Emily Talmage, who teaches in Maine, recalls the time when she applied to teach at a charter school. It was a chilling experience.
She writes:
When I was twenty-five, I interviewed at a charter school in Brooklyn.
Before I sat down to talk to the dean, I observed a kindergarten class that looked nothing like any kindergarten class I had ever seen: just shy of thirty children sitting in rows on a carpet, each with legs crossed and hands folded, all completely and utterly silent.
In my interview, the dean asked me what I noticed about the class.
“They were very well behaved,” I said.
“Yes, they were. But they sure don’t come in like that,” he answered. With icy pride in his voice, he said: “It’s only because of the hard work of our staff that they act like that.”
I took the job – foolishly – and soon found out what this “hard work” meant: scholars, as we called them, were expected to be 100% compliant at all times. Every part of the nine-hour school day was structured to prevent any opportunity for deviance; even recess, ten-minutes long and only indoors, consisted of one game chosen for the week on Monday.
We were overseers, really. Our lessons were scripted according to the needs of the upcoming state test, and so we spent our days “catching” scholars when they misbehaved, marking their misdeeds (talking, laughing, wiggling) on charts, and sending them to the dean when they acted their age too many times in one day.
There weren’t any white children at the school, but there I was – a white teacher, snapping at a room full of black children to get them to respond, in unison, to my demands.
…
Everyone in the nation is talking about our racist history, but do people know what type of racism is happening today, beneath our noses, under the banner of education reform?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What Emily went through was reverse colonialism, done right here on American soil. Creativity, self expression, critical thinking, joy of learning, and developmentally appropriate learning environments are for other people’s kids.
The charter school industry has purchased these children and their families at a silent auction, and they are not about to let anyone mess with their merchandise. In case any of it turns out to be defective, they can always toss it out of their schools and into the garbage by counseling kids out.
How convenient when you’re always looking for a ROI.
First, America enslaved people of color to do labor; now it does so to become brain washed and be turned into good little obedient eager worker for the corporate state. It’s slavery all over again with a dash of pay and a dollop of HR beneifts thrown in.
Norwegian Filmmaker,
How convenient is RIGHT.
A great reveal of our scariest truth in those two words : SILENT AUCTION. It feels as if the nation has let itself be hypnotized into a passive blindness.
Those wishing to develop a more than caricatured understanding of school discipline in charter schools beyond the particular charter school that Emily alludes to would do well to watch both of these videos.
“Re-Thinking Discipline: What Schools Are Trying and Learning”
That 2017 session, moderated by former High School expellee (and also US Sec’y of Education) John King, is an interesting follow-on to last year’s discussion:
School Discipline: It’s Complicated
John King’s charter school in Massachusetts had the highest suspension rate in the state, while he was there. Children can’t learn when they are not in school. He came from one of the harshest no-excuses charters, Uncommon Schools. It may have been the same school that Emily wrote about.
Diane: “Children can’t learn when they are not in school”
Even when the suspension rate at Roxbury Prep, which King co-founded, was at its highest, I suspect that virtually all students were spending far more time in school than they would have if assigned to a local district school, thanks to Roxbury Prep’s extended school day and school year. For example, this year, at Roxbury Prep, the first full day of school was August 22nd, as contrasted with September 7 for most Boston district schools.
On average, the schools’ students seemed to have lost a little more than one day of school due to suspension in the most recently reported year.
Stephen,
It was a horrible no-excuses school. I would not allow my grandchildren to go to a prison camp
I also wonder how much of “starting early” allows these no-excuses charters to drum out students before they actually appear on their official count.
We know from the NAACP testimony of the Success Academy dad that his son and 2 others were marked for removal during those early days. He said his son was the last of the three to leave on day 12.
Starting a few weeks early makes it much easier on parents whose children aren’t up to snuff since they can move their child to the public school without having missed a day.
There is something really appalling about pro-charter advocates saying suspensions of young non-white children are perfectly acceptable because they still get more days of education even if they are suspended for many days!
Talk about the pro-charter folks trying desperately to pretend that high suspensions of at-risk almost never white kids when they are still in Kindergarten and first grade are not a big deal. Because the “important” thing is whether they get “more days of education”.
FYI — it isn’t even true since there is summer school for public school students who need it, giving them “extra days” of school. But justifying high suspension rates by saying “they still get more days of school” has to be one of the saddest comments and reveals so much about how ed reformers think about non-white children in charters.
I have challenged Stephen B Ronan many times about one of the charter CEOs he frequently defends.
Stephen B Ronan doesn’t agree with me that it is racist to believe that as many as 25% of the children in a no-excuses charter school could be acting out so violently that they needed to be suspended from school. IN KINDERGARTEN AND FIRST GRADE.
I’m sure the fact that those children just happen to attend charter schools that have almost no white children has nothing to do with his attacks on me for questioning such high suspension rates. I’m sure that’s it’s not racism that makes Stephen B Ronan take the word of a white charter CEO that so many non-white 5 and 6 year olds are violent. It’s just his superior knowledge of children and especially, the ones who aren’t white and are so frequently violent that a school has no choice but to keep those children out to “tame” them.
Not racist at all.
Non-expulsion for kids in kidnergarten and first grade is for suburban kids, middle class kids, rich kids, and kids who might not be of color.
Non-expulsion is for OTHER people’s kids, not for the up and coming rote-and-drill beaten, test-inculcated servants the charter schools have purchased. Better not mess with their shiny new merchandise, or they’ll bite you under the guise of “civil rights” and “access to an excellent education”.
Their bite is worse than their bark, BTW.
NYCPSP,
There is a good reason the NAACP came out against charters. They know colonialism when they see it
The most revealing thing about the pro-charter advocates like Stephen B Ronan was their reaction to the NAACP report.
You’d think they would take that criticism to heart. You’d think the “good” charters that don’t believe in characterizing so many at risk kids as “violent” would have embraced it. Instead they attacked the messenger! As if the NAACP was “worse than the ku klux klan” as one of the biggest funders of charter schools would say.
But the supposedly “good” charters are complicit. Without the high test scores of those high suspending, high attrition, high scoring students in the charters with the most reprehensible policies, the results of charter schools don’t look particularly good at all.
Stephen, I skimmed both videos, and found the same evasions, misdirections, falsehoods, bragging and humble bragging that is endemic among so-called reformers.
I’ve already had to spend too much of my life thinking about and responding to people like John King, et. al, but suffice to say: meh…
Fiorillo: “Stephen, I skimmed both videos”
Not up there with Pauline Kael’s and Judith Crist’s best work, but thanks for your several perceived scattered seeds of overripe tomato. I’d award two thumbs up plus a gallon of fully flavored gazpacho if that would help drive further viewership.
The time I devoted to them was far, far more than they deserved.
It’s almost impossible to caricature so-called reformers when they do such an outstanding job of caricaturing themselves.
Fiorillo: “It’s almost impossible to caricature…”
Do you say that after, or prior to, watching those sessions I recommended viewing?
Stephen,
You are obsessed with privatization of public education.
Go post elsewhere. Your act has become repetitive and boring.
Get a life.
Diane: “Get a life.”
Diane? Most everyone around here’s been telling me “stay safe” and now from you: “Get a life”. What is this, a post mortem? What transpired? I expired?
Ah, no, now perhaps I get it. That was your subtle, discreet invitation to join your Words With Friends Posse… Naturally, I’m honored, but must needs decline. I suspect I lack the time and/or wits and/or telephone screen size/visual acuity to compete successfully.
But thanks.
Stephen,
You said ” I suspect that. . . ”
Suspecting something isn’t good enough to qualify as a valid supporting statement around here.
Duane: “Suspecting something isn’t good enough to qualify as a valid supporting statement around here.”
So far as I can see, that largely depends on what, around here, it’s supporting.
If you continued past the initial sentence you would have seen that I supported my suspicions with powerfully persuasive evidence, e.g., the fact that Roxbury Prep students seem to average loss of little more than 1 day of school due to out-of-school suspensions throughout the entire school year, while not only having an extended school day, but also starting school more than two weeks sooner than most district schools… If, nevertheless, you harbor substantial residual reasonable doubts, please explain them. I’m quite confident they can be assuaged with further data.
It may be that “largely depends on what, around here, it’s supporting.” That still doesn’t obviate the need to have a “better” argument than “I suspect that. . . ” Since you are “quite confidant that they can be assuaged with further data”, please go ahead and supply that data.
Thanks in advance,
Duane
This is an excellent and timely post.
The charter industry is sustained by PR about Recruits having a “passion” for teaching of the highest quality in order to save black and brown children from failing public schools. Who has infused cask into charter schools? Yup, the Obama and Trump administrations, us…in addition to billionaires who are highly skilled in making profits while sheltering their great wealth in non-profits.
No excuses charter schools demand militaristic conformity that none of the promotors would tolerate for their own children. And the promoters want teachers who are naive, basically ignorant of any alternatives for educatio, and eager to use their time in a charter as if that qualifies them to tell others how to teach, and what matters most about teaching. The no excuses charter schools should call themselves military academies, indoctrination factories, boot camps, penal institutions for youth offenders. Being a child, young, still learning about everything in a no excuses school is just not allowed.
The DEFORMERS are preparing us for the DAZE of the ROBOTS. SCARY!
Charter schools in Los Angeles are dropping the ball on on-site vaccinations, or demanding parents bring in proof of off-site vaccinations:
http://www.scpr.org/news/2017/08/28/75025/why-are-california-charter-schools-vaccination-rat/
NPR:
For several reasons — the homeschool exemption being one of them — unvaccinated children appear to be ending up disproportionately in charter schools, the KPCC analysis showed.
Immunization experts say it takes a vaccination rates of around 95 percent to protect against diseases like measles or pertussis, often known as “whooping cough.” Crossing this threshold is often known as achieving “herd immunity,” a level of immunization sufficient to not only stifle outbreaks but also protect medically-fragile community members who are unable to receive vaccines themselves.
In seventh grade, the vast majority of California’s district-run public schools had crossed this threshold; 96.8 percent of schools enrolling seventh graders reported enough students were fully “up-to-date” on their shots to cross this herd immunity threshold.
But in only 73.6 percent of charter schools were most seventh graders up-to-date on their shots.
The numbers among entering kindergarteners were even worse for charter schools.
First, consider how many schools had 95 percent of kindergarteners who had either received all their shots or who were not yet due for a required dose: 92.1 percent of all district-run schools met this threshold, compared to in only 70.8 percent of charters.
Even adding in kindergarteners exempted because they’re homeschooled or because they have a special education plan does little to narrow the gap, as shown in the chart below: 93.1 percent of district-run schools, versus 75.9 percent of charter schools.
I’ve said this before but I think it’s important- there is a group of parents who want this level of discipline. Not only do they want this level, they want children who can’t conform removed from public schools. They are a loud minority in my district.
It’s what makes it so hard, such a balancing act. For every parent who objects to “zero tolerance” there is a parent who supports it. Do some of them change their mind when their child is the targeted “bad actor”? Yes. But that doesn’t stop a lot of people believing that “more discipline” is what works.
We have a substantial number of parents who judge teachers exclusively on how much rote memorization goes on. If you are not drilling on the times tables then you are lazy. If they don’t see endless worksheets coming home then you “aren’t doing any work”
I think it’s naive to believe that parents have this holistic, informed, nuanced view of schooling. A lot of them don’t.
I agree with this — especially the point about the ones who change their minds when it is THEIR child who is suddenly the “bad actor”.
Is there a no-excuses charter in the country that doesn’t require their parents to sign a contract laying out exactly what is required of them and their kids? If you read the NAACP testimony of the Success Academy parent whose son was drummed out, you will see that his first reaction to the school calling him about his son’s behavior was “I’m glad they are strict.” He didn’t realize that “strict” wasn’t about teaching — it was about culling.
Ask those same parents what they want to do with the kids who aren’t doing well with “zero tolerance”. Do they sit at home? Are those parents willing to take money from their zero tolerance schools to give to schools with many more resources for the children who don’t do well? When it is a COMMUNITY school — the real public school — every parent who embraces no excuses has to use their taxpayer dollars to address the needs of children because public schools can’t suspend 1/4 of their Kindergarten class — and recall they are suspending the children AFTER the ones who get weeded out the first few days are already gone!
If you asked those same parents: Should children who can’t function in no-excuses schools no longer be the responsibility of tax payers and they can rot if they don’t have families rich enough to pay for a private education? What would those parents say?
I don’t think any parent wants “zero tolerance” but they also don’t want their child harmed either. It’s a slippery slope for all involved because children make mistakes…because they are children and that’s what they do. What parents DON’T realize is that physical activity does a lot to calm children so that they are able to sit and concentrate (boys especially!). If children aren’t allowed to actively play, they are not able to get the wiggles out and they are not learning how to interact with other children in conflict resolution….this all leads to bad behavior and class disruption made even worse by overcrowded classrooms. There weren’t these kinds of problems 20-30 years ago because kids had PE and recesses and 1 hour for lunch. Parents don’t realize that kids are being asked to sit for hours on end, they don’t realize that recess is non existent or only 15-20 minutes. Parents have been brainwashed to believe that their children are mini adults and must be trained early to be the meat widgets of tomorrow. It’s sad what school (charter, public, voucher) has done to children in the name of accountability to feed free market enterprise. It’s child abuse.
Also, children aren’t being taught “WHY”. When my kids come home from school and tell me about little Johnny and that he got into trouble and hauled down to the office (again for he 3rd time in a week), I ask them what for. Then I ask them “why” they think Johnny keeps up with the bad behavior. It’s the” WHY” that is the most important aspect of it all. No one wants to deal with the “WHY”. That’s sad.
“. . . they are not able to get the wiggles out. . .
Great line LisaM! I know I was one of those kids who needed to get the wiggles out. Hell, I’d go run outside around the house just to see how fast I could do. 5-10 times in a row. Recess was a time to run, and run a lot as far as I was concerned, racing each other all over the place. Or pushing someone on the swing, or pushing the merry go round as fast as we could, climbing the trees if we could get away with it.
Get the wiggles out indeed!
I’m dating myself, but kidz gotta “Get Their Ya Ya’s Out” (hat tip to The Rolling Stones).
There are parents who want the teachers to beat their children. They should homeschool and do it themselves. DeVos will pay them.
There were students that I knew that had parents who believed a beating was a good thing. I made sure to keep any kind of discipline action strictly between those students and I. I certainly didn’t call home. Seemed to work fine for the students.
I wonder if this perception that kids are in need of MORE discipline and that the school MUST be the enforcer is ever critically examined?
My hunch is that many parents are working very hard to put food on the table and keep a household together, are exhausted, and for many reasons are outsourcing parenting to social media, including games on screens and television, and to the peer culture of their children and teens.
Schools, viewed as institutions of authority and surrogates for parents, are having a hard time dealing with the wrap around social services that might ameliorate discipline problems.
I think that the current enthusiasm for “social-emotional learning” (and tests for SEL!) is one response. The SEL standards basically call for the student to be the parent, to “manage self,” ASAP.
One of the leading centers promoting SEL is the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) based in Chicago http://www.casel.org/. CASEL’s work is rooted in sociology, especially Bandura’s demonstrations of learned aggression in young children.
In addition to advocacy, CASEL serves as a clearinghouse and evaluator of assessments for social-emotional learning (SEL). With help from CASEL staff, Illinois has developed SEL standards, initially for pre-school, then adding 100 additional standards for grades K-12. The SEL standards are for grade spans: K-4, 5-6, 7-8, 9-10, and 11-12.
These standards are organized around three goals and ten “learning strands.” The strands call for each student, K-12 to…”
–Identify and manage one’s emotions and behavior;
–Recognize personal qualities and external supports (family, peer, community);
–Recognize the feelings and perspectives of others;
–Recognize individual and group differences (focus on positive qualities);
–Use communication and social skills to interact effectively with others;
–Demonstrate an ability to prevent, manage, and resolve interpersonal conflicts in constructive ways;
–Consider ethical, safety, and social factors in making decisions;
–Apply decision-making skills to deal responsibly with daily academic and social situations; and
–Contribute to the well-being of one’s school and community.”
I found an astonishing expectation that students in K-4 should be able to “recognize and ACCURATELY label emotions and how they are linked to behavior.” (That sounds to me like a challenging assignment even for a person with a Ph.D in psychiatry or linguistics).
In any case, SEL standards reflect a hope that reason and skills in analysis—“skill sets”—can be developed in ways that subdue emotions and impulses, enhance self-control and serve as strategies that work to:
–reduce bullying,
–prevent substance abuse and risky behavior,
–induce empathy for others,
–teach civic virtues (character education, well disguised), –and prepare students to lead a thoroughly planned life…
“It is critical for students to be able to establish and monitor their progress toward academic and personal goals.”
Manage and monitor. The portrait of a “good life” is there in the standards and expectations for “skill sets.”
The good life is pretty much a fiction–free of the fortuitous, unplanned zigs and zags, ups and downs, left turns, circular paths, joy, playfulness, spontaneity, artistry, and more.
Better to have a life where everything is rationalized, rule-governed, prescreened, coordinated so you are always on track, on time, well-managed.
I have digressed, but Chiara’s impression that: “For every parent who objects to “zero tolerance” there is a parent who supports it” bears some examination.
In my opinion, CASEL research is being pressed into service for preventing and handling discipline problems in schools, and in ways that favor zero tolerance policies enacted by students. SEL is also an elaborated effort to reduce the need for professionally trainerd school counselors and school social workers.
I’m not sure what’s more chilling in this account: the regimentation of childhood or the principal who took pride in it. I can only imagine how this would have scarred me for a lifetime had I been in classes like this.
Students in Walnut Creek, CA are attempting to stamp out racism in their schools.
How?
Girl, PREACH!
I’ve said on this site before (in so many words) that there are so many factors involved in administering this type of ‘discipline’. It matters who is saying these things to children, how they are saying it, why they are saying it, and where they are coming from. Not too long ago and not too far away when schools were racially segregated, I know for a fact that many black teachers conducted their classrooms of all black students in this way, but…. it was different then in ways that if I have to explain, you wouldn’t understand anyway.
Please explain as I might understand better at least.
Okay…
My father remembers being inspected for cleanliness and neatness before going into his classroom at an all black school with all black teachers. He recalls coming home from school to find his teacher enjoying a cup of coffee with his mother. He saw his teachers both in and out of school because of the segregation of society at that time. It is not an exaggeration to say that his teachers, together with his parents, raised him.
Black children were being taught by people who not only looked like them, but who fully understood (or at least made a good faith effort to understand) them, their parents, their shared history, and shared struggle. Chances are pretty good their parents spoke to them in the same lovingly firm tones. It may have sounded harsh (at times, it was) but it came from a place of “I love you, I care about who you are now and the type of person you will become because “we” (all of us black people) need you to be the best you can be when you go out there in the world with “them.” You will be representing us whether you want to or not, so you need to be prepared.”
Children were not made to feel that they were deficient, less than, or lacked ‘grit’ but their teachers did not hesitate to call them out on laziness or BS. Nonsense was not tolerated because too much was at stake for each child personally, their families, and their entire communities.
A black teacher could tell a black child something in a way that was corrective, yet still affirming. I’m not saying white teachers couldn’t then (or can’t now), but they have to be willing to listen more and talk less, ask questions rather than make assumptions, and make peace with both the internal and external comforts that come with whiteness.
Lisa Delpit and Gloria Ladson-Billings have written extensively and far more eloquently about this. Please read their work if you desire more information.
How’s that?
Thanks for that explanation, SIGBI?!
What is interesting is that that sort of community schooling, if I may call it that, is almost identical to the schooling that I received in Catholic K-12 schools of which K-8 was in a more rural, just beginning to become the outer fringes of suburbia, certainly lower middle class at most if one looked at the jobs our dads had (yes most moms were stay at home moms). By high school, which was definitely suburban by then, there was still that sense of community, perhaps because in the 60s-early 70s outside of local Catholic school communities, Catholics were still looked down upon by the more supposedly elite groups. The sense of hard work and discipline will pay off eventually was very much drilled into us, I imagine not unsimilar to the fashion you describe.
Black/white, white/black it was a community effort to make sure that the children learned. I’m sure in the communities to which you refer the worst thing a child could here upon coming home from school was “Okay, what happened at school today?” from their mom!
Again, thanks for your explanation!
could hear, not here-ay ay ay!
“I’m sure in the communities to which you refer the worst thing a child could here upon coming home from school was “Okay, what happened at school today?” from their mom! ”
Yep! My dad said that if he’d done anything wrong at school, he got a verbal lashing (“Boy! You know better than that!”) and sometimes a physical “love touch reminder”, too all the way home from every parent, neighbor, and friend of the family within his community. And then when he got home, that’s where he REALLY got it!