Obama's 'Race To The Top' Drives Nationwide Wave of School Closings, Teacher Firings

[HiPointDem]

84. Here's what's happening with one of those great charter schools that replaced a Memphis public

Last edited Wed Jan 16, 2013, 04:37 AM - Edit history (2)

school:

The Lester Community Center bristled with anger Wednesday as Binghamton leaders demanded Achievement School District leaders explain why they were not part of decisions regarding Lester School.

One mother brought her small daughter to the microphone to tell ASD Supt. Chris Barbic that she wet her pants twice because teachers would not let her use the restroom and then had to wear the same clothes until school was out. The child also said teachers took her shoes and made her walk barefoot, apparently because she failed to ask permission to tie her shoes.


"The teachers in this school are causing the kids to do one of three things," said Chan Douglas, community leader. "Fear the teachers, hate the teachers or kill the teachers."

Last winter, Barbic and his team selected Cornerstone as the charter that would take over Lester under the authority of ASD... The decision regarding Cornerstone was final.

This is the first public blowup over the ASD's role at Lester. There were outbursts in November when the ASD announced 10 of 14 additional city schools were in line for takeover...

The ASD's mission is to take schools from the bottom 5 percent to the top 25 percent in five years.

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2012/dec/19/memphis-parents-lash-out-against-achievement/

Cornerstone Preparatory School, a startup charter school chosen to turn around low-performing Lester School, a semester later sits in an uneasy alliance with the Binghamton families it serves.

School administrators are at odds with parents and community leaders over a host of issues, including claims that children are denied bathroom breaks and that children's shoes are taken away as punishment. An internal audit of school practices released last week found no instances of child abuse at the school, but teachers interviewed by the auditor said they had taken children's shoes away to keep them from playing with them in class.

Across the nation, charters are having similar flare-ups in the inner-cities where they are trying to change school cultures by replacing faculty, changing traditions and cracking down on discipline. "The kind of reaction you are seeing is not uncommon. There are many communities where that has occurred," said Pedro Noguera, executive director of the Metropolitan Center for Urban Education at New York University. "It's more likely to happen in charters because charters are often not designed with the focus of being responsive to parents, the community or the culture of the children."

The traditional means of recourse — complaining to the school board or running for school board — don't work because charters don't have elected school boards. Cornerstone does not hold public meetings. Outside of principal Lisa Settle,its seven-member board is all white; the school is predominately black.

Cornerstone, formerly a faith-based private school at Christ United Methodist Church, took over Pre-K through third grade last fall. Last month, the ASD announced that Cornerstone would expand through the sixth grade next year. And in the fall of 2014, it will be completely in charge. Problems started to bubble up soon afterward with allegations that the teaching staff, now more than 75 percent white, was twisting students' arms, forcing children to spend the day in wet clothing after bathroom accidents and taking their shoes.

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2013/jan/14/charter-schools-face-backlash-in-inner-cities-to/

I remain hopeful that a full investigation of all of the allegations will take place, though it does not appear to be part of Cornerstone's "audit" by a local accounting firm. The audit report has not been made public, though some results were disclosed to the Commercial Appeal last week.

Instead of making the report publicly available on its website, as would be expected by a government organization engaging in transparent behavior, Cornerstone has adopted a public relations plan that involves letting the information trickle out, a little bit at a time. That might reduce the impact of any single story, but it will continue to keep them in the news...

So here's today's little trickle of information, and it's a doozy! It's pretty well buried, but it's there! Those children who alleged that their shoes were taken away as punishment? They were totally telling the truth! "An internal audit of school practices released last week found no instances of child abuse at the school, but teachers interviewed by the auditor said they had taken children's shoes away to keep them from playing with them in class." Does Cornerstone have a policy that this is good classroom management? What about the part where the students had to walk around in their socks for the rest of the day...? Perhaps this is among the "best practices" that ASD Supt. Chris Barbic promised that Cornerstone would bring to the ASD table.

Child abuse because of shoe confiscation? No. There are much worse allegations being made against the teachers and adminstration of Cornerstone - allegations that Cornerstone is apparently leaving to Child Services to investigate. But this kind of behavior by these alt-certified teachers is exactly the kind of behavior that would not fly in middle class schools, or even in real public schools.

http://schoolingmemphis.blogspot.com/2013/01/cornerstone-audit-results-continue-to.html