At graduation, the top students at Universal Academy in Detroit spoke critically of the school, and now their diplomas arebeing withheld.
The school might have been proud of their graduates for showing independence and critical thinking, but no.
A piece of certified mail arrived for Tuhfa Kasem this week. Kasem hoped the envelope contained her long-awaited high school diploma.
What she found instead seemed to her like a threat.
Kasem, one of the top students at Universal Academy, surprised school administrators by delivering a graduation speech in May that criticized the school.
Nearly two months after her speech went viral, an official from Hamadeh Educational Services, the company that manages the school, wrote to Kasem and Zainab Altalaqani, who delivered a similar speech, that they had committed acts “of dishonesty and deceit.” The letters ask the students to meet with administrators, noting that they “have every right to bring an attorney…”
The students say they’re being targeted for putting a spotlight on problems at their school, which sits on the western edge of Detroit. In their speeches they argued that the school employs too many long-term substitutes, and raised concerns that students face punishment or retaliation if they speak up.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Sounds like the lady that runs this school doth protest too much. She needed to be involved in her students and know them, thus understanding and addressing her frustrations before this embarrassment ever happened.
There’s an old saying that is appropriate here:
Adminimal is as adminimal does!
It’s up at OpEd https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Detroit-Top-Students-At-C-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Charter-School-Failure_Graduation_School-Discipline_Students-190730-191.html#comment740743
my comment.
Charter schools are perfect institutions for our autocracy to flourish.
Thanks, Susan.
Love your comment: “Charter schools are perfect institutions for our autocracy to flourish.” And this is the point of charters.
Two families I know took their children out of charter schools and enrolled them in PUBLIC Schools. WOW … their kids are happy. Seems the children from these two Hispanic families were treated as “LESS THAN.” These kids are smart, kind, respectful, and are now happy in school.
I agree. “Charter schools are perfect institutions for our autocracy to flourish.” They are anti-democratic institutions advancing the end of universal public education and the ideals of Charles Koch and Alice Walton and Eli Broad and Reed Hastings and “private prisons investor” Bill Gates and …
Finland is taking FAKE News seriously.
Finland: https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2019/05/europe/finland-fake-news-intl/?fbclid=IwAR2JteY98Px8NTv0b_-XgtwOXsn2e1_cyoNh16dxd6SXd0IUne7jeBDck-0
So my questions is: Why are these students being punished for being critical thinkers who are brave and honest and telling the truth?
Private charter schools are often more interested in protecting their brand than hearing any dissent or criticism from students. Management does not want to hear anything that may interfere with their ability to make money. Corporate culture does not invite acceptance of criticism.
“Protecting their brand” is surely part of it, but this also comes down to dollars and cents.
Poor teacher pay is not a bug, but a feature of charter schools.
Lots of low-paid long-term-substitutes, and lots of teacher turnover — teachers with 2 years and then they’re gone — are not bugs, but feature of charter schools.
The more money that the operators can save from the line item of teachers’ salaries, the more money that can be moved from that line item of teachers’ salaries up to the line item of administrators’ or bosses salaries, so that those bosses can pay themselves more.
These two trouble-making students, with their trouble-making graduation speeches are getting in the way of that — what with their uppity demand for fully-credentialed, permanent staff teachers. Thus, these two kids must be made an example of to dissuade future students from ever doing the same thing.
I’ve spoken to people in LAUSD personnel, and they freely attested to the cause-and-effect that raises has on the number of fully-credentialed teachers that apply to work in LAUSD. After a long-threatened strike during the years 1999-2001, management settled with the teachers for a 12.5% raise. The same thing happened in the 2013-2015 years of a threatened strike leading up to a 10% raise. In the aftermath of both of these, teacher applicants flooded the recruitment office, many of them not just credentialed, but with years of experience, and stellar recommendations and records of quality teaching.
This led from having lauds 70% fully credentialed teachers in the 1990’s, to near 100% today.
That way, LAUSD personnel could and now can pick and choose the best, and not just take the best of the worst … as charter schools have to. For example, you have to be fully credentialed JUST TO WORK AS A SUBSTITUTE TEACHERS, as they district stopped hiring non-credentialed subs a couple years after the 2001 settlement.
Now with this latest contract — 6% raise, plus lowering of class size — this effect will only intensify.
Why? Because supply-and-demand works when it comes to raising teacher salaries. Alas, while the corporate ed. reformists blather incessantly about applying “market-based principals” to public education, they desperately avoid applying the most basic market law — supply and demand, with an attendant raise in teachers’ salaries — when it comes to staffing their schools.
Part of the reason the charter industry propagandized so strongly against a raise for public school teachers in the recent strike, is that any time a teacher union gains a substantial raise (through a strike or the threat of a strike), this drives up the pressure on charter school operators to raise their schools’ own teachers’ salaries. The bigger the raise, the bigger the pressure, and … again … the less that they can pay themselves.
And boy do those folks love to pay themselves, as this graphic from UTLA — and posted by Kohlhaas — shows:
On that score, I found something funny from Michael Kohlhaas, something interesting that happened at an L.A. charter school in the during the eventually successful UTLA strike last February. As they watched UTLA flex its muscles and strike for a 6% raise, the teachers at that charter school formed a quasi-union of sorts — not an official one recognized by the stat Labor board. Calling themselves “The Teacher Collective,” they wrote an email with a “request” — not an …-or-else demand — that they receive the same 6% raise that UTLA was asking for (and which the UTLA got), and also have that same raise apply retroactively for 2 years prior to the settlement (which the UTLA settlement eventually did)
http://michaelkohlhaas.org/wp/2019/02/05/emails-from-new-los-angeles-charter-schools-about-the-utla-strike-shine-some-light-on-various-interesting-matters-uncomfortable-new-la-charter-co-location-at-baldwin-hills-elementary-school-wi/
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KOHLHAAS:
“And, most poignant of all, there’s a pleading letter from something called “The Teacher Collective” asking Brooke Rios in a markedly subservient tone if New Los Angeles teachers will also get a raise if the UTLA teachers win one in their strike. Sounds like some folks are ripe to be organized!”
Here’s that “pretty please” email:
Click to access 2019_01_11_new_la_teacher_collective_asking_if_they_will_get_raises_if_utla_negotiates_a_raise.pdf
Here’s the text to that school’s CEO or principal-equivalent:
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
Dear Brooke,
Congratulations on your new role! We are excited to meet with you on Tuesday. Some questions we have regarding the potential strike and UTLA negotiations are around our salaries since we follow the LAUSD pay scale.
1. If there is a salary increase would our salaries be increased as well?
2. Would there be retroactive compensation for the increase?
3. We all received an email requesting our transcripts. We are curious if there are any status updates on configuration of a new salary plan?
Have a great weekend,
The Teacher Collective
New Los Angeles Charter School
1919 S. Burnside Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90016
T: 323.939.6400
F: 323 936.6411
http://www.NewLosAngeles org
X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X
I’m guessing that both Brooke and the charter’s Board of Directors blew a gasket when they read that email. Damn that UTLA! Look at what they’ve done! Gettin’ our staff all uppity!. But for UTLA’s strike, this never would have happened.
From what I understand, “The Teacher Collective” got nothing in response to this email, which just teaches charter school teachers that, without a strong union, they’re just “The Help,” akin to the folks who cut your lawns, or park your cars, rather than professionals such as doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc.
is this the school which fired 8 teachers without cause in April of 2016, During the Obama Duncan Gates regime? Was Michigan a state which Clinton did not carry?
Any suggestions for who their lawyer or lawyers should be.