Charter $chools Are $pecial - MLK Day 2013
Let’s turn logic on its head for a moment and review the
Chicago Tribune’s recent editorial applause for the National Labor Relations
Board’s finding that teachers in city charter schools like “CMSA (Chicago
Science and Math Academy) cannot join a union.
They can – if they vote for it.
The decision means that the NLRB has recognized that charters are
special, and their teachers are not constricted by the same rules, as, say,
traditional Chicago Public Schools teachers are.” You can find the entire article at http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-charters-0121-jm-20130121,0,190687.story.
The editorial also praises the recent decision in its likely
draw of additional charters to Chicago as well as the privatized demonstration
that “with dedicated teachers and the right atmosphere, many charters show that
any student can earn.” For the Chicago Tribune, these necessary
components are always found wanting in public schools, especially those many operating
on limited funds, crumbling infrastructure, and lack of curriculum. Something they choose to overlook. Adding more insult, the editorial suggests
that “dedicated teachers” are not likely to be found in the public
setting. “All of that flexibility is a
direct challenge to the delineated-by-contract, homogenized,
command-and-control system preferred by most teachers union leaders.” Private, good; public, bad.
If you’d like background on the origin of this battle to even
suggest unionization at CMSA, and the repercussions for the poor educator who
was so bold as to request the possibility, you might turn to an earlier blog:
If you are wondering about
the advantages of “flexibility in a private market to make kids learn more,”
read on.
"If you don’t
like it – you can leave.” - (a
description of CEO Milkie’s and Mayor Emanuel’s response to questions regarding
discipline policies at Noble Street Network School) – Jasmine Sarmiento, Voices
of Youth in Chicago Educations.
“Noble is forcing
low-income parents to choose between paying the rent and keeping their child in
school. This is a tax on Chicago’s Black and Latino families, and it’s
wrong..” - Donna Moore, parent of a student in Noble
Network Schools.
Charter School Discipline (…or...How to take out
the trash, and look real good)
Back in the day, I mean way back in the day,
students actually got to determine their own form of discipline – a long piece
of green hickory branch usually cut by the very student about to be
switched. This was considered a vast
improvement in exchange for the cane used during the 17th and 18th
centuries. Ah, progress.
After the mid-nineteenth century, continued
disciplinary progress for public students included the paddle, in my own case,
hung in plain sight above the principal’s office desk as a reminder of his overt
ability to dispense justice in the form of extreme pain. But I was just one of many south side kids
being “taught” and civilized in a continuing grand experiment on a national
level.
Before all of us, even unto the mid 1850’s,
education in America was provided primarily to the wealthy, and the overriding
sentiment was that the poor were both uneducable and unworthy any attempts at
education. It wasn’t until 1852 that
Horace Mann, then Secretary of State for Massachusetts, urged all states to
provide education to all students, creating what he hoped would be the
great equalizer and the ultimate disappearance of poverty.
Later, the efforts of modernists like Phillipp
Emanuel von Fellenberg and Francis Parker (1850’s) promoted concepts that
remain current: “modern behavioral modification methods should attempt to
address the underlying reasons or motivations for student misbehavior and
tailor consequences to fit the (particular) transgression. School administrators should seek to
encourage a positive association with school along with socially acceptable
behavior” (www.pbs.org/kcet/publicschool/evolving_classroom/discipline.html). In
essence, these movements suggested that learning was best accomplished with
support, encouragement and kindness.
This was quite the opposite of discipline for being incorrect in answer
or deportment. Remember that word, deportment.
In the early 1900’s, as schooling became mandatory
for all American youngsters, teachers found themselves stepping further and
further into the roles of parents (in
loco parentis), and “one value attached to this development asserted that
while adults should be punished for their crimes, children should be
rehabilitated for theirs, thus formalizing a beginning to the separation
between juvenile misconduct and suffering as its remedy” (www.education.uslegal.com/discipline-and-punishment/).
Augmenting these modifications of the kinds of
discipline painfully dished out in the working houses and boarding schools of
the past, the 20th century educator awakened to the concept that
education was more than simply transfer; instead, with the assistance of
forward thinkers like Rosenblatt, Berne, Spock, etc., psycho-social arguments
promoted the student’s own involvement in a transactional paradigm of
learning. In short, teachers and
educators moved way from the traditional belief that students learn best by
rote and by sitting demurely in linear rows at rigid attention; quite the
opposite, best practice now held to a more personalized and interactive
learning/teaching construct.
Enter NOBLE STREET – Stage Far Right.
The Noble Network of Charter Schools, which runs 10
city high schools and yearns for more after recent school closings, has found
an entirely new, novel method of exacting discipline for student
“misbehavior.” This is the same network
of schools that Mayor Rahm Emanuel praised for having the “secret sauce” for
improving students’ scores, behavior, and success rates. It would appear that the secret sauce of
which the Mayor and Superintendent Brizard crow is in great part actually a
monetary disciplinary fee that has raised nearly $400,000 this year for Noble
Street, left parents foundering to scrape together fines that are imposed upon
them for their own student’s deportment, and has caused the flight of
nearly 13% of students from the Noble Street charter schools back into the
public system from whence they came – seeking opportunity and assistance to
improve their own lots in life and finding failure for disciplinarily high
expectations – monetarily?
In fact, according to the Chicago Tribune
(Ahmed-Ullah, Noreen. Protests targets
charter discipline fees. Chicago Tribune.
14 Feb. 2012), the loss of students from the Noble Network schools to
other public districts has increased from 211 students in 2010 to 473 students
in 2011. At the same time, CEO Michael
Milkie will point glowingly at the Noble Networks improved graduation rates,
not surprisingly – from 78.8% in 2010 to 86.2% in 2011. And CEO Mr. Milkie, who earns an annual
salary over $200,000, should be proud of his enterprise’s increased revenue
stream. Noble Street has received almost
$400,000 in disciplinary fees since the 2008-2009 school year
(Ahmed-Ullah). George M. Schmidt of Substance
News reports “the charter company is profiting to the tune of some $200,000
per year from a disciplinary code that can only be called predatory” (www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=3055).
Following the kind of schema found in the
factory/transference models of business and schools of the early 1900’s, Noble
Street has implemented the “SMART” disciplinary code. Here is what SMART’s acronym entails:
S = Sit up straight and be ready to learn.
M= Make eye contact when addressed.
A= Articulate in standard English and speak in
proper volume.
R= Respond appropriately.
T= Track the speaker.
Each of these misdemeanors comes with a fine of $5
or more. In fact, infractions include an
unbelievably long list of potential infractions not necessarily spelled out –
chewing gum, carrying “chips,” forgetting your belt, tardiness, carrying a
marking pen, having an energy drink, making a noise with a pen, etc. Each infraction (and others) will cost a
student $5.00 or more (Rossi, Rosalind.
School’s discipline: you act up you pay up. Chicago Sun Times. 14 Feb. 2012).
By the way, if a student is having a bad day – or
time of it – 12 detentions/infractions or more will result in a $140 fine (they
call it a fee) to attend an obligatory class on “behavior.” Additional detentions will result in an
additional discipline class for an additional $140. Any student (more likely their family) who cannot
pay will be held back from moving on to the next class – regardless of his or
her grades. Please keep in mind that
even though Noble Street schools are funded by wealthy benefactors like Penny
Pritzker, nearly 90% of the families are low-income (Schmidt, George), and
cannot afford the mounting fees for students who are having difficulty adapting
to the “SMART” model.
Unlike the public system, Noble is allowed tougher
disciplinary policies than the CPU because it is a charter – remember our
earlier changing characterizations of public vs. private when it came to our
model Chicago Math and Science Academy (see Vocabulary – Feb 19 & 26). Meanwhile, CEO Mr. Milkie affirms that SMART
and the other “disciplinary policies at NOBLE promote basic, common sense
citizenship things, which you know teenagers need” (Golab, Art. www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=3055)
On the national level, school chief Arne Duncan also
touts Milkie’s Noble Street agenda and, along with Pritzkers and other wealthy
benefactors, endorses the programs used there:
“’ We’re dramatically changing the opportunity structure,’ Duncan told Chicago a few weeks before leaving his
CPS post to become the U.S. secretary of education. ‘We have tried to make this
[city] a mecca for people who want to make change in public education ‘”
(Rodkin, Dennis. Charting a new course. Chicago Magazine.com. 29 Feb. 2012).
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