Walmart Waltons, Broad the Toad Throw Money at Charter that Expels Students for Dropping Pencils

[Hannah Bell]

Achievement First is a charter school chain out of New Haven, CT. It was founded by a couple of Trustafarian yuppies, & its entire "Leadership Team" is mostly equally white & privileged, while its clients are mostly black & poor.

http://www.achievementfirst.org/about-us/leadership-team/#DougBio

Here's a little puff piece touting 1/2 of the co-founding team, Yale Law Trust Funder Dacia Toll, as a "Robin Hood". Dacia is oh-so-worried about black children:

"Yale Law School graduate and Rhodes Scholar Dacia Toll sees education as a civil rights issue. One chilling statistic that puts the so-called achievement gap into perspective: the average black or Latino 12th grader now has lower basic skills than the average white 8th grader."

http://www.robinhood.org/heroes/dacia--toll-and-doug-mccurry.aspx

This is a charter school chain that educates mainly poor black youth, and touts its "strict" policies. Strict, as in:

...detention for slouching, humming, or failing to look teachers in the eye.

...detention for talking loudly in the bathroom or using a pen during math class.

...demerits leading to detention (three demerits = 45 minutes detention) for students who put their heads on their desks, don't face forward while walking in the hallway, or go to the bathroom during class time.

...automatic 45-minute detention for questioning a demerit, rolling one's eyes, or sucking one's teeth.

Which is why on the average day, 16.6% of the student body is in detention.

Good training for prison, as one parent says: "I understand that schools need to have rules, but this is like Rikers Island," said Sarah Dickens, who said she will be at the board meeting to protest her fifth-grade son's daily detention for things like dropping a pen and failing to address a teacher as "ma'am."


And we know what happens to charter school students who get too much detention -- they get kicked out into the public schools. 31% of Achievement First's Crown Heights' freshman class is gone before graduation:

http://www.stateuniversity.com/elmsed/NY/Achievement-First-Crown-Heights-Charter-School-Brooklyn.html

Who likes this kind of schooling? The Department of Ed & rich white people, such as the walmart waltons & eli broad, the real estate toad:

Achievement First is receiving $1 million from The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation to nearly double the number of high-performing public charter schools operated by the charter network to serve an additional 6,500 students in low-income communities throughout New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island, the charter management organization announced today.

The support comes on the heels of other funding Achievement First has recently received from the Walton Family Foundation, which provides $250,000 for each new Achievement First school opened, and $1.7 million over two years from a U.S. Department of Education grant to replicate and expand high-quality charter schools.

Combined with the new Broad Foundation funding, this philanthropic support is allowing Achievement First to expand into a third state, Rhode Island, in partnership with the Rhode Island Mayoral Academies.

"We are incredibly grateful to The Broad Foundation for this generous support, which will be invaluable as we work to provide many more students in coming years with a high-quality education that prepares them for college," said Dacia Toll, co-CEO and president of Achievement First.

During the 2010-11 academic year, Achievement First is serving nearly 5,500 students across nine public charter elementary schools, eight public charter middle schools and two public charter high schools.

Ninety-nine percent of Achievement First's enrolled students for the current academic year are African-American or Latino, and 74 percent are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. The Broad Foundation grant will help enable Achievement First to open 14 new and two expanded public charter schools, expanding to 35 schools in New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island by 2017.

http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2010/11/detention-first-at-segregated-charter.html


In the days to come, you will *pay* to keep your child out of this kind of school; it will be the only free schooling there is.

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Hannah Bell]

2. nothing new there: "Truth? Truth? They can't HANDLE the truth!"

[leftstreet]

3. I'm just amazed they're not contracting out detention

Yet

K&R

[Hannah Bell]

4. you have a future in business young man (or woman, as the case may be)

[leftstreet]

6. lol

You KNOW someone, somewhere's thinking about it

[musette_sf]

5. That's okay, they have the NYPD "School Safety Division"

www.aclu.org/files/assets/Filed_Amended_Complaint_6_18_10.PDF

[leftstreet]

7. !!

:wow:

[musette_sf]

8. Harper's November 2010 issue printed excerpts from the suit

in the "Readings" section. I was horrified.

[musette_sf]

9. dupe

dupe

[AdHocSolver]

10. Teaching Americans how to be subservient, one child at a time. nt

[Hannah Bell]

11. Michael Fiorillo said...

"Children of color attending essentially a segregated school that is funded by rich white people, often staffed by mostly white people, and run like Riker's Island,"

And located in rapidly gentrify neighborhoods where the young missionary teachers look an awful lot like the people displacing the long-term residents.

Let's not ignored the underplayed aspect of charter schools as being part of the colonization and gentrification of these neighborhoods, especially when they are invading and taking over public facilities.

November 16, 2010 5:59 PM

http://perdidostreetschool.blogspot.com/2010/11/charter-school-prison.html

[erodriguez]

12. Living in Brooklyn I see the colonization daily.

People of lesser means are being priced out and pushed further and further away from the city.

[Starry Messenger]

13. k&r

[auntsue]

14. I wonder if the children of the benefactors are held to those

same standards in their ritzy prep schools? I'm thinkin' - NOT! I taught in inner city LA (AKA Watts) in the early 70's. I taught in East LA in the 80"s. I taught in an "alternative school" in 2000. From what I could see that level of control is not necessary to achive order and motivation. Consistant, firm application of uniform standards of behavior is important, but equally important is that the students know at a gut level that their teachers care about them and have high hopes and expectations. In some of the schools i was in we were called Mr. or Ms. and our last name, others were so informal that all staff was called by first names. The respect and discipline were achieved from teachers having an attitude of respect TOWARD students as well as expecting respect FROM students. It sounds to me like the teachers and administrators at this school are afraid of loosing control because they are actually afraid of the students.

[Hannah Bell]

15. the parents of prep school kids wouldn't tolerate this for a minute.

such tactics are reserved for the uncivilized children of the proles, who need to learn discipline & their proper place in life. and yeah, poor black teenagers are even scarier than white ones.

[Reader Rabbit]

16. Where's that "Stop the Insanity" woman when we need her?

I probably shouldn't read these posts and articles first thing in the morning. They make me depressed for the rest of the day.

[LWolf]

17. The growth and spread of corporate schooling will do more

damage to the condition of our nation than I want to see in my lifetime.