – Blame the victim’s parent(s)? Now is the time to act and help get parents get their
kids out of there and close this school, not point fingers.
That is outrageous to blame the parents. Blame the politics and the people who support charter schools INSTEAD of improving public schools. If your only choice is a failing and VERY underfunded public school which now has more students with high needs (charter school rejects) and fewer at grade level students, the so-called “choice” that reformers claim you are given is no choice at all.
When reformers talk about “choice”, what they really mean is choice for the people who run charter schools that can “choose” to do whatever means necessary to get better test scores. All the pro-charter folks on here that pretend there is enough oversight are truly awful people who don’t actually give a darn about the kids, they give a darn about promoting their brand of “reform” and if some kids suffer, that’s a price those reformers are very, very happy to pay. Seriously, the folks on here who don’t understand this are just lying. If they cared, they would be promoting internal reform of the charter schools instead of pretending that the ones who get good results aren’t using reprehensible practices that no middle class parent would accept. In the name of “choice” which is a choice only for the people getting rich from fake school reform.
I have to agree with you completely. These schools would not survive if parents did not send their children to them.
“First let’s put the blame where it belongs, the parents.”
I have a suspicion that these are parents who respect the authority of those who they believe are chosen to educate their children. They mistakenly believe that these supposedly educated people know better than they do. Even as a teacher I suffered from the mistaken notion that educators/administrators had some special sauce that gave them authority over all educational concerns. I never quite shed my naive student persona and innocently believed that they had the good of the child, school, teacher always at the forefront of decisions they made. It was quite a shock to finally realize the truth and I have a masters degree! I am not surprised at the distress of these parents, nor do I blame them for the harm done to their children. While I would remove my child from such an environment, it is telling that these parents do not necessarily believe that they have that right.
I absolutely do not understand why this is not considered corporate child abuse.
Drop the “corporate” from the sentence and it makes a lot more sense.
This is heartbreaking and infuriating. Education is not something to do to children. Parents, pull your kids out and shut this school-to-prison pipeline down.
The war against public schools is a war against our communities:
Day 24, #FightForDyett Hunger Strike Continues, Black Political Class Stands for Privatization | Black Agenda Report
http://blackagendareport.com/dyett-hunger-strike-20150909
Sarcasm alert:
Hold on, folks. They get good test scores. That is the sole currency of school and teacher quality. Good test scores make any practice acceptable. And this school is very innovative! Who would have thought that Inquisition-lite would be a good school model?
But, hey, it’s all about test scores. It’s a game. They’re playing by very inappropriate rules, but they can brag and boast about those scores. And everyone will excuse whatever method it took to get those scores.
THIS! Every oversight board says if test scores are good, the school is fantastic and it doesn’t matter if large cohorts of kids — and they are almost always at-risk kids whose parents have little resources — disappear. The ends are all that matter, so any person who thinks what Nashville Prep does should not be a “model” for all public education just should shut up. If their test scores are good, that’s all that matters.
“Nashville Prep has refused to allow some students to withdraw.”
Wait, what? How can they stop them? “I’m sorry, my child will no longer be attending.”
What happened to “choice”?
😎
Now posted on Amy Frogge’s Facebook page – Sept 8th 8:09 pm
“An update on the Nashville Prep conflict:
Media coverage of this story was both good (Dennis Ferrier ran a great piece on Channel 4, and the Momma Bears put up a good blog post) and bad (the Tennessean ran a story that essentially compares the content of City of Thieves to jokes on Spongebob Squarepants).
Then, today, Ravi Gupta sent this letter home with every student at his schools (which explains the angry comments that have suddenly appeared on my page today). Bless these poor students. This is how Gupta rolls. He instigates battles with school board members and others (my FB post was in response to Gupta’s blog post accusing me of a “book burning”) and then uses this sort of ridiculous nonsense to gird parents against anyone whom he feels is a threat to his agenda of expanding his charter school empire. (This is the same man who has compared himself to Moses and who claims he will lead his charter school families to the Promised Land. It is also the same man who uses his students as props in front of the legislature; I’ve seen this on multiple occasions.)
“Dear RePublic Families,
On Friday, a local school board member, Amy Frogge (who represents Bellevue), called on the district to shut down on of our schools – Nashville Prep – Because Frogge disagreed with the choice of book our 7th grade students are reading. Presumably she also wants to shut down Liberty Collegiate because that school is also reading the book in question. Of course, if you have questions, feedback, or suggestions about our book choices, please reach out to your teachers and school leader.
But, this is clearly not about the book. This school board member has a history of coming after RePublic Schools and will stop at nothing to shut us down. She has previously compared charter school leaders to slave owners and has suggested parents like you have been tricked into enrolling in our schools. (Which is false, as i asked my own parents to enroll me) We wrote a lengthy response to Frogge (attached) that made it very clear that we will not be bullied around – and that she will fail in her attempts to score political points on the backs of our schools.
Since yesterday, Frogge and her allies have been circulating false information about our schools – accounts that you will find utterly unrecognizable from your experience. These politicians ignore your voice, your children’s results, and your experiences at RePublic at the expense of their political agenda.” ”
As I understand it, from attorney friends who still live in Nashville and who are trying to follow this at Nashville Legal Aid, the school won’t explain how to withdraw and no one from the district will help the 12 families who are trying to withdraw. Even my attorney friend can’t find the proper forms or process to help them. Yet, the handbook says they need to officially withdraw so they won’t receive truancy notices and mandatory court appearances. They want to take all of their school records to their new school. They need an official withdrawal to reenroll in a different charter or a public school. Somehow this is written in regulations, at least that is what the district administration is telling the parents. They have made the process very confusing for the parents and for those who are trying to help them. Everyone hopes that Ms. Frogge will be able to get them proper guidance.
Until that happens, they have the choice and the right to pull them out and file paperwork to homeschool. At least they will avoid truancy charges and court appearances.
Thanks for the info 4myersgirls. Is that the Legal Aid Society of Middle TN you are referring to?
This assumes that all the parents can stay home with the kids during the transition. Or else assuming it’s OK for the kids to stay home unsupervised all day. I don’t think either of those is a safe assumption to make.
Boonie, my suggestion is that they do not have to stay in an abusive environment for fear of truancy or a court hearing. There are other legal options.
4myersgirls–If your attorney friends at Nashville Legal Aid have not yet contacted Amy Frogge, please tell them to do so. She is easy to find on Facebook–https://www.facebook.com/AmyFroggeForNashvilleSchoolBoard?fref=ts
The charter school will wait until the state has “paid” for the students. Then they will be happy to withdraw them. Oh they will be HAPPY to withdraw them……………..
That’s it. That’s why they won’t let the kids go.
That should be another lawsuit. They should not be allowed to keep that money, especially when the kids’ parents were trying to pull them out before the date the kids were counted for the payment.
Bingo!
How can any parent leave their child enrolled, after detailing abuses, or after a child comes home crying, and wait for policies to change? Pull them out!
Yes. I won’t blame parents for putting their kids in this school to begin with – lord knows they probably have a slick presentation that would fool most parents, especially those whose public schools are badly underfunded. But once a parent realizes that his/her child is being abused, it is up to the parent to put a stop to it, no matter how much work or trouble it is. We don’t accept, “well, I knew my ex was abusing my daughter, but I didn’t have any other childcare” as an excuse, after all.
I do think we have to recognize that a lot of parents like, no, DEMAND “zero tolerance” discipline and in my public school anyway they really run the gamut, from parents who have obedient kids and think their kids are harmed by any kind of disruption to parents whose kids are disciplined constantly and think schools should come down harder on their kids. It’s just really hard to find the “sweet spot” in a public system- it’s near-constant give and take, it seems to me. I think it’s one of the things public schools have to wrestle with that “choice” schools don’t- they have to serve ALL of them and that means compromise. But, there’s definitely a group of parents who talk about “slaps on the wrist” and that kind of thing and they don’t fit any profile I’ve ever been able to discern because we have a mix of low income and high income parents who love this stuff.
Very sad situation.
The novel, City of Thieves, might be a good novel for teenagers. There may be good educational reasons for choosing the book to assign. I haven’t read it, however.
But here are the comments on Goodreads:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1971304.City_of_Thieves
Obviously, there is no excuse for mistreating students. But I don’t agree with the tactic of shocking the public with accusations that the school is distributing pornography to children.
Excerpts are in the post. Screenshots of the (supposedly expurgated) text that was sent home are available on twitter – look for NashvilleMom62. judge for yourself if that’s something you should force 12-year-olds to read without parental consent. You can quibble over the choice of the word “pornographic” to describe the passages, but they’re pretty explicit.
It’s an Alex award winning book, so the answer to Amy Frogge’s question of “would believe that this particular book is remotely appropriate for twelve-year-old students” is an expert panel of the ALA.
http://www.ala.org/yalsa/booklistsawards/bookawards/alexawards/alex09
However, there is a difference between a text that is suitable for circulation based on a young adult’s choice from a school library and a text that is suitable for required reading. Middle school vs. high school is, for me, an important distinction here too. I’m not familiar with the book, but if the description is accurate it’s reasonable to ask whether this is a suitable required text for middle school.
Boards of education have the power to select materials, or not select, despite the recommendation of teachers. When it comes to inclusion of texts with strong content at the secondary level, I have always felt it is a matter of judgment in balancing the professional autonomy of teachers and parent preferences but recognizing that almost any text at the secondary level worth using will have some parent critics.
But if you read the very positive reviews about the book, you will notice it is classified under ADULT novel, ADULT fiction.
Reading the reviews, the book is definitely intended for adult readers.
Aren’t they required to vet employees? Public schools take fingerprints and do a background check before a candidate is hired. This should be a requirement if they are receiving public money to work with children.
It’s pretty laughable that Lexile score is being used as a justification for assigning the book in question. I would imagine it’s the prevalence of *four-letter words* that brings its score down.
Sad, sad situation for the students and their families. I hope they have an attorney. It might be the only way to get their kids’ school records released.
This situation is of course appalling. However, I checked out “City of Thieves” on Amazon and the description of the book does not match the one that Frogge discusses. What gives? Did she give the correct title. — Edd Doerr
I did the same thing. The book stories don’t seem to match.
You can go online and download a copy for free. Believe me the language is vulger, obscene and disgusting. I don’t think Amazon is going to list the foul obscene language in the little synopsis they put with the book. The book has explicit sex scenes, f****** in the bushes, sh**, c***, etc. I would encourage you to go online and read the actual text.
Do you agree that the school should be shut down for this offense?
FLERP! – no, not for that incident. But all the other allegation sure as hell need a thorough investigation by a non-interested party. (The police, perhaps?)
Plenty of the negative reviews mention vulgarity and profanity.
Esquith said one little thing that was hardly anything, unless this is the Victorian era. And this book’s language is o.k. to force twelve year olds to read aloud? This is the Bible belt? As an atheist middle school teacher I would never. The first year I taught, a student complained about the one “f___” in A Separate Peace. (Underline is the text’s.)The principal ok’d my teaching it. And that was in eleventh grade.
I know times have changed but not that much. Gupta would be fired in any public school in which I taught. There are many really deep, literate books that appeal to middle school students not containing these words. It seems this one belongs on the library shelf. That is “choice.”
Then there is the question of copyright. Only nine copies can be duplicated last time I looked. So notify the author’s publisher. Both are being cheated criminally. How much does Gupta owe them?
A teacher I knew lost a law suit over just such copying.
Gupta was chief strategist to David Axlerod on the Obama campaign & worked with Susan Rice at the UN. I suppose his friends in high places are helpful when “innovation” means child abuse in practice.
http://www.takepart.com/article/2012/07/12/ravi-guptas-no-excuses-charter-school-shakes-nashville
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
What is the real cost of corporate education reform?
This is ridiculous. This is America. You simply enroll your child back into the public school in your neighborhood which has to take them, and that is what the complaining parents should be told. Let the charter school try to come after them for not following proper procedures. Or are the public schools around them so bad the parents are put into a moral dilemma of where to send their kids? Even in Adelanto where the parent trigger law was pulled, the parents who chose the trigger school are keeping a close eye on everything and some who have been unhappy have simply withdrawn.
“You simply enroll your child back into the public school in your neighborhood which has to take them, and that is what the complaining parents should be told.”
Great! No consideration at all of the effects on the public school? They’re just there standing at the ready for when the “choice” school doesn’t work out?
That’s nice. For the charter school innovator. The public school picks up all the kids who don’t meet his exacting standards?
Tell me again how charter schools are “public” schools” and it’s a just a matter of which “sector” we’re talking about. Does he have any responsibility to the public system that backstops him and makes his school possible?
Of course! Believe me, if there weren’t neighborhood public schools (or “lesser” charters with no big hedge funders on their board and desperate for any student) one would be extremely hard pressed to find a single decent charter school. In cities where they don’t have the political connections to simply send off the unwanted kids to a different (usually public) school with no one caring, charter schools have been failures.
Or New Orleans, where students disappear altogether and no one cares if they are enrolled in school or not.
My experience is that when the ICEF and other charters decide to dump kids with special needs and IEP’s, they do not even bother to write a transition IEP. And it was always after norm day and they had their money, and before testing so they did not get the scores.
I’m rather stunned that any parent would allow their child to stay in that school a minute more. The whole thing is utterly inconceivable. Why has this school been allowed to continue, given the stated “horrors.” And… “won’t let some children leave ????!!!!” Say what? When did a school have the jurisdiction over the choice of a parent? Quite frankly, much of this looks like a class action law suit. I don’t think anyone should stand on formalities here, I think the school should be thoroughly and properly investigated. And parents…be very angry and act accordingly. Don’t be fooled or intimidated, you are the ones with the power. Use it.
Wow: if even a fraction of these charges are substantiated, someone has to be prosecuted.
City of Thieves is a great book, not for twelve-year-olds, but it’s a great buddy story between two unlikely Red Army deserters. They can win their freedom if they can find a dozen eggs for the general’s daughter’s wedding. This is during the Siege of Leningrad. Great book!
Why are 12 year olds reading this book as part of their curriculum? It sounds to me as if some young Ivy-League teacher with no experience thought it sounded like a “cool book”.
There is a huge difference between 12 and 15 when it comes to appropriate reading material.
It sounds as if it could be a challenging but good choice for high school classes, but I question whether 12 year olds are going to have the skills as well as the emotional ability to appreciate it.
Reminds me of a group of ninth grade students who had read Camus in the eighth grade. I wonder just how much experience they brought to the reading, other than decoding skills. They may have understood some of the plot with a little help from the history teacher. This was in an upper middle class neighborhood, but the kids were not that sophisticated.
Just because the book is critically acclaimed by the general public DOES NOT mean that it should be accessible to school children. This is even worse than having kids exposed to Attitude Era of WWE(criticized for containing too much vulgar, adult-content messages/angles) in school. If the rated-R films are accessible to 12-year olds, then what’s the point for the theaters in imposing age-restriction on viewers?
Well, you raise a deeper question than you may have intended, Ken. What, indeed, IS the purpose of imposing age restrictions on viewers? It isn’t theaters doing that, but rather the Motion Picture Association of America. And in that regard, I recommend a terrific documentary, THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED, that underscores much of the hypocrisy that informs the development of that and previous systems for censoring or restricting movies in the US.
Funny how people who otherwise scream bloody murder at the government telling them what they can or can’t do often have no objection to being told what they or their kids can or cannot see, read, etc. And almost always the big fear is that children might be exposed to either sexuality itself or words having to do with sex, as if there are no other places where children learn such things but from literature and movies. Frankly, I was more concerned that my son might develop brain rot from watching Barney and similar pap than what would happen to him if he watched episodes of SOUTH PARK.
If the typical American parent actually understood middle English, Chaucer would be tossed out of public schools. Some of Shakespeare’s jokes are too bawdy to be respectable, but I know of no child scarred from exposure to the works of the Bard. ROMEO AND JULIET has underage sex in it: underage, that is, by current standards, but not for the time in which the story is placed (and, I gather, not in Shakespeare’s either).
All of that said, I wouldn’t have been upset by my son being asked to read CITY OF THIEVES in 7th or 8th grade. The rest of what is reported above about this school, if true, is reprehensible. Were I involved in trying to get it shut down, I’d leave the book out of any complaint.
I agree with Michael.
The only thing I question is the teacher’s altering of the book, is he allowed to do that?
My answer to your question is NO. That falls on deaf ears of DEpublic Schools. Oh, well. They have their own standards to set upon, and they claim freedom from rigid traditional teaching–or whatever.
Wonder how the DEpublic schools would react, should these kids become rebellious gangs and assault teachers and school staff after being screwed by no- excuse discipline.
Books are different from movies. We have no rating system for books.
So I ask: 1) why is any parent choosing…CHOOSING…to enroll a child there, and 2) why wouldn’t a parent just stop sending their kid…pull them out and literally never have them return? We have to wait for permission to withdraw? Sounds like BS to me.
I don’t understand the withdrawal procedure–I mean, certainly some red tape exists, but I would simply not let my child go there anymore, and if need be, bring some formal complaint to the Superintendent of Schools. Now, silly me, in my town, there is 1 Superintendent of Schools, and we are so small there are no charter schools here. There is a private religious school, but that is it.
In surrounding towns, there are other religious and/or private schools, and charters as well…so if someone living here didn’t want to attend the in-town public schools, they could certainly turn to any neighboring (or not neighboring) towns and send their kids to private schools, and people will say “if they can afford it” but the religious school in town does have scholarships for kids who can’t afford the tuition, and that has been ongoing in many religious schools for years.
Anyhow, sounds like the school in question is questionable, and I don’t see why anyone would send their kids there. If word gets around, and it will, that school will have NO students, unless the town assigns them (like the One Newark app did for Cami Anderson so she could get those charter seats filled). As to the profanity in the book, there have been questionable and objectionable books aligned with the common core — and I don’t understand why the people in control would want to be introducing such works at these ages…or at all in elementary schools — they are just inappropriate, and I’m no prude either.
“Now, silly me, in my town, there is 1 Superintendent of Schools, and we are so small there are no charter schools here. There is a private religious school, but that is it.”
In ed reform there are only two kinds of public schools- “wealthy suburban schools” and “failing schools” so I’m sorry but your personal experience in public schools will not be accepted for review.
Oh, and the only people who have even adequate public schools are the people who 1. buy houses and 2. buy houses in “wealthy suburban” areas so just completely ignore the people in your district who don’t own houses at all yet attend public schools with people who DO own houses, because those people don’t exist.
Even a blogger who seems to dislike Frogge and who overlooks the book’s explicit content thinks there is a serious copyright violation over the school’s changes to the text:
http://www.nashvillescene.com/pitw/archives/2015/09/09/nashville-prep-please-stop-this-right-now
As the mother of two of them, I am super appalled by the book’s stereotyping of redheads, and I don’t care that I might be taking the passage *out of context*! Almost as bad as the South Park episode that promoted kicking redheads, which led to real incidents in schools a few years back.
Unbelievable abuse and professional malpractice. But why do parents en masse KEEP their children in this school? Why not withdraw them? Or have they? What about class action lawsuits?
These are not run by educational professionals- they do not recognize research based best practices, or have knowledge of how children learn. The damage being done to these children, and ultimately to our society is immeasurable. NO one who runs these schools would place their own children in such a facility.
“What about class action lawsuits?”
Do we know anything about the socioeconomic makeup of the students in this school? We keep talking about lawsuits. Has anyone seen lawyers standing in line to take charter school cases?
This is NOT a consumer issue! The education of children is a public responsibility, and everyone, whether they have children or not, pays for the public good of having an educated society. WE are funding schools like this one, this is state sponsored child abuse! I wouldn’t care if some parents think this is appropriate- the public should not be paying for the corporal punishment, shaming and emotional abuse of children. If this was a cult, it would be shut down. Public schools should not be “free-market” driven- parents should not be denied a local, well-funded, safe and caring school run by democratically elected school boards.
To explain my remark that this book is not remotely appropriate for twelve-year-olds, here are just a few passages from it:
“But she said her p**sy was hurting so she s*cked me off instead. Fifteen minutes later, I’m ready again, she grins and says, ‘Oh, I love you young ones’ and lets me go inside her. ”
“Your mother’s c*nt has a particular tubular shape, he yelled. Nonetheless, I tolerate its effluvium and enthusiastically lick its inner folds whenever she demands.”
“[M]aybe tonight I want to f*ck an animal.”
“corpse-f*cker,”
“pig f*ckers”
There are many more graphic portions like this. It appears that Nashville Prep edited out most of the explicit passages. However, since this sort of language is scattered throughout the book, it seems there would be much better choices for middle school children. I also question why the school must use a book which must be extensively censored before it is distributed to students. For example, my eleven-year-old daughter has been assigned the classic A Wrinkle in Time at her school.
I’m not sure why anyone would choose this book as the best choice for a high school curriculum either.
2old2teach: “the best choice” is a pretty difficult criterion to apply, don’t you think?
Seriously? After watching the battle of words that you and another poster have had recently, I know that you are well aware of what I am saying. In all fairness, I have not read the book nor do I intend to. If its message for prepubescent and adolescent children is so important, I question whether it needed to be delivered by resorting to the graphically sexual conversation scattered throughout. Kids will write on the bathroom and locker room walls and crow about their sexual contests soon enough. To imply that “Thieves” falls in the same classification as bawdy Shakespearean humor and to imply that the 7th or 8th graders are universally ready to deal maturely with sexuality presented in such terms is probably a little over the top.
This really strikes me as the worst issue you could raise in your complaints about the school. It’s one of the few things you could possibly discuss that undermines your other points and almost makes me feel sorry for the school. You gave Gupta an out that I see he has been smart enough to take: you’re trying to censor curricular content. And since as you say, the school went to some lengths to remove most or all of the “offensive” language, you’re stuck making an argument here that, frankly, offends those of us who don’t think that “naughty words” in secondary education should be grounds for removing books from school libraries or classrooms.
The “classic” A WRINKLE IN TIME would undoubtedly upset some parents, and indeed there are conservative Christians who have objected to the author’s “liberal Christian” views as manifested in parts of the book. Are those objections reasonable? Are they sufficient to raise a fuss over? If you don’t think so, be careful when you start to pick and choose whose objections are sufficient to deserve action when it comes to censorship. It’s a slippery slope that quickly leads to high school teachers being told that they can’t teach Harry Potter and librarians can’t have books from that series in local and/or school libraries. It happened 15 years ago in western Michigan thanks to a conservative Christian superintendent of schools.
Of course, you’ll retort that there’s simply no comparison here, and after all, there is plenty of “more appropriate” literature for teachers and schools to assign to 7th graders. But the Harry Potter flap was aimed at getting those books banned in the entire school system. Witchcraft = Satanism, don’t you know?
And we have politically incorrect language in Twain. Out goes HUCK FINN. Hemingway? Pretty risque. Ditto Fitzgerald. I didn’t much care for Jane Austen in high school (like her much better as an adult) and wished someone would have found some dirty words in PRIDE AND PREJUDICE so I could have avoided it. Oh, well.
I agree. I worry people are joining forces with a group who doesn’t want to end control of academic control, rather they want to take control of content.
First, I would be calling child services if I were these parents. This is a matter for the police and the judicial system.
End. Of. Story.
And, the video someone posted of what teaching is like at Nashville Prep is something the school is proud of? Wow. I would blow my head off if I were a student or a teacher. It reminded me of the audience at a North Korean sporting event. They all dress the same, have the same haircuts, react at the same time in the same way, and even clap in unison. Scary scary stuff.
Again-CALL THE POLICE!!!!!
I know.
Like when one individual child is allowed to speak, all the other children pivot and face that child in a quick jerky robotic move, then jerk back to that idiot teacher:
and at 0:12 – 0:14… the chubby kid in back briefly stares into the camera with an deadened expression.
A while back I was contrasting Ms. McDonald with the fictional Ms. Ashley Ferguson, from the COMEDY CENTRAL show, Key & Peele.
where they did a spoof where a TV program covers teachers and teaching the way ESPN’s “SportsCenter” covers football.
Who would you want to teaching your child, Ms. McDonald or Ms. Ferguson?
“TeachingCenter”.
(Go to: 2:00)
Halfway through (2:00) they do a parody of a football replay & blow-by-blow analysis of a teacher conducting the same kind of class as Ms. McDonald’s—a social studies/history class where historical facts are being reviewed.
This part is called “The Highlight of the Day” and features “star history teacher Ashley Ferguson.”
It shows how, contrary to Ms. McDonald, Ms. Ferguson doesn’t treat each student as an identical, interchangeable non-entity, requiring everyone to regurgitate facts back to her, and do so, whole group, in silly, robot-like chanting.
In lieu of this abomination, Ms. Ferguson asks a history question, waits, patiently looks around the room, then takes into account that there is an “introverted” student named “Max” in the middle of the room, who feels isolated, or who has isolated himself from the class.
(This is a humorous comparison to a quarterback looking around to see which receiver to throw the ball to… for those not acquainted with football)
“ANALYST 2: “She looks left, then right… looks past the students with their arms up in the air … ”
When Ms. Ferguson calls on Max, the two excited analysts explode:
ANALYST 1: “Oh come on! See what she did there?! She’s bringin’ an introvert into the discussion, y’all? That’s a ‘Teach of the Year’ play! Right there!”
ANALYST 2: “That’s right. You know the confidence gained by Max by answering that question correctly will enhance his performance throughout the rest of the year.”
ANALYST 1: “No doubt! … Coming up… ”
(Go 2:00 … though the whole thing is hilarious)
(Funny stuff… though less discerning viewers might
think the piece endorses using test scores as a valid measure of teaching. It doesn’t.).
Which teacher would you want for your children — Ms. McDonald, or Ms. Ferguson?
This entire parody offers up a Bizarro World where everything is backwards. For example, you have to listen closely during the “Teacher Draft” sequence. They describe the family background of the Number One Draft Choice teacher, who, as a result, will soon sign a multi-million-dollar contract.
(1:24)
(1:24)
“His father, livin’ paycheck to paycheck, as a humble Pro-Football player… “
As for Ms. McDonald, exactly how did she end up teaching this way?
It’s due to being put through asinine teacher training such as this:
And what is Ms. McDonald, the teacher in the video, is up to these days?
“Christina McDonald will be the Founding Principal of Reimagine Prep and Ravi Gupta will be the Managing Partner of RePublic Charter Schools, the organization that will manage Reimagine Prep and its leadership team. Christina McDonald is currently the Assistant Principal for Culture and Arts and 5th Grade Social Studies Teacher at Nashville Prep. Previously, Ms. McDonald served as the Executive Assistant to the co-founder of the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) charter schools network and a chorus teacher at KIPP Infinity Charter School in New York City. “
How does any parent or multiple parents (let alone teachers, if they are, indeed, real teachers) let that crap go on? If a parent wants to yank their son or daughter out, who’s to stop them? This boggles the mind.
I see so many comments here blaming the parents for enrolling their children at Nashville Prep. But if you take a look at the school’s website and watch the little film they posted there (https://vimeo.com/75365902), Nashville Prep looks very appealing indeed. The building and grounds are clean, neat, and well-equipped. The teachers are smiling and shaking the kids’ hands. The kids seem happy, diligent, and well-mannered. The parents seem happy. The test scores are high. The kids are learning to write computer code. They even have a garden! Yes, the film mentions strict discipline, but they don’t say anything about running the school like a prison.
If you’re a parent with a kid stuck in a chaotic, overcrowded, underfunded neighborhood school with no computer lab, no library, broken toilets, and kids getting beat up in the schoolyard, Nashville Prep would look like a good choice. You’d think you were doing what’s best for your child. This is especially true if you are poor or if you are from a minority background (most of the kids in the film are black). You hope that the education your child will receive at this school will enable him/her to compete with the white, middle-class kids.
So please, let’s not put down these parents. They only believed what they were told.
So proud of you, Amy!
If a teacher did this in the UK, they would be sacked. No Union could support the use of such a book with 12 year-old children. The planning trail for the use of this book should be scrutinised and the person, or persons responsible, must be held to account – it is a form of child abuse and would be totally unacceptable throughout the United Kingdom. As a Foster Carer, I am amazed to read this. As a teacher, I am disgusted that it is a required text in a US Charter School. As an individual, it is a sign of how awful Education is becoming in the USA, the supposed leader of the free world. The Discipline strategies described here would see you charged with assault in the United Kingdom. What I have read beggars belief.
Something is seriously wrong.
Oliver Kingsley,
Vice President,
Liverpool Division of the National Union of Teachers, United Kingdom.
If this happened in a public school, the teacher would be fired and the union would support due process only — the union would never defend such disciplinary practices towards children. Charter schools are protected by the wealthy corporations that fund them — they are out to privatize public education and union bust, and absolutely do not represent education in the U.S. today.
How do state authorities let this happen in America?
Money.
The charter industry has billionaires backing them. They have very good lobbyists, and politicians from both parties in their pockets.
Is this the same Ravi M. Gupta, also known as Radhika Ramana Dasa who was home schooled by his parents and went to college at age 13 graduating by 17 and graduation at 22 with a doctorate in Hindu Studies? If so, it says he taught for one year at University of Florida before he became an Assistant Professor of Religion at Centre College, Kentucky. In 2008, he became Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2011.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radhika_Ramana_Dasa#Post_graduate_education_and_career
What does this guy know about educating children K to 12?
No, he is not the same Ravi M. Gupta…. But he still doesn’t sound like he would know anything about educating children…He was schooled by Nuns which might explain his tough love approach.
No, He does not appear to be the same Ravi Gupta you are referring to, but he still doesn’t appear to know much about educating children. He was schooled by nuns for a while which might explain his tough love approach.
He is not the same person