On the Democracy Prep Plantation: When Zero Tolerance Becomes Psychological Warfare

UPDATED:

• all the teachers at this charter school are white and from out of state. The school's administrators did manage to get two coaches that are African-American from the New York City area. They are the two in charge of the detention room. Is there something wrong with that picture?.....
• his teachers were directed to video tape him in every classroom. One of the teachers according to him followed him with a camera into the lunch room when he went to pick up his lunch, followed him up the stairs into the hallway and continued videotaping him while he was eating lunch.....
• It's time to examine the police state structure of some of the charter schools model in the minority community in New York... Former Democracy Prep mother

Ahhh, that ole' plantation mentality at Democracy Prep. Message to Seth Andrews: Don't tick off a parent who is a professional journalist.

Gary Rubinstein pointed out just how bad the Democracy Prep (relative to public schools despite their significant advantages) test scores were in this post: Petrilli’s Desperate Attempt To Save Democracy Prep’s Reputation.  Now, as Gary says, I don't view school success and failure based on test scores. But if charters are going to make big claims based on the scores, then die by the sword. Especially when they set up a regressive "zero tolerance" situation (when there are so many progressive means of discipline, like restorative justice.

[Our buddies at Teachers Unite have done an excellent film called "Growing Fairness" -- I attended the premiere the other night and will write a review soon. -- but see the trailer. ]

One of the most riveting parts of our film response to Waiting for Superman was the testimony of former charter school parents.

Here are the links -- make sure to have some tissues handy.

• https://vimeo.com/30227766
• https://vimeo.com/30238788
• https://vimeo.com/30266020
• https://vimeo.com/30357874

Here is another parent who removed her child from Democracy Prep (from their point of view: mission accomplished).

Extracting high test scores at Success

 

And even with these policies they still had horrible test scores. Eva is smarter at extracting high scores I guess. Has anyone checked to see if kids at Success
Academy schools still have their fingernails?



Posted at: http://www.blackstarnews.com/ny-watch/news/the-mis-education-of-my-son.html

When Zero Tolerance Becomes Psychological War Fare: Democracy Prep Charter Middle School

By Bukola Shonuga

Finally, in the last hour and all my tolerance threshold and mental power exhausted I had no choice but to remove my 12 year old son from Democracy Prep Charter Middle School in Harlem - two weeks before graduation from 6th grade. After months of mental torture of my son by overzealous teachers, endless meetings, tons of emails and paperwork that's turned me into a social worker/mom/psychologist, I realized that it has become unhealthy and unsafe to keep my son at Democracy Prep.

The latest episode of the daily psychological abuse of my son occurred on June 6, 2013 when I placed one of my routine calls to the school to check in on him. I was informed that he has been suspended and that his suspension papers were being processed when my call came in.

It's time to examine the police state structure of some of the charter schools model in the minority community in New York.



While I was gathering the facts to write this article, the stalemate situation at my son's school, Democracy Prep middle school in Harlem is unraveling faster than I can keep pace. On May 22nd, my son told me that at lunch time, his teachers were directed to video tape him in every classroom. One of the teachers according to him followed him with a camera into the lunch room when he went to pick up his lunch, followed him up the stairs into the hallway and continued videotaping him while he was eating lunch. I was so outraged. I couldn't believe the school would actually break the law by videotaping a scholar without parental consent.

So I emailed the principal and copied all the teachers including the superintendent of the Charter Schools in District 5 in Harlem. I also spoke with the Principal who told me that it's routine to place a camera in the classrooms to which I responded that it had never been the case for the last nine months and assuming that it's routine, why was my son singled out and followed with a camera and made uncomfortable while he was eating lunch?

There was no response to that question. I also emailed the particular teacher involved and copied every relevant party. I have not gotten any reply to that email message either.

Earlier, last Friday, May 18 my son stormed into the house from school - in another outburst of frustration with his school. "This School sucks," the 12 year old blurted. "Can you believe we didn't attend regular classes today? They separated 46 bad students including me into two groups of 26 and sent us to a special class called 'Prep Academy''.

Normally it takes a while for certain information to register in my brain, particularly the endless daily discipline saga at Democracy Prep where my son has been attending for the past nine months. But he persisted, "So Mommy, they think we are bad kids and had to separate us from the good kids right"?

That caught my attention so I stopped and looked him in the eyes and reassured him that he's a very smart, kind and loving young man, and that he's going to realize his dream by becoming one of the best scientist of his generation.

And more importantly he should never allow anyone to define or label him as a "bad-kid". Nurturing and preserving my son's self-esteem has become a daily routine in the last five months due to the covert psychological abuse he's been experiencing daily at school.

Democracy Prep Charter Middle School in Harlem was an attractive choice when I was searching for school for my son about a year ago, having just moved from Brooklyn where I'd lived for over 20 years. I was rudely awakened by the shortage of good middle schools in the Harlem area and particularly in district 15.

A friend of mine informed me of Democracy Prep and I went to the open house and decided that it sounded like a good fit for my son. I remember sitting in the orientation session and marveling at the no-nonsense and sound academic model presentation. For starters I like the idea that students have to wear a uniform and that accessories and other distracting personal effects are not allowed.

The scholars must abide by school rules and orderliness and so on. I fell in love with their reading marathon program called "word count " where scholars are rewarded based on how many words they read per month. I love reading and I thought it'd be a huge incentive for my son who loves to write but needed to do more reading.

Fast forward: the first trimester was like Xmas. My son got mostly A and B grades and everyone was happy including the school of course.

But as the second trimester begun in January I noticed that he started to complain about how he didn't fit in with the kids and how some used "bad" language - and how they didn't like him because he's different and so on.

Yes, my son's different in the sense of not being street smart. He was never allowed to venture out by himself because I was a little too paranoid about him traveling alone. Not to mention that he's sort of an absent-minded professor. But academically, he's very smart.

I started to notice frequent behavioral comments on his weekly progress report. I eventually learned that those comments adds up to detention, then interrogation (called reflection) and then suspension.

I went to a colonial boarding school in Nigeria and when you got suspended it meant you'd committed a serious crime - like skipping school for days, stealing, falsifying your report card, cheating on exams, or having boys over in your dormitory.

So when my son told me he'd been suspended, I was outraged. I demanded to meet with the principal immediately. She explained that once a scholar is sent out twice in one day, he or she is automatically suspended.

I was really shocked to hear this so I asked why my son was sent out at all in the first place? And I found out a the litany of allegations ("deductions," "detentions," and "interrogations") called reflections, then suspension.

I couldn't believe the extreme disciplinary system; akin to taking a suspect to a police station where offenders are booked and then jailed. But in this situation, scholars are suspended.

I was flabbergasted and my journalistic instinct was automatically activated telling me there's something worth investigating here. So I decided to take advantage of the "open door" policy and started showing up unannounced to observe the classes in session to find out what rules my son was breaking that's resulting in him being sent out almost daily, which had led to three suspensions in three months.

On my first visit to observe class I was struck by the robotic and monotonous style of teaching whereby teachers are programmed to literally clock every second of the class through a count down, while simultaneously monitoring every movement and body language of the young students.

The students are supposed to respond in non-verbal coded signals called : spirit fingers - a twirling of all ten fingers in the direction of the scholar being supported - means a 'show of support,' brain match - is the simultaneous waving of the thumb and the pinkie - it means 'I agree with you,' track your speaker means 'focusing on who's speaking,' pound it out - a chorus of pounding on the desks - means 'the question is answered correctly'; and so on.

So now I understand fully well why my 12 year old who is very creative and loves to be in motion would feel like he's in prison; having to endure ten hours of monotonous class sessions daily without any sports activities or recess. Scholars have to eat their lunch in their respective classroom/homeroom and are only given fifteen to twenty minutes.

I don't know many adults who would survive these conditions. I sat in about about 15 sessions and observed my son and the other students. Yes, some of the them were very quiet and not interactive; and yes, some, including my son, were somewhat restless after awhile. The latter category - in which my son belongs - was very interactive, usually enthusiastic and tended to raise their hands all the time to answer a question.

The endless list of reasons for which students can get railroaded into detention and ultimately suspension include: "not spontaneous on queue," "clapping three times instead of twice as prompted," "slouching over the desk," "looking back at another student," "talking," "mumbling to yourself," "fake coughing or sneezing," "asking to go to the rest room," "raising your hands too long," "clearing your throat" or "breathing too hard."

I found this preposterous.

So the process of suspension usually starts as follows. A teacher would declare "that's one," meaning a deduction, then if a student interjects "what did I do,"? The teacher would respond: "that's two."

The third deduction automatically sends a student to "COLUMBIA," the detention room managed by two African-America male coaches.

All the Advisory/home rooms are named after a University. My son is in UCONN. I'm not sure why the detention room is called COLUMBIA. And by the way all the teachers at this charter school are white and from out of state. The school's administrators did manage to get two coaches that are African-American from the New York City area. They are the two in charge of the detention room.

Is there something wrong with that picture? Yes, in my opinion. These coaches are more like interrogating officers who hand students a three- to five- page packet called a "reflection packet," asking the students to give an account of the incident that led them to detention.

In most cases students are held for hours and not allowed back in class for the rest of the day the "detainees" account of the incident differs from that of the teacher who sent them out.

My son says he's treated unfairly. Most of the time his account the incident differs with the teacher's. So he winds up being held in detention for hours and missing an average of five hours of classwork a week and his homework begins to accumulate and become overwhelming.

It becomes impossible to catch up with hours of class assignments -- for classes he missed while he was "detained." He would have to make the best guesses; meanwhile the pile of homework that normally takes three hours per night -- he now spends endless hours catching up, not getting enough sleep at night. His grades are sliding as a result.

It's a vicious cycle that has to stop. And not just for my son but for over 50 or more scholars who have been labeled "bad kids".

My own investigation entailed hours of playing mom-detective/social worker about three hours on average per week. I spent time at the school and combed through 40 pages of documents that I demanded by force from the detention coaches/officers. I exchanged about 75 sometimes contentious e-mail messages with teachers, the principal, the assistant principal.

I discovered that one particular teacher, my son's writing teacher, was responsible for most of the "sent-outs" that had resulted in suspensions. I had already noticed a pattern of disciplinary excessiveness in her comments on the weekly progress reports. I had also raised numerous concerns about what I deemed an abuse of authority but the principal and the assistant principal defended her fiercely.

This particular teacher continued to find a litany of reasons to send my son out of her class; daily railroading him into detention knowing for sure that it would lead to suspension. She's succeeded in stigmatizing my son and that has led to him being teased by some of his classmates and other students.

My son now suffers anxiety and has nightmares. Some of the current writings in his personal journal reflects the covert psychological abuse that he's had to endure up until present.

To stop the abuse I recently demanded that my son be taken out of the writing class taught by this particular teacher; the school adamantly refused. When I informed them of all the evidence that I've gathered to formally address this issue, they began to coach other teachers to establish a case against my son.

For example, all his teachers were directed to place a camera in all the classes he attends and one of the teachers videotaped during the lunch hour early this week.

I believe this school broke the law by targeting and exclusively videotaping my son, a minor, without my consent. I believe this is a careless action on their part to intimidate, harass and further traumatize a 12 year old whose passion is to go to school, to work hard and to become a roboticist one day.

Is this the model of charter schools in all communities of color?

In the case of Democracy Prep Charter Middle School in Harlem, there are systemic problems. Having examined the school closely these past five months, I found that there is a cultural discord and a police-like system of discipline that's highly incompatible with the demographic it serves.

Author Bukola Shonuga is an independent journalist listed with the US Foreign Press Center.*

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Another Blogger Slams Eva's Success Academy Charter Scam

Owen Davis at The Commonal follows up on Gary Rubinstein's analysis of the Eva Moskowitz charter scam which we reported on the other day: Rubinstein: Success Academy Scores Based on High Attrition Plus Other Factors.

Davis takes Gary's work a bit further:

It’s true that Success owes its success to more than just general student attrition. But Rubinstein only examined the overall numbers. When you look at specific student demographics, even more troubling patterns emerge. I’ve been dissecting the student data of prominent NYC charters since Democracy Prep and I sparred over its unmistakable pattern of steadily losing students with disabilities and students learning English. (They promised a “debunking” of my post. I’ll assume it’s still forthcoming.)
At Success, the pattern is similar, if not more stark. Not only do its classes contain disproportionately few students with disabilities and English language learners (ELLs), but their numbers almost invariably decrease with each passing year. This should have no uncertain effect on test scores.

 I actually get hot thinking about a slam at the arrogant Democracy Prep crowd which for some reason annoy me even more than Eva's crew. (I admit to having had some great discussions with some Success parents and officials -- we have been sparring for so many years.) Democracy Prep recently pushed out a program for GED students.

But how much fun is it to see Eva jump so far ahead that there will be intense scrutiny? Even her usual trolls have toned it down.

Owen concludes with:

What’s sad about this is how unsurprising it’s become. High-achieving charters, with no exceptions that I’ve found, enroll fewer needy students, witness substantial attrition of these students, or both. These patterns could reflect some implicit policy, or they could result from the extraordinary behavioral demands charters impose on students. The proximate cause doesn’t matter so much when it comes to test scores, though. Scores resting on high-needs student attrition shouldn’t withstand even the mildest scrutiny, yet they garner unreserved praise from the likes of Mayor Bloomberg and the Post. 
It’s just an added irony that one of Moskowitz’s Success expansions literally pushed at-risk students out of an existing school.
I need not dwell on how disturbing all this is. Any notion of success should be predicated on serving the neediest students right alongside those who make “no excuses.” Anything less is reprehensible.

Read it all, with charts:
http://commonal.tumblr.com/post/58209601458/harlem-success-academy-charter-and-attrition

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Can We Close the Achievement Gap Between Success Academy and Democracy Prep, KIPP et al?

Emergency crisis emerges as Eva's Success exposes massive achievement gap amongst charters.

Moskowitz proclaims: They would have done better if not for those bad teachers at the charter schools. Clearly there are not enough choices out there for parents to choose between good and bad charters. But since we are the only good charter, I am changing my position on choice. We should be the only choice.

{OK, above it satire alert, though would it surprise you of Eva actually said that?}

Gary Rubinstein did some great work on the charter scores (Driven by data … right off a cliff). Gary uses their own data to hammer the nail.

The most stunning example is the famed Harlem Village Academy which had 100% passing in 2012, but only 21% passing in 2013 for a 79% drop....Democracy Prep officials didn’t respond to a request for comment...KIPP also did not respond to a request for comment.
I actually got one of the third grade questions wrong....these new tests have the opposite problem:  Students can do very poorly on them even if they do understand math.  This is why I don’t like to base 20% of my teacher rating on a single test that I didn’t write.
.... Gary Rubinstein

Gee, Harlem Village Academy suffered a bigger drop in scores than Michelle Rhee gained in her 10 minutes of teaching. HVA's Ed deform media darling Deborah Kenny, who had that noted educator Cathie Black on her board, will escape scot-free on this. I call for a recall on all her appearences on NBC's education shmation. Do any of these "experts" ever ask the question as to how a school gets 100% rates when it has enormous teacher turnover. [Below, in Afterburn, are a batch of ed notes links to Kenny and the school, including  a link to the fawning Brian Williams interview with her.

Gary also points to the hit in the big chains, KIPP and Democracy Prep, with TFA miracle workers, took.

Anyone have an eraser?

While DP won't comment, former chief Seth Andrews, wearing his yellow baseball/thinking cap, is probably thinking: I only left 6 months ago and they already fucked up our scam. Leonie Patrick Sullivan points out on the NYCParents blog:

The Democracy Prep results shouldn't be surprising to those who recall the earlier audit of Democracy Prep where DOE reviewers found “few lessons required higher-order thinking skills or deep analysis of concepts.” 

KIPP is already making plans to expand S.L.A.N.T.S. so KIPP can close the achievement gap between then and Eva's Success Academy. Can't let the competition get too far ahead. KIPP Amp dropped from 79% in 2012 to just 9% in 2013.

And TEP run by Zeke Vanderhoek, profiled on 60 Minutes, the NY Times, and the film "American Teacher" dropped from 76% to 20% in one year. Rewrite. [Also see Afterburn for Ed Notes links to TEP stories]. Gary sums up:

To see if most charter schools were like KIPP Star and Democracy Prep, scoring well below the 22% city average, or if most were still doing relatively well, like the Success Academies, I made another scatter plot, but on this one I marked all the charter schools (or at least the ones that had the word ‘charter’ in them) with a red circle.... charters are, in general, the ‘outliers’ meaning the schools that had the biggest drops relative to other schools with similar 2012 scores.  In the Stephanie Simon report she mentions that KIPP Star and Democracy Prep hadn’t done so well with their proficiency rate, but she doesn’t mention how far they had dropped.  Out of over 500 schools, which includes about 35 charter schools, of the one hundred largest drops, 22 were charter schools.

The Bronx Charter School Of Excellence, which recently received money from a $4.5 million grant to help public schools emulate what they do, dropped from 96% in 2012 to 33% in 2013.  So these are the schools that are the red ‘outliers’ hovering near the bottom right of the scatter plot.  In general, the average charter school went down by 51 percentage points compared to 34 percentage points for the average public school.  The most plausible explanation for charters dropping so much more than public schools is that their test prep methods were not sufficient for the more difficult tests.  In other words “you’re busted.”

evidence that charters are certainly not working the miracles they claim is very clear from this data.... if the ‘reformers’ really value their ‘data’ so much, they should really think about how to interpret the charter grade crash.... this suggests that maybe the hundreds of millions of dollars given to charters, both from the government and from private benefactors could be spent elsewhere in education more effectively.

Afterburn

Ed Notes Online: Harlem Village Academy Retained Only 4 Full ...

Sep 19, 2010

This year Harlem Village Academy opened its doors with only 4 full time teachers returning, a turnover of more than 75%. There are office staff, department heads and and administrators that returned (some of them teach one ...

Cathie Black on Board of Harlem Village Academies, HVA Head ...

Nov 29, 2010

Cathie Black's placement on the board of Harlem Village Academy as a way to get her ed creds- despite the fact that she didn't attend any meetings, has focused attention on this scandalous school and its relation to the ...

  

Ed Notes Online: NBC Bias on Deborah Kenny HVA Charter Scam ...

Jun 12, 2012

Why would you believe anything reported on NBC? Even more outrageous was the puff piece NBC's Today show and Brian Williams did in an interview with Harlem Village Academy founder Deborah Kenny. Leonie has done ...

Ed Notes Online: Steve Koss: The Cathleen Black story just gets ...

Nov 11, 2010

Seems that her singular claim to education involvement was being on an advisory board of some sort for Harlem Village Academy. However, the Times is reporting that she not only just joined that group a few months ago and ...

 

Ed Notes Online: NBC Bias on Deborah Kenny HVA Charter Scam ...

Jun 12, 2012

I was researching Deborah Kenny to see what teaching experience she has and to learn more about her credentials (and salary) and you were the second piece to show up on a Google search. Great writing, Ed. I'm definitely ...

Ed Notes Online: Cathie Black on Board of Harlem Village ...

Nov 29, 2010

"[Deborah] Kenny, who oversees 450 students, is paid $442,000, including a $140,000 "bonus" and $27,780 in "other" expenses.....Bloomberg has called the school a national "poster child" for school reform. Conservative ...

Ed Notes Online: Videos: FairTest Honors Diane Ravitch with the ...

Jun 10, 2012

After all, being in the same space with Debbie Meier and Diane Ravitch is a very special occasion, especially as it was a fundraiser for a worthy organization. ..... NBC Bias on Deborah Kenny HVA Charter Scam and NY .

--------------

Ed Notes Online: TEP: Hey, Buddy, Wanna Teach for 125 Grand ...

Oct 02, 2012

Remember a year ago at Education Nation at the premiere of American Teacher celebrated Zeke and TEP, which had lured a Harvard grad teacher away from Jersey who ended up being a low rated teacher based on flawed ...

Ed Notes Online: The Failures of Katie Couric as a Reporter: Biased ...

Mar 14, 2011

Couric did bring up the fact that TEP's scores were lower than the public schools in the area (only a 31% pass rate) but didn't drill too deep on that one. You know the line: it takes time to reverse the effects of those awful public ...

Ed Notes Online: UFT Leaders Show Disdain for Tweedies: We Don ...

Dec 17, 2012

This is for all non-TEP schools (TEP is Danielson Pilot schools). If your school is not in the pilot, please let me know if you have groups of people coming into your rooms to observe or to ask you for your lesson plans, etc.

Ed Notes Online: Reviewing "American Teacher": Ed Deform Wolf in ...

May 27, 2011

And presenting Zeke Vanderhoek as a hero (on the post-screening panel) who pays teachers at his TEP charter school $125 grand is enough to make you gag. Vanderhoek was featured on 60 Minutes (Ed Notes link) trashing ...

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Edushyster Blows Up Democracy Prep 100% Grad Rate and New Yorker Shill Piece

I was going to do a piece on the New Yorker article on the publicity seeking Democracy Prep but was so spitting mad I couldn't think straight. To our rescue comes Edushyster. Did DP give UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon a speaker's fee as part of the PR machine hype, which to charters like DP is their most important operations? Just askin'.

I was in a DP co-located school in Harlem a few years ago when the chapter leader invited me to address the staff during a union meeting. The staff was mostly black, Latino and older. A walk through the halls during passing showed the DP racist spin in action The blond pony tails of the young teachers were bobbing along. And the big signs on their doors with the names of their fancy colleges were prominent.

http://edushyster.com/?p=2907

Other People’s Children

Posted on July 11, 2013

Why are white people so eager to advocate for the sort of schools to which they would never send their own children?
 
 

Reader: more and more white people agree that strict, “no excuses” style charter schools provide an ideal learning environment for poor minority kids. As proof of this surging enthusiasm I give you exhibit A: a glowing report about Harlem’s Democracy Prep charter school featured in the current issue of the New Yorker, one of America’s whitest magazines. (Full disclosure: I am white and also a New Yorker subscriber). Which brings us to today’s fiercely urgent question: why are white people so eager to advocate for the sort of schools to which they would never send their own children?
 
Through the Gauntlet
The New Yorker piece, by writer Ian Frazier, is subtitled ‘Up Life’s Ladder’—but ’gauntlet’ might be a more accurate metaphor. Frazier is dazzled by the spectacle of the 44 members of Democracy Prep’s first graduating class, on stage at the Apollo Theater in their school-bus-yellow robes, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on hand to fete them. But more than three quarters of Democracy Prep’s students—23% each year—never made it onto the stage. If Frazier is aware of the school’s attrition rate, among the highest in New York City, he doesn’t mention it. Nor does Frazier have anything to say about the school’s strict “no excuses” disciplinary policy. Instead, he seems excited by the fact that students at the school are required to take Korean, the only foreign language offered. Best of all, Frazier likes the fact that 100% of the remaining graduates are headed to a four-year college.

Whatever it Takes
 

I’m guessing that it’s not the fault of the New Yorker’s legendarily “no excuses” fact-checking department that these less inspiring (not to mention less democratic) details about Democracy Prep didn’t make it into the magazine. Instead, the writer is merely reflecting a growing consensus among elites that a certain kind of schooling is necessary to propel poor minority students along the steep uphill climb to college. This formula for success, the “special sauce,” is long and hard and requires the sort of militaristic discipline that I doubt any writer for the New Yorker would tolerate for his or her children for a day, let alone the four years, eight years, even 12-year-long slog that is supposed to end in a mythical place called “college.”

• Doing time
  The school day at Democracy Prep starts at 7:45AM and lasts until 4:15PM, but students routinely stay until six for tutoring. A nine, ten or 11 hour school day would no doubt strike middle class parents as excessive (what about Skyler’s soccer practice, or Emma’s beekeeping camp?) but even within this endless school day there is no time to lose. Democracy Prep, like many urban “no excuses” schools, uses a countdown during transitions from one class or activity to the next so that students don’t waste a second of learning time.

• Living the DREAM
  Democracy Prep relies upon a monetary-based system of rewards that is common in the “no excuses” world. Students earn and lose DREAM Dollars (the acronym stands for the school’s values: Discipline, Respect, Enthusiasm, Accountability and Maturity) based on behavior and academic performance. In addition to providing an important regulator of behavior, the DREAM dollars also prep the students for their ultimate destination beyond even college: work.

• Broken windows
  A “no excuses” school embodies a philosophy that might best be understood as the educational equivalent of the broken windows theory. Small disruptions are seen as leading to the kind of unruliness and disorder that stands in between poor minority kids and college-bound success. Hence the straight, silent lines in which students transition from one class to another might be seen as leading straight to college.

• SLANT
  Suburban parents are likely unfamiliar with SLANT, the KIPP-informed mantra that shapes “no excuses” teaching. The behavior management technique instructs students to sit up, listen, ask questions, nod and track the teacher. Younger students, who tend to be naturally disruptive, may also be instructed to fold their hands or “make a bubble,” pursing their lips and filling their cheeks with air so as to keep them from talking.

• Time and Punishment
  The elaborate architecture of rewards and punishments that undergird the “no excuses” approach must have consequences, of course. Suspensions at these schools tend to be extremely high, even though suspending students has long been linked to worsening academic outcomes and higher drop out rates. The recent revelations about the high number of kindergartners suspended by the charter school chain “Achievement First” in Connecticut may have caused some initial discomfort among suburban advocates of these schools (little Haley, suspended???). But amid the rising certitude that we must do “whatever it takes” to propel poor minority students to college, that discomfort was soon forgotten.

Send tips and comments to tips@edushyster.com.

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