Achievement First Amistad in New Haven is known for two things: high test scores and high suspension rates.
https://fox61.com/2019/01/17/principal-of-new-haven-charter-school-quits-after-video-surfaces/
But when a video captured the principal
exercising the usual harsh discipline, the principal stepped down and a former “behavior specialist” spilled the beans.
“The State Department of Education has reprimanded the leadership of AF Amistad in the past for what the state says amounts to three times more suspensions as any other New Haven public school. Now, a video obtained by the New Haven Independent, shows AF Amistad principal Morgan Barth grabbing a male student, who tried to leave his office, while discussing previous discipline.
“The school’s Chief External Officer, Fatimah Barker, calls the principal’s conduct “unacceptable,” in a statement. It continued:
“When this incident happened, we conducted an internal investigation, documented the incident in accordance with state laws, and worked with the student’s family – including sharing the video with them. In addition, Mr. Barth was disciplined and also required to attain additional restraint training.”
“From the time I met that man, very intimidating to the kids,” said Steve Cotton, a now former AF Amistad employee. “Multiple staff always referred to his style as intimidation, basically.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Armistad is the charter school owned by stefan pryor who is gov. raimondo’s commerce corporation schmo, giving out tax incentives like water to questionable outsider people and businesses-many who take the tax credits and then leave the state!) When RI’s ex ed com missioner Deborah Gist was pushing charters, she took former RI Gov Chafee to Armistad saying how wonderful it is…Luckily nothing came from it. Armistad like stefan pryor are frauds…
Watch the full video of Steve Cotton blowing the whistle on Achievement First, made just after quitting his job in disgust:
Have any ed reformers grappled with this in their idealized “choice” system?
Schools are doing this because they want to get rid of students who are more trouble- that sends a message to parents and students that “your kid doesn’t belong here” – Success Academy does the same thing.
But public schools in a given geographical area are systems, so one school’s individual and largely unregulated individual rules affect the whole, because it’s a universal system- the kids who are made to understand they don’t belong there go to another school. That’s how K-12 schools differ from college- colleges aren’t a universal system.
They’re hoping this all just plays out “equitably” due to the magic of markets? What about the schools receiving the kids who wash out of Success? Does anyone care what happens in THOSE schools?
We actually have a “high performing” public school in this county who do the same thing- they set up draconian rules so kids who don’t conform won’t stay. Everyone knows that’s what they’re doing and then we all have to watch as the clueless politicians heap praise on them for high scores and ding the schools who are TAKING the kids they discard. This will be wildly exacerbated in a privatized system.
Ed reformers do NOT believe in a “choice” system. I think that we should call them out on this lie every single time one of them says it. Believing in choice for public schools means believing that a public school system may offer a magnet school for high achievers and a vocational-type school for kids interested in certain careers that might not require college and a performing arts school where students spend 3 hours/day in their performing arts talent.
Ed reformers believe in a PRIVATIZED system. Challenge them to provide one instance where they are fighting and lobbying for more magnet schools or performing arts school that are part of the system.
Ed reformers want PRIVATE entities — sometimes non-profit and sometimes for-profit — to be able to run a school in which once a student is out of the school their responsibility to them ends. Period. Ed reformers want to give some private groups the franchise to teach the kids they want to teach while the public schools teach whoever they don’t want to teach.
Remember, you can offer “choice” WITHIN the public school system. It isn’t perfect, but it means that ultimately the public school system is responsible for all kids, and the principal at Stuyvesant can’t brag about how her school is superior and bash the NYC Dept of education for running those wasteful schools where students don’t get the same high SAT scores.
It means there is truth in the discussion rather than lying charter school CEOs going to Congress and insisting that public schools serving the most at-risk students absolutely do not need anything but huge class sizes because her charter school PROVED that is all that is needed. Because she just refuses to teach the kids that won’t thrive in large class sizes and as long as you are ruthless and have no moral compass — which describes so many charter leaders — you simply force out students through whatever means necessary and you can make false claims and get rich.
Remember, ed reformers don’t believe in choice. They believe in PRIVATIZATION where certain favored entities are given a franchise to teach the students they want to teach and only the students they want to teach.
a crucial point
Yes and I forgot to add why it is so crucial.
Ed reformers believe in COMPETITION. That is their guiding principle — not “choice”. And they want a competition in which one group (charter schools) gets to use rules that favor them, and the other group must use rules that ALSO favor the other team.
A vocational high school does not “compete” with a magnet arts high school and a magnet arts high school doesn’t “compete” with a magnet school for academic achievers. The success of one does not mean that the rest of the system is given a pass. The ed reformers never look at the myriad of highly successful public high schools in NYC and say “oh, great high schools so obviously the public system is superior”.
Thanks to dishonest ed reformers like Arne Duncan, public school systems are now judged on how well the lowest performing students succeed. The academic success of tens of thousands at-risk poor students doesn’t matter as long as there are still many at-risk students who are struggling academically.
Ed reformers would rather ignore the tens of thousands of students who succeed each year in public schools because they say what matters is that more kids in public schools aren’t performing well enough academically. According to ed reformers, having 15 kids graduating from a charter high school is their proof that 100% of students should be successful in public schools too. That they get away with such fraud because they have billionaires paying PR firms to push the lies is one reason why public education has suffered so much.
Incidentally the private school here also does this- they make it clear to parents and students that kids who don’t follow the rules won’t be staying.
You know where they go? The public school.
In ed reform’s privatized system when we are all paying private school tuition will public schools be compensated for acting as a back-up to privatized schools?
If they achieve their goal and there are no public schools and private schools don’t want to serve X, Y or Z students, then what?
We’re back to square one- 1911- where we have to set up the public systems they just eradicated?
Aren’t these things we should be discussing? Shouldn’t we have a real debate on privatization at some point instead of avoiding the issue with this nonsense about “every child gets a hand crafted, artisanal school of their choice, everywhere”?
Betsy DeVos is not just wrong, she’s delusional. She doesn’t grapple with how systems work. Someone better grapple with it, because she and people in her echo chamber are privatizing as fast as they can and they present this as risk-free. It’s not.
Good to see DC is conducting their annual promotion of charter and private schools, and attack on public schools.
“US Dept of Education
This week, the Department of Education and will celebrate and raise public awareness of the different K-12 education options available to families”
It’s “public schools suck” week in our nation’s capitol. If your kid happens to attend an unfashionable public sector school tell them to ignore these hacks and lobbyists- it’s not true that all public school students are low performing delinquents.
If they can’t offer any practical value-add to the public schools the vast, vast majority of the unwashed masses attend (and they don’t) could they at least refrain from attacking our schools and teachers and students to push their ideological agenda?
Just leave us out of charter and private school promotion week. Ignore us like they do the other 51 weeks of the year. There isn’t a single family in a single public school in this country who will notice. They’re irrelevant to us.
Can the US Department of Education point to a single practical effort they made to assist, support or improve any public school in this country this calendar year?
They’re very good at marketing charters and private schools with this endless daily cheerleading of the privatized schools they prefer . What about the other 90% of people they supposedly serve?
If you landed from Mars and looked at the federal government for the last 20 years you would believe the vast, vast majority of people in this country attend private and charter schools. That’s what ideological and policy capture looks like- it’s neglecting or denigrating the schools who serve MOST families in order to push an agenda.
We shouldn’t have to pay for this. The Walton heirs can pick up the tab.
Here’s a video podcast interview with Achievement First Amistad whistle blower, Steve Cotton, a former behavioral specialist who’s been blowing the lid off the extreme abusive discipline employed by the Achievement First Amistad charter school:
SIDE NOTE: The school’s name is quite ironic, as this wiki entry indicates:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Amistad
The above video podcast is riveting stuff — quite appropriate for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
Go to 33:00, and you hear the following:
The reason — or a major reason — that Steve Cotton was pushed out of Achievement First Amistad was the following:
On the day of the incident, Cotton was originally told that a student (or rather “scholar” … oy vey, I hate when charter folks call students “scholars” ) had hit Morgan Barth, not the other way around, Cotton then checked the video to discover that this was a lie, that it was the other way around.
Cotton then did something that contributed to his being pushed out:
— he bypassed his principal/boss Barth, then jumped the chain of command, and reported the incident — and the existence of corroborating video — in an email to the top dogs or CEO’s at Achievement First, Doug & Dacia Toll, and a bunch of other big wigs, including Superintendent Jeff Sedmeyer (sp?). Since Cotton handled the situation this way, Barth couldn’t promote the phony student-hit-me story, and destroy the video.
Smart guy.
In his email, Cotton strongly insisted that Achievement First leaders need to be fully transparent with everyone — the victim’s parents, the parents at the school, the community, etc. — and that Morgan Barth be punished accordingly.
Smart guy.
The following Tuesday, Achievement First Superintendent Jeff Sedmeyer and Achievement First CEO Doug Toll then visited the Acheivement First Amistad school. Eventually, Sedmeyer, under Toll’s direction, engaged Cotton in a deceitful conversation later that same day.
Superintendent Jeff Sedmeyer told Cotton that Achievement First leaders, including Doug Toll, agreed with Cotton that the abuse that Barth inflicted on the child was unacceptable, and that they agreed with Cotton’s recommendations about transparency — i.e. sharing the video with the victim’s parents, the rest of the school’s parents, etc.
(quotes below starts at around 35:10 )
“Needless to say, like .. that didn’t happen,” Cotton then says in the podcast. “He (Doug Toll) had (Superintendant) Jeff (Sedmeyer) lie to me that day. He (Doug Toll) didn’t do ANY of the things that he said that they were gonna do.(i.e. share the video with the parents.) They (Achievement First leaders) didn’t even show them (the parents) the proper (camera) angle of the video. They (only) showed them a (camera) angle that was from a camera down the hall. (not the closer camera that was more incriminating.)
“You understand?”
“And I try and tell people that when things like this happen at Achievement First, that’s not by mistake. That’s by design. That’s an intentional … That’s something intentional that they’re doing to deceive the parents and the staff.
“Because here he (Superintendent Jeff Sedmeyer) he is. He knows that I’m a man of color. He knew that this didn’t sit well with me. ‘So let me call him (Cotton) down by telling him or me that we’re gonna do everything that he(Cotton)’s asking us to do,’
“Be a politician,” says the podcast host.
Cotton nods, ” ‘Be a politician,’ but then, behind closed doors, do the exact opposite (of what was promised), and had I not taken it up (with the victim’s parents), had not me and (the victim’s) dad not known each other, and then got in contact with each other, whatever, the information (about the incident) would never have been exchanged. …
“Had we (the parent and Cotton) not been been talking, I would never have known that Jeff had lied (to the parent.)”
Steve Cotton just won’t shut up.
Here he is telling a New Haven newspaper that Achievement First leaders attempted a “coverup” that would have allowed Morgan Barth to stay on — this incident happened back in October — but the existence of the videotape evidence made that impossible. Had that video not existed, and had not Cotton blown the whistle, Barth would have stayed on as if nothing happened.
Furthermore, Cotton believes that the upcoming “listening tour” that Achievement First bigwigs are doing with with parents is just window-dressing, and will amount to no changes. Indeed, in the past when similar incidents prompted a “listening tour,” parents and students vented, but absolutely nothing was done in response, as everything just gets “swept under the rug.”
Here’s the full quote:
https://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/discipline_amistad_/
x x x x x x x x x x x x x
NEW HAVEN INDEPENDENT:
“He (Cotton) questioned why Barth hadn’t been dismissed earlier, especially after he emailed the charter network’s co-CEOs, Doug McCurry and Dacia Toll, about the video last October, telling them that what he saw was ‘over the top and unprofessional,’ ‘aggressive and almost violent.’
“ ‘To me, that sounds like a typical Achievement First coverup. My question to them is if he was already going to leave and they were already looking for new leadership, why did you feel it was okay to keep him there for the rest of the year? If the video never came out, would you have let him stay around?’ he asked.
“ ‘It shows their way of thinking: This is the culture of your school, that you were willing to allow somebody to stay there for so long.’
“Cotton said he didn’t expect much to come from Achievement First’s listening tour. He said he’d seen the network send its bigwigs down to hear from parents before — without instituting any real reforms after.
“ ‘I just want to point out to people, don’t be fooled. This is what they’re going to do: They’re going to say they want to hear what you black people want to say, they’re going to put out people who look just like you and they’re going to tell you all this good stuff to calm you down and make you comfortable with keeping your kids there,’ he said.
“ ‘But there are things that can be done now, like bringing a restorative philosophy into schools and allowing teachers to build relationships. But that doesn’t fit into the model that they have set.’
“Recent graduates who’ve protested before, walking out of school in 2016 and skipping a big college announcement in 2018, said they’ve noticed that pattern too.
“ ‘What the AF system in general does is have meetings and say that they are going to change things,’ said Tyshon Hill, who graduated last year and now studies at the University of Connecticut. ‘But every time it comes down to it, things get swept under the rug.’ ”
This is from the US News and World Report website: Amistad Academy is ranked 1st within Connecticut. Students have the opportunity to take Advanced Placement® course work and exams. The AP® participation rate at Amistad Academy is 100 percent. The student body makeup is 48 percent male and 52 percent female, and the total minority enrollment is 99 percent. Amistad Academy is the only high school in the Amistad Academy District.
2018 Rankings
Amistad Academy is ranked #55 in the National Rankings and earned a gold medal. Schools are ranked based on their performance on state-required tests and how well they prepare students for college. Read more about how we rank the Best High Schools. End quote
Of course what is not discussed is the attrition rate, the dumping of problem kids, special ed kids and the selectiveness of the admissions process.
US News ratings for schools are a farce. This incident is surfacing on MLK day. I am not confident that the dismissed principal has studied and understood the hisorical significance of the name “Amistad.” Perhaps the students are also unaware of the significance of this name for their school. Even though the government has been shut down, this remarkable document, among others, is available from the National Archives. https://www.docsteach.org/documents/document/amistad-opinion
I find it disgusting that a charter school would co-opt the name of the Amistad, which is one of the most important stories in American history. If you don’t know about it, today is a very appropriate day to take an hour of reflection. Here’s a good place to start: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/adams-begins-arguments-in-the-amistad-case. And it’s also a good day to reflect on the man and presidency of John Quincy Adams, who played an integral part in the Amistad story. It’s also worth perusing the website of Tulane’s Amistad Reseach Center: https://www.amistadresearchcenter.org
If you’re looking for a good book on John Quincy Adams, may I recommend Fred Kaplan’s comprehensive biography. Here’s a review I wrote for myself a few years ago:
Kaplan answers the question of why he wrote a biography of John Quincy Adams in the last sentence of his bibliographical essay: “The opposition that he met, his successes, and his failures are part of the torn fabric of public discourse in early-twenty-first-century America.” In this excellent account of Adams’s life, one can’t help but be constantly reminded of today’s pressing American political issues.
From gag rules preventing public officials from mentioning climate change and the medical effects of gun violence to bank bailouts that leave the perpetrators untouched and in power; from the inordinate power and influence the reactionary South has on national politics to the division of power between the states and the federal government; all of these issues were similar to those confronted by Adams. His responses to them would serve as timely suggestions for today’s politicians.
Born into a prominent political family, Adams spent much of his early life in Europe, first as the son of an ambassador to France and England, which also took him on travels through the continent as far as St. Petersburg. After studying at Harvard and beginning a legal career, he spent the entirety of his father’s presidency in Europe as a diplomat. After serving one term as a U.S. senator (when he learned “To do a thing, by assuming the appearance of preventing it. To prevent a thing by assuming that of doing it”), Adams returned to Europe for eight years as one of the chief diplomats of the Madison administration. This period was highlighted by his strong influence in negotiating the Treaty of Ghent to end the War of 1812.
He returned to America to become President Monroe’s secretary of state. That term was marked by his negotiation of the Adams-Onis Treaty, which gave shape to much of the American West, and his influence on what later became known as The Monroe Doctrine (much as Truman’s vision became The Marshall Plan). As a successful president, he promoted infrastructure improvements like the Erie and Chesapeake & Ohio Canals. But his conviction that “sense of duty shall never yield to the pleasure of a party” opened the door for the partisan populism of Andrew Jackson and denied him a second term. It was the birth of a politicization of the White House that, by the end of Jackson’s term, Kaplan concludes “It now seemed inevitable that every president’s last two years would be dominated by a race to succeed him.”
Two years after leaving the presidency, he was elected to the House of Representatives, where he served until his death 16 years later. It was as congressman that Adams could freely voice his core beliefs and convictions. As Kaplan writes, Adams believed “the point of government” was that “It existed for ‘the improvement of the condition of those who are parties to the social compact.’” This “meant not only material improvement but ‘moral, political, and intellectual improvement.’” And it meant that a strong central government was needed to overcome the narrow, self-interested priorities of the states.
Adams opposed slavery with the principle that “A dedication to justice and human rights was ‘the only legitimate foundation of civil government.’” While he knew that he was in the minority and that the Constitution gave the South the mechanisms to prevail legislatively, “…Adams predicted…a war between the North and South. There would be, he believed, no other way to end slavery.” But that did not prevent him from forcefully opposing nullification, which he felt “substitute[d] physical force in the place of deliberate legislation” and the actions of the House leadership to enforce a gag rule which “would accept nothing short of prohibiting the mention of slavery” in legislative proceedings.
Kaplan, in describing a “Southern propaganda machine, built on an edifice of widely propagated lies” extensively quotes a late speech by Adams that is worth repeating: “Falsified logic—falsified history—falsified constitutional law, falsified morality, falsified statistics, and falsified and slanderous imputations upon the majorities of both Houses of Congress for a long series of years. All—all is false and hollow. And for what is this enormous edifice of fraud and falsehood directed?” His efforts, though mostly on the losing side, did earn him begrudging praise. As one of his political enemies observed, Adams was “the acutest, the astutest, the archest enemy of Southern slavery that ever existed.”
Kaplan’s strongest contribution to understanding Adams is the examination of his many writings, most importantly a diary that he kept from childhood through the end of his life, and to show how relevant they are today. Adams “…consider[ed] it as the business and duty of my life to write,” believing that “Pen should never be put to paper but for the discharge of some duty to God or man.” Adams was deeply religious, but a rationalist. The bible “was, he decided, ‘philosophical Romance,’ not a history of facts, ‘full of profound and admirable instruction.’” Or, more to the point, “The resurrection of the Spirit disencumbered of the body, I can imagine; but the resurrection of the body—a body too which will no longer be flesh and blood is beyond the compass of my understanding.”
Kaplan best sums up Adams’ life and character in a telling anecdote: “Admiral Stephen Decatur’s widely publicized toast in 1816, ‘our country, right or wrong,’ struck Adams as not only discordant but immoral.” As Adams saw it, “My toast would be, may our country be always successful, but whether successful or otherwise always right. I disclaim as unsound all patriotism incompatible with the principles of eternal justice.” Justice, morality, and duty guided Adams throughout an intellectually consistent life. That’s a lesson that transcends American history.
Thank you , see also the National Archive document I mentioned.
Your post inspired my rant!
The principal in question is named Morgan Barth. A Richard Barth is a longtime leader in education “reform,” and he’s married to Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America. (Barth has been a honcho at once-hailed, now-defunct Edison Schools, and more recently head honcho of KIPP, and I’m not Googling at the moment to see if he still is.) A little Googling indicates that a Morgan Barth may have a family connection to Wendy Kopp and Richard Barth. I’m not saying that’s confirmed or confirmable, just noting. If I learn that there is no connection, I’ll ask Diane to remove this post.
Caroline,
If you use Intelius.com, you can find out stuff like this.
I just did, and yes, Richard and Morgan Barth are brothers.
To see this, CLICK HERE:
https://www.intelius.com/people-search/Moran-Barth/New%20Haven-CT
In the second column, you see Relatives, and the third name down is “Richard Barth.”
Richard Barth who’s Wendy Kopp’s husband should be older than that, but 39 is too old to be Wendy’s kid, so there’s more to be explored about the relationship…
The intelius.com page above says that Morgan Barth is 39, not Richard Barth, so perhaps Morgan is Richard’s younger brother,
the same Richard married to Wendy Kopp. The Richard Barth who’s related to Morgan Barth can be in his 40’s or 50’s, and thus the right age to be married to Wendy.
Also, Caroline, in the above podcast interview with Steve Cotton, Morgan Barth’s salary is called into question.
At around 11:45, Cotton tells of how he discovered that Barth’s salary was $180,000 / year, causing Cotton to go ballistic.
“That’s insane!” intones the podcast host (whose daughter goes to an Achievement First School, by the way.) regarding Barth’s salary.
Cotton uses this fact to criticize Amistad Achievement First’s lack of field trips, and then asks the parents, how many field trips — not just the college trips the students go on — they could buy if they cut just $10,000 from Morgan Barth’s salary?
The video where Cotton talks to the camera is also compelling.
At around 14:20, Cotton also tells how how the administration reacted to a student protest two years ago — a protest where kids walked out over Achievement First’s harsh discipline, no black teachers, etc..
There was not a positive word towards the protesting students. There was nothing but insulting treatment.
The administrators first threatened the students with dismissal if the students didn’t return immediately to the class. They told them that they could not use the bathrooms, or drink water, and the kids who rode in long-distance bus rides would be forbidden from using the bus after school ended.
Cotton called his wife, and told her to buy some cases of water, and drive it over to the protests. The kids did the same thing with their parents, who also brought out water.
Teachers were told that if anyone assisted the protesting students — i.e. bring the students water — they’d be fired. The administrators were desperately trying to get the protesting students back in the school before any media showed, belittling the students condescendingly throughout.
However, once the media showed up, they administrators then put on their “nice guy” masks, and, talking to the press, changed their tone, and out came the spin, as told the press,
“We’re so proud of our kids. This is the type of leadership that we encourage at Achievement First. We encourage our kids, to advocate for themselves … blah-blah-blah … ”
Cotton then went ballistic. “F— no! You don’t! You don’t encourage them kids to advocate for themselves. You do everything you can to keep them stifled! You do everything that you can, as a system, to shut them down! You don’t encourage them to speak their own minds, just like you don’t encourage the adults in the building to speak their own minds, So If the adults in the buliding don’t feel they can speak their own minds, what makes you think that the kids do?”
I listened to the podcast and it was great, though Cotton and the host don’t grasp a lot of stuff about the big picture of how charters operate, and I was (still am) itching to get their contact info and give them more information. Especially because the podcast host has a kid at the school himself, a fascinating twist.
On this MLK Day, watch some striking teachers do a line dance to Aretha Franklin’s FREEDOM:
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez re-tweeted this dance video of LAUSD striking teachers and students boycotting school (student participation is key here), dancing as one, doing a flashmob line dance in front of their school (Venice High, I think).
Each dance move communicates a different contract negotiation talking point:
FIRST STEP: “Reach up and lower those class sizes.” — reach and pull down motion
…
THIRD STEP: “Scoop into that billion-dollar reserve.” — two-hand scooping motion
Then Aretha Franklin music kicks in. Watch it. It’ll give ya chills: (re-tweet this folks)
A bit of movie location trivia.
Apparently, this video ABOVE is not the first time a musical number was performed and filmed at Venice High School.
Those teachers & students above are dancing on some sacred-to-movie-lovers ground, the actual location of the classic movie GREASE, with John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John.
BELOW is one of those amateur YouTube videos where a film lover goes to the actual location of a beloved movie.
Go to 0:30 to see the location of the teacher-student line dance, along with corresponding footage from GREASE on the same site as the teacher-student line dance: