By chance, two articles came to my attention today about two leading figures in the Reform movement who don’t want to be seen as Reformers any more. Have they really changed? Frankly, I am waiting for each of them to call a press conference and declare their support for public schools and renounce their past error in supporting charters (and in Booker’s case) vouchers. Even then, I would be dubious because both of them have motives that are politically expedient.
Cory Booker, as we know, was closely associated with Betsy DeVos. He was on school choice boards with her, attended her events, was feted as keynote speaker at the conservative Manhattan Institute, and has a long history demeaning public schools and unions. Just days ago, he attended a charter school rally in New Orleans. Just a few days ago is past history, right? But an article in Mother Jones suggests he may have changed his mind. What really burns me is that the writer compares Booker’s possible (but not sure) change of mind to my own change. I would like to point out that I had nothing to gain and everything to lose by publicly changing my views. I gave up a cushy position at the Hoover Institution and lost a lot of friends, as well as income, when I changed sides. I left the gravy train and took a stand with no assurance of any reward. Booker, on the other hand, has to change his views or face the wrath of the teachers, the unions, and parents who prefer public schools to corporate chains. You can’t run for president with the support of the parents of the 6% of kids in charter schools and expect to win.
Did Booker support vouchers? Of course he did. Education Week wrote an article on February 1, 2019, describing him thus:
Cory Booker, School Choice Fan and Ex-DeVos Ally, Is Running for President
U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., announced Friday that he will seek the presidency. When it comes to education policy, Booker has an interesting and perhaps unique track record among the Democrats who will fight to take on President Donald Trump. Although much of that record was established before he was elected to the Senate in 2013, how he talks about that record, and how teachers’ unions react to his candidacy, will be worth watching.
Before coming to Congress, Booker was the mayor of Newark, N.J., from 2006 to 2013. During that time, he made his support for various forms of choice one of the key issues of his administration. In 2012, for example, we highlighted Booker as an example of how vouchers had gained a political foothold among Democrats at the state and local level. That year, he gave a speech to the American Federation for Children, a group formerly led by Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos (more on her in a moment) that supports vouchers, in which he said that many children “by law are locked into schools that fail their genius.” And he co-founded a group, Excellent Education for Everyone, that backed charters and vouchers in New Jersey but fell short of its goals.
During his early political career, Booker also garnered support from Wall Street donors who took an interest in education policy. That group of donors eventually helped start Democrats for Education Reform, a group that supports charters and other forms of public school choice—Booker has served on its advisory board. However, some in the education community are suspicious of Booker’s Wall Street ties.
Then there is Rahm Emanuel. He says he used to prefer charters. But then he became Mayor of Chicago and learned that charters don’t hold all the answers. Now he says he likes all high-quality schools. Can we take the word of a man who says he has learned his lesson, that he now likes any kind of school as long as it produces high test scores? Why did he forget to mention that he closed 50 schools in one day? He was Mayor in 2013 when he did that. I imagine his tombstone: Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago who closed 50 schools in a day, a historic and shameful legacy. Maybe he is running for Secretary of Education in the next Democratic administration. Then he can revive Race to the Top and close even more schools in search of those “high-quality seats.”
Color me skeptical.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
From the Mother Jones article: “When she [Ravitch] saw the effects of the reform agenda, she turned around and said just as quickly and strongly, ‘I made a mistake,’” García explains. “It would be interesting to see which politicians, Democrat or Republican, are willing to be that honest.”
Imagine that, a public intellectual moved by the facts instead of by a potential for personal gain.
Every single potus, senator, house representative, governor, mayor, school board member, and school superintendent who promoted these “DEFORMS” and who dissed public schools and public school teachers need to “apologize publicly” to the American citizens and our students for ALL the HARM they have caused.
We have had years of insanity and bad policies re: education.
Why should teachers have to fight for a living salary? Why should teachers have to use those awful programmed materials on that screen written by those far away from the classrooms? Why do teaches have to purchase their own materials to use in their classrooms?
Why? Why? Why?
Many years ago, I wrote on the pages of this blog that it will be amusing to watch the Vichy Collaborators with Ed Deform, and especially the education gurus and pundits who collaborated, attempt to rewrite their histories as Ed Deform inevitably and predictably crumbles under the weight of its repeated failures. Well, here we are.
And after the truth is known about Donald Trump, Vlad’s Agent Orange, the same will be true for the Repugnican collaborators with his misadministration. It will be fun watching them try to distance themselves from their association with the man.
What a striking contrast is provided by the case of Dr. Ravitch, who put the facts and the welfare of kids first.
It was truly shocking, after the passage of No Child Left Behind, how many education pundits who had previously written extensively about the problems with standardized testing and of summative testing generally, ones who had built careers on promoting formative assessment or portfolio assessment, ones who has castigated bullet lists of vague, curriculum-narrowing standards, ones who had championed peer evaluation and lesson study and so on as methods of teacher evaluation, immediately threw out all their principles and started wallowing in the great river of Ed Deform green, how they suddenly became big fans of high-stakes testing and bullet lists of “standards” and state evaluation systems tied to test scores. So, what were the souls of these people going for back in the day? A contract with PARCC here, a grant from the Gates Foundation there.
Bob,
Do you have any names of those “who had built careers. . . ” and then became “big fans of . . . “?
Oh yes, You bet I do. My little list of money-grubbing Vichy collaborators.
When’s the reveal party?
So, I take it that you don’t favor a general amnesty for Ed Deform collaborators, Duane. LMAO!
Booker and Rahm are still Deformers. Neither has expressed regret for what they have done to harm public schools. No contrition there.
Rahm is recasting everything these days, attempting to find a spin he can put on his history that will be palatable: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/02/policymakers-need-new-path-education-reform/581995/
Excellent Bob, and thank you. I’m currently working in the “Springfield Empowerment Zone Partnership” in Springfield, Massachusetts, which is rife with kind of corruption you describe.
And now that I have your attention, I just want to check with you on something: After the next two themed history months (Black History and Women’s History), which Mark’s Text Terminal observes assiduously, I’d like to put up a post touting your blog. Also, I’d like to add you to my blog roll?
May I secure your permission for these moves? Please advise.
Please do, Mark. Thanks!
Thanks, Bob. Will do.
Color me more than skeptical.
I think Booker and Rahm must first prove beyond MORE than a shadow-of-a-doubt that they have changed. And the test will take at least a decade or longer in a position way below that of President of the United States.
For the next ten years, minimum, I would not trust them to even be a state governor or US Senator. They should start as a city’s mayor (Wait: Rahm has already done that and earned nothing but dismal failing grades in that post — is there a grade worse than an F?) for a few years and then run for a seat as a state legislator for a few more years before running for a two-year stint in the US House of representatives. By then, we the people, the voters, would have enough evidence through their voting recor (not their verbal lies) to decide if they mean what they say.
As it stands now, both of these scum only deserve a decade in prison for their roll in supporting the corrupt, power hungry, U.S. oligarchs that are destroying the United States Constitutional Republic and turning it into a Trumpish Kleptocracy.
Saying “I support high quality schools” really means:
“I support high quality charters that dump every student they claim is low-quality and undeserving of a seat because the high quality schools I love so much can’t be high quality if they have to teach those low-quality kids I don’t care about at all.”
And that would be Cory and Rahm who justify their non- support of public schools because they are “low quality” since they don’t do what “high quality” schools they love do and dump “low-quality” children.
^And as far as I can tell, HRC is the ONLY Democrat to this day who has actually come out and stated for the record that the supposed “high quality” schools simply refuse to teach the students who would make them not “high quality” anymore. Maybe AOC has made some references to this, but certainly not leaders like Warren and Sanders.
I don’t think Corey Booker has changed his mind at all.
If ed reformers like Booker are “agnostics” and support public schools along with charter and private schools, why don’t they do anything for public schools?
Why are teachers unions the only people/organization doing this? :
“Then, in 2018, teachers across the country walked out of their classrooms to demand greater investment in public education, pointing to low wages, small school budgets, and large class sizes as symptoms of systemic divestment. Protests that began in West Virginia inspired similar movements in Arizona, California, Colorado, and Oklahoma, and the efforts have been viewed, by and large, as successful.”
At best ed reformers are irrelevant to families in public schools, and at worst, and often, they’re actually harmful to public school families.
They haven’t given anyone in a public school any reason to support them, and they seem to care so little about that they rarely even mention public schools except to criticize them. Any defense of public schools is met with immediate dismissal as motivated solely by greed, which really works out well for them, because then we have passionate promoters and defenders of charter and private schools and a complete void as to public schools.
Booker is trying to convince people that Newark was a big success. If you look at the “study” he mentions, it says scores went up for reading, but not math. It also states that the score changes were likely due to changing enrollment patterns. It is implying that improvement is due to gentrification. I was in Newark two years ago. There were signs all over encouraging people to buy before the prices get too high. http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/11/newarks-revival-is-finally-real-so-is-its-latest-problem.html
We have already been through eight years of dissembling Democrats under Obama. Corporate Democrats often use the term public schools to include charters funded by public money. They engage in lots of double speak which they need to clarify. They should know better than that by now, but who knows? High quality schools is another term that allows them to squirm out of the privatized-public debate. Are high performing schools that promote segregation worthy of plundering public schools for? I am with every other skeptic here in saying I want to here them say unequivocally they will support no programs that will undermine public schools. By the way, if Booker is a reformed “reformer,” why was in just in New Orleans in January celebrating with all the privatizers? Booker speaks with “forked tongue.” https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/02/cory-booker-charters-public-schools-president
All union members should reject Booker and Emanuel.
Ugh, and he’ll hire the whole echo chamber from Gates and Walton and Zuckerberg again.
They’ll revolve right back into the federal government for another 8 year stint.
Between Bush, Obama, Trump and President Booker we could have FORTY YEARS of the exact same people and ideas. It won’t matter if they actively seek to eradicate existing public schools. They’ll die from neglect.
Go back to Reagan in 1983 when he released the lying, misleading, fraudulent “A Nation at Risk Report”. This mess didn’t start with G. W. Bush.
In fact, we should start with the birth of the Koctaupus in 1973.
Yes. Well said.
Emanuel didn’t change his mind either. He basically said he should have ranked and measured principals rather than teachers.
That was his big growth moment. His whole “evolution” could have been reduced to one sentence. The rest was ed reform slogans and bragging.
Rahm has this distinction. He knows nothing about education and has learned nothing. But he doesn’t know that either.
Leopards don’t lose their spots…they just camouflage them for stalking purposes.
LOL. These do.
Agree with all the points mentioned in the post and related comments. This seems no different to me than how Jeb and Kasich tried to extricate themselves from wholesale support of the Common Core by stating they simply cared about “high standards.”
I also view the Ed Reform media in the same way as I do these politicians. Some have made steps in the right direction. Never is there an apology.
Color me nauseous.
Oh, look. Another ed reform billionaire converts to a LLC so they can buy unlimited political clout:
“They’re not alone. Other big-dollar donors have taken the same approach. Laurene Powell Jobs has an LLC (the Emerson Collective), as do Pierre Omidyar (Omidyar Network), Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna (Good Ventures), and Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg (the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative).
An LLC is not subject to all the same requirements as a foundation. It doesn’t have to spend down 5 percent of its assets each year, as foundations are required to do. It does not necessitate the same kinds of disclosures of public tax documents. And if any of the LLC’s investments turn a profit, the owners have discretion over what to do with it.
Foundations are also limiting if you want to make grants to political advocacy — pushing for policies or supporting candidates that you think are most likely to do good in the world.”
I seem to recall that George Wallace, the ardent segregationist, changed his stripes after seeing the handwriting on the wall and surviving an assassination attempt. Seems like he went back to the Gov. role with a majority of the black vote and behaved as though he had changed.
Behaved as a changed man. that is the key.
When I was out on strike, Booker was the keynote speaker of a Charter School conference. He’s a fraud – so is Rahm. I’ll plug my nose and vote Trump over these jerks. Enough said.
First, there has been no outright recanting of having been wrong by Booker like yours, Diane. And you’re right, his extremely recent and alleged position pivot is opportunistic. Second, the common refrain describing neoliberals is “run from the left; govern from the right.” Their word is flimsy. Their campaigns promises and their actions are usually two opposing things. Third, when one is running for office, history is supposed to matter. It does matter. I have not forgotten — and will never forget Booker’s full throated, bordering on foaming at the mouth speech in the Senate supporting high stakes standardized testing during the ESSA discussion. Do I care whether he changed his mind? No! He hurt me badly. I want political revenge. Booker will not get my vote for anything ever. He should drop out of the race.
Run from the Rahm. Book from the Booker.
Run from Reformers (Apologies to Dan Fogelberg, Run for the Roses)
Born in the board rooms
And praised by the Rhees
Of billionaire boredom
And billionaire fleas
Obama beside you
To ‘help’ you along
You’ll soon be a-teachin em wrong
Oh, the Rahm crazy closing
Of schools by the score
With Jitu opposing
And so many more
Could never prepare you
For what lies ahead
The run from Reformers, so bad
And it’s run from Reformers
As fast as you can
Your fate is delivered
Your moment’s at hand
It’s the chance of a lifetime
In a lifetime of chance
And it’s high time
You gave them the lance
It’s high time
You gave them the lance*
*As you would a nasty boil
Shut the book on Booker!
One more thing: Green New Deal!
Green New Deal: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Green No Deal: Nancy Pelosi
The past always goes before the future.
Foreward to the Past
When past is the future
The future is past
The obvious truth here
Is future won’t last
Meanwhile, the self-appointed members of the “Education Strategy Group” will command the National Press Club March 8 for a launch of “Level UP, Aligning for Success.”
The program will focus on “how we are collectively working to improve student preparation and increase success in postsecondary education and training,” especially “the preparation of students of color, students from low-income backgrounds and first-generation college students.”
Level Up is described as a coalition, a collaboration, and effort to provide “a playbook of high-impact strategies that K-12 and higher education leaders can collaboratively use to increase student success.”
The Founder (2012) and President of the Education Strategy Group, Matt Gandal, is not embarrassed to offer a brief resume that reveals his 20 year association with perfectly terrible policies for education. He was as a senior advisor to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan where he led the “Reform Support Network” created as an enforcement arm for compliance (implementation) of Race to the Top.
Before that job, Gandal claims to be a founder and executive vice president of Achieve—infamous for its promotion of the Common Core State Standards—and the antecedent American Diploma Project. If you have not read Common Core Dilemma: Who Owns Our Schools by Mercedes Schneider please do so. If you know the history of those bad ideas just be aware that they are not dead yet, not by a long shot. Gandal also claims to have held a leadership position in Chester Finn’s Educational Excellence Network. What more do you need to know?
Gandal ”was the author and chief architect of Making Standards Matter, an annual American Federation of Teachers report (beginning in 1992) purporting to evaluate the quality of the academic standards, assessments and accountability policies in every state. He also helped to drum up anxieties about standards in the United States in relation to other industrialized nations.
So, that is the leadership for the “Education Strategy Group.” The group functions as an advocacy shop for varied efforts to sustain the Common Core, with the attached aim of preparation for “college and career,” where career refers to workforce training.
This is a partial list of past and present “clients” for the Education Strategy Group: Delaware Department of Education, Georgia Department of Education, Maryland Department of Education, Rhode Island Governor’s Workforce Board, Indiana Department of Education, Indiana Commission for Higher Education, Ohio Department of Education, Ohio Department of Higher Education, Baltimore City Public Schools.
These are also listed as if clients: Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), National Governors Association (NGA), Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), Southern Regional Education Board (SREB), American Association of State Colleges & Universities (AASCU), United States Chamber of Commerce Foundation, myFutureNC, New America.
Credits indicate support from the Charles A. Dana Center, Collaborative for Student Success; Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Helios Education Foundation; Rodel Foundation of Delaware; J.P. Morgan Chase; Carnegie Corporation of New York; Joyce Foundation; Lumina Foundation; Abell Foundation; Strada Education Network; and Belk Foundation,
Two of the service “stories” of the Education Strategy Group focus on “The Collaborative for Student Success,” a project of the New Venture Fund. The Collaborative is also a creature of deep-pocket funding from groups unfriendly to public schools: the Bloomberg Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, ExxonMobil, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and The Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation.
“The Collaborative for Student Success (CSS)” is a platform designed to reassert the general idea that standards are not high enough and they are a panacea. The CCS is also one among several non-profits (e.g., Bellwether Education Partners) that have elected to review and criticize state ESSA plans. You can see the CCS effort here with a direct link (no surprise) to the charter loving Walton funded 74 Million http://schoolimprovement.the74million.org
In other words, the National Press Club will become a forum for the launch of “Level UP, Aligning for Success.” The question is whether any one in the audience will have done enough homework to grasp this latest effort to shore up failed education policies. The National Press Club is for hire, and the launch of “Level UP, Aligning for Success” provides another venue for billionaire foundations and corporate friends to promote policies and practices that have no basis in professional wisdom. I hope members of the National Press Club will ask pointed questions about this latest PR effort to keep the the standards movement in place–a major effort to discredit public education. The link to the Walton funded 74 Million leaves no doubt about whose interests this PR campign serves.
http://edstrategy.org/level-up-launch/
And the question may be (after recognizing that the press is for hire) not only WILL anyone in the audience have done their homework, but will anyone in the audience THINK IT NECESSARY to do any homework. So much ‘news’ now being simply ‘offering an enthusiastic mouthpiece.’
“Reform” is the product of billionaires buying policy that has no evidence to back it up. It hires a lot of wonks, think tanks and advertisers to endorse standardization. Then, the indiscriminate press repeats the false assertions. Rinse and repeat.
The more I think about it, Level Up sounds like a smokescreen to launch an attack on community colleges. Privatizing community colleges under the guise of higher standards would fit as the next logical assault by the wealthy.
Rahminating on Schools
I’m only for The Good Schools
And really hate The Bad
And certainly The Ugly Schools
Were always just a fad
Dr. Suess and you …
Dr. Seuss – can not spell things wrong on here with so many teachers.
Thanks.
I consider that the ultimate compliment.
Dr. Seuss is my favorite poet, just ahead of Robert Frost.
And I still have to look up the spelling. (Of Frost, not Seuss)
Left Coast When you say he hurt me badly..It is really no joke…the reform crowd did the unforgivable to teachers…they put a ridiculous amount of pressure on good hard working well meaning teachers for their game of good teacher bad teacher…busywork evaluations and overtesting that did not improve the education of our students.
Not hyperbole.
Certainly not hyperbole
One more thing….GREEN NEW DEAL
That puts a smile on the ole’ face! We need a Green. New. Deal.
YES!
Don’t forget how they hurt us in L.A. Wrecking careers in the LA Times by publishing individual teachers test scores and branding good teachersas failures, ruining careers and reputations.
By chance I saw that article by Rahm. It was mostly a nauseatingly self-congratulatory exercise, noting how much progress had been made because of him, and his deep insight that principals were important. At the end of the article I noticed – he wrote not one word, not one, about teachers.
If Rahm lit the match that burned Chicago down and roasted hundreds of thousands of people that couldn’t get out in time, he’d turn that into a bragging point too and claim he’d improved the city.
Rahm, Trump, the Koch brothers, the Walmart Walton family, Eli Broad, et al. are all cut from the same toxic cloth.
To get to the point:
I only know that the accurate formula Q = V x T or distance is equal to velocity multiplied by time. For instance, when (s)he can walk or run V = 100 meters per second and within time T = 10 seconds, that person can achieve a distance Q =1000 meters.
Similarly, if we put a person’s lifetime to be leader as Q, actions that a person performs to achieve as V common good/ lifetime; and T as lifetime (=30 years in politics).
We can see that Booker and Rahm CANNOT achieve in their life time any fraction of COMMON GOOD for America.
In short, I hope that Teachers, grandparents, parents and students will UNITE TO SAY NO AND TO VOTE NO TO ALL BAD POLITICIANS who
1) HARM the American PUBLIC EDUCATION System,
2) BULLY TEACHERS and WORKERS OF ALL TRADES.
3) GIVE bad countries – corporate, communist, or dictatorial – like Russia and China the opportunity to invade the American economy and to invade North America’s DEMOCRACY.
I admit that Americans are true to their principles in a democratic culture – that is, in a culture of Western values that esteems equality of rights among citizens in a given nation.
I hope that ALL PEOPLE will RESPECT the true principles of WESTERN VALUES.
Those that do not act according to this first principle of equality of rights deserve to suffer the consequences of their intentional harm to others (in which case, they would not be respecting the rights of others). Back2basic
I just read the article by Rahm. First, I wonder what makes him think he is a teaching authority. Was he a teacher? A principal? Anything educational? No, he was an investment banker. Second, Rahm has clearly learned nothing and changed nothing. He still believes in failing schools and that he can judge school quality. Third, as noted above, he closed fifty schools in one single day. Where is the apology? When are the reopenings? I like your math, m4potw. Here’s some more: fifty minus fifty equals zero. Zero equals Rahm.
No more self-proclaimed experts. No more investment bankers running for office. No more billionaires. No more Beutner. No more Emmanuel. No more.
Rahm is no investment banker. HIs degrees were in liberal arts and speech communication. It is true he worked for an investment house, making $18 million in 2.5 years after he left Clinton’s White House. What he did there (or before or after) to deserve $18 million is anyone’s guess, but I suspect it didn’t involve complex financial models.
You are so right, Bob. I believe that, for a time, he worked for the billionaire Bruce Rauner (ILL-Annoy 1-term Guv); they were great friends.
Also–he was appointed to the board of Freddie Mac by Bill Clinton, where he made $320K (&, again, not really qualified {a lot of people were hurt by F.M.} to be involved in finance, esp. not at that level). I suggest people read his Wikipedia profile on that year & during his time in Congress, as there was an investigation into alleged monetary improprieties & purported scandal.*
I apologize for not connecting the dots as skillfully as Laura Chapman
(& I, for one, thank you, Laura!), but I do urge you all to read the aforementioned–it’s all there.
*This, in addition to numerous other not-so-flattering facts.
The Black Caucus can be reached at 202-225-7084. The Caucus will be deciding rather to endorse Cory Booker or Kamala Harris.
Thank you Diane for sacrificing so much to be the campion of the common good and, particularly for protecting the most vulnerable- the children of labor and the children of the poor. Many of whom are one and the same.
Now HERE’S a good one (courtesy of The Onion, by way of…today’s Chicago Tribune! {well, they DO hate Dems}):
WASHINGTON-Sighing w/resignation as he spoke to those surrounding him, Democratic presidential candidate Cory Booker reportedly apologized to a coterie of Wall Street bankers for all the mean things he is going to have to say about them in the upcoming months…a tearful Booker then reportedly left for a meeting w/health insurance executives to let them know that “while my mouth is saying ‘Medicare for All,’ my heart is saying ‘increased profit margins for Blue Cross Blue Shield & Cigna.'”
Triple TAGO!!!
While the MotherJones article claims that Booker rejected vouchers during his 2006 mayoral campaign, by 2013’s Senate race he was back to supporting vouchers…
Supports school voucher proposal, like other Democrats
U.S. Reps. Frank Pallone and Rush Holt took some shots at Booker, mostly for his support of a school voucher proposal offered by Gov. Chris Christie. “I very much disagree with Mayor Booker on this. I do not believe that vouchers are the answer,” Pallone said. “I’m very concerned about how vouchers, which he supports, will take away funding from public schools. I believe in public schools.”
When Booker responded that he, too, believes in public schools and that he helped bring $100 million in philanthropic funds into the city’s school system, Booker said both Pallone and Holt had voted in favor of the Washington DC Opportunity Scholarship Program–a voucher-like program that gives scholarships to low-income children. “While they’re criticizing me I’d like them both to explain why they voted for the same position I have,” Booker said. The vote Booker referenced was actually a much larger appropriations bill that included the program. (http://www.ontheissues.org/celeb/Cory_Booker_Education.htm)
In universities, the oligarchs came first for the economics departments, then, the education departments, then….
If faculty have no input to who a department hires, promotes and fires, they are woking for a donor’s think tank with students, not a university.
If a university senate doesn’t care about strings attached by donors, they should consider disbanding.
Emanuel touts the Noble Network of charter schools as an example of “high quality schools” that should be supported.
This Noble Network:
http://www.nprillinois.org/post/feedback-noble-charter-schools-story-hit-nerve#stream/0
http://www.nprillinois.org/post/culture-shock-teachers-call-noble-charters-dehumanizing#stream/0
Teachers Call Noble Charters ‘Dehumanizing’
Ann Baltzer taught chemistry at Hansberry. When one of her female students showed up with braids that included strands of maroon — the school color — the girl was told she couldn’t attend class. So she asked Baltzer to use a black marker to obliterate the maroon in each braid. The teacher looks back on that as not only unnecessary, but racist.
“To have a system that results in a white woman having to color on a black woman’s hair, and if I don’t, she’s excluded from education, there’s something wrong with that,” Baltzer says.
Each Noble Network campus can add requirements to the basic dress code. Here’s a page from The Noble Academy’s student handbook.
But some teachers embrace Noble’s policies. Annie Bell was fresh out of college when she became the chemistry teacher at Noble’s Johnson College Prep.
”If one of my students came to school with red hair, I would say, ‘You knew. You totally knew that you shouldn’t have red hair,’” she says.
With no prior teaching experience, Bell didn’t question Noble’s policies.
“I really trusted the system and I really trusted my principal,” she says. “And so I just enforced it all.”
Bell, however, believes the rules are necessary to mold low-income students into college material.”
When this is one of the “good charter schools,” there’s a big problem with charter schools.