In response to an earlier post about the IDEA charter chain, which won a $29 million Race to the Top grant just months ago, a teacher writes:
I taught at an IDEA secondary school during the school year 2011-2012. When I began, one of the phrases scarred in teachers’ and students’ minds is “No Excuses”. I understood this to mean that students should not give any excuses because the teachers equip them with the necessary abilities to complete the work and pass the exams.
Within a short time I realized it meant that teachers must go above and beyond to do as much for students that there was no possible way they could give an excuse (this came just short of basically doing the work for the students). Examples were fill-in-the-blank notes, doing homework together (question by question), giving students the notes, teaching them the questions that were to appear on the exam, accepting homework or make-up work months late, and many more. Because students still did not perform, grades had to be changed. No student could have a grade lower than a 60 appear on their report card and no assignment can receive a grade lower than a 50 (even if never turned in).
I can definitely back-up this article by reiterating that “the numbers” for TAKS look good because “they teach to the test.” The standards for students are ridiculously low, and the expectations for teachers are impossibly high. When you’re asking the teacher to do the work for the student, how can you expect them to be college-ready? I had this argument with my assistant principal WEEKLY. I could not change my teaching philosophy to think like them, and I went to work everyday miserably, knowing full-well that my efforts were useless. These kids were doomed, and there was no way they would make it in college.
At the beginning I went in actually teaching. However, because these students were not used to it, I got so much push-back from the students and absolutely no support from administrators. I quickly realized these students were like that because of past teachers and administrators at IDEA.
One thing you might not know is that most administrators are white and almost all students are Hispanic. A good amount of teachers are also white (and TFA members).
Teachers and administrators have the mentality that these are poor, Mexican kids, and we can’t expect them to do anything for themselves. They are their saviors sent from up North, come to finish their high school education for them. I know this sounds extreme, even racist, but you have to teach here in order to believe the things that occur in this school.
Diane Ravitch's blog 