Charter Schools Teaching Oppression?

Steve Nelson is the Head of The Calhoun School in Manhattan, NY. The Calhoun School is known as a co-educational independent school that focuses on education comprised of four parts: intellectual pursuit, creativity, diversity, and community involvement. Nelson wrote in an article on the Huffington Post:

"Students in KIPP schools wear uniforms, walk silently in single file lines from class to class, and are disciplined for even the smallest infraction. It is a school-based version of the 'broken windows' policing philosophy, which claims that the best way to control crime is to aggressively criminalize every small act. Arrest the window breaker, the theory goes, and murders will go down. As this has played out in places like NYC, where the metaphorical 'broken window' is often possession of a small amount of recreational drugs, the crime rate did indeed go down. Probably because an unconscionable proportion of young black men are in jail, where they can't soil the statistics by breaking windows or anything else. " 

Nelson then followed that with a quote from Jim Horn, the Associate Professor of Educational Leadership at Cambridge College in regards to KIPP's approach:

'"(It is) intended to create a culturally-sterilized corps of black order takers and low level corporate drones who never complain and always ask How High? when the boss man says, Jump.'"

Nelson deems KIPP as a "no excuses school" and concludes his articles by saying:

"Punishment, shaming, shunning, compliance and conformity are not tools for character development. They are agents of oppression."

I, personally, have never been opposed to Charter schools. As EduNation Revolution referred to in his TEDTalk post of Bill Gates on teachers and feedback, students do really well in countries and school systems where teachers are helped to self-assess. Charter schools tend to have higher student academic performance rates than public schools because they invest a lot of time into their teachers.

However, after learning more about the operations of KIPP as what Nelson deems a "no excuses" school, I don't think the high academic performance rates is what rising generations really need. I have a professor that teaches on business communication and he taught on a survey that was conducted with employers and students applying for jobs. Students thought they did really well in areas such as critical thinking and employers thought they did rather poorly. This reflected that schools now-a-days are teaching students to study books and take tests based on learned information instead of actually critically thinking and being able to come up with real world solutions.

Similar to the lack of creativity and critical thinking present in school curriculum, Nelson points out that that kind of "oppression" is also present in disciplinary structures. This great new and improved charter school system being implemented across counties may actually be raising up generations to conform to the power of a very select elite. That sounds a lot like George Orwell's 1984, the book schools make students read in high school, doesn't it?

Changing the Conversation About Overhead

Laura Ferreri, a financial consultant for nonprofits, said in a lecture that it is completely unreasonable that nonprofits are ridiculed when they allocate more than 10% to overhead when business give well over 20% to overhead.

Ferreri was pointing out the double standard between a business that is solely based on profit making and a model that was based on social good—with no interest in making a profit.

Susan G. Komen, a nonprofit working to end breast cancer, faced public scrutiny when word spread that they were paying their CEO more than $600,000. However, when you do the math, that salary is less than 4% of their entire revenue.

The Apple CEO makes about 9 million. Nobody says anything about that.

A writer from The Street wrote in an article, “When donating to a nonprofit, you like to think that most of your money is going towards its stated goal, and that the nonprofit spends most of its money towards making the world a better place.”

Ferreri was right, this logic is completely irrational. Just because a person chooses a career to alleviate poverty or help illiterate children, they should have barely enough income to survive? Whereas someone who chooses to make profits off of selling the newest and coolest, possibly unnecessary, technology to the most elite of the 1^st world should earn an income to throw parties the price of some college students’ tuitions.

The conversation about overhead needs to change. People need to acknowledge that just because a not-for-profit is not supposed to be using donation dollars for salaries—it’s necessary for the people who run the organization and implement change to survive. 

Ferreri was so upset when she shared this piece of information, she had to sit back and stop talking to keep herself from rambling in anger. Her reaction to this issue is how we should all be reacting.

Poll Finds Californians True Feelings on Race & Education

USC Dornsife and the LA Times have collaborated in conducting statewide polls for years. They cover subjects from immigration and politics to trend topics such as asking people if they’ve read a book in the past month.

In their most recent survey of more than 1,500 Californians, they found out peoples’ true feelings regarding race relations between one another as well as law enforcement and how they feel about education tenure.

The survey found that most Californians feel race relations are better in California than in the rest of the United States. They particularly feel positive about the way different races interact within their own smaller communities. Dan Schnur, Director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC, said that this largely reflects the comfort people feel with other races when they actually get to know them on a personal level.

With the wide diversity in California, people are exposed to a multitude of ethnicities. The fact that this poll reflects that people feel positive about the diversity in their neighborhoods and in California is encouraging for the long-lasting societal stride towards equality.

The survey also found that in particular, young Californians, ages 18-29, are most optimistic about race relations in general. This reflects the newer generations adaptations to diversity and ultimately, growth towards acceptance of one another despite color.

The poll went deeper into race relations, asking questions on how people felt about law enforcement interaction with different races. It found that the number of Californians that think police are tougher on African Americans has increased by 10% in the past few months. This has an extremely interesting correlation with the heavy media attention on alleged police brutality regarding race. In the past 5 months, society has been exposed to a multitude of police-involved killings regarding African Americans all over the country and there has been a strong movement of protests against it. Evidently, this has had a large influence on how people all over the United States are moved to feel a certain way towards the issue of law enforcement racism.

In addition to race, the survey also asked questions regarding education--specifically tenure, which is seniority based layoffs of public school teachers.

Thirty-eight percent of Californians say they believe teachers should not be granted tenure. Thirty-five percent said tenure should only be granted for teachers who have been working for 4-10 years. That's nearly 70% that don't support current teacher tenure that grants teachers job security after one year.

Job security is a generally a positive thing, but this tenure plan also makes it more difficult to fire poor-performing teachers. On the heels of last June’s Vergarav. California ruling that found teacher layoffs based on seniority to be unconstitutional, the poll shows that Californians also seem to reject the notion that teachers should be laid off based on seniority.

I understand this issue on a more personal level. My mom was the secretary at my elementary school and remained there until my junior year of college. She went to school to be a teacher when I was a child, but there were never any job openings in the districts near our home. While she was secretary, they were laying of teachers with up to 12-years experience. The layoffs started with the newest teachers and each year sent pink slips to teachers with the least experience—all the way up to 12 years. After receiving her teaching credentials, my mom was very discouraged because there was no way she would be hired when my own kindergarten teacher was getting fired as I was graduating high school.

The survey found that people recognize this as a broken system for education. When asked how California schools should lay off teachers when necessary, 53% said teachers who receive poor marks in their classroom observations should be the first to go.

Twenty-six percent said teachers whose students didn’t make enough progress on standardized tests throughout the year should be laid off first. As a fairly recent student in the public school system, I think this is an awful idea because students don’t take standardized tests seriously. No one wants to take them and they end up bubbling answers in randomly due to the fact that score won't reflect on their report cards. Students don’t necessarily understand that their test scores determine their schools’ API score and in turn how neighborhoods and colleges will look at that school in terms of academic performance. The other side of this is the level of motivation for children in poverty stricken neighborhoods with high crime or gang rates. These kids may not care enough to score well on standardized tests—is it really logical for the teachers that dedicate their careers to helping children in these neighborhoods be fired for this?

The answer in regards to how layoffs should be handled is not a definite one. As for California overall, only 8% felt layoffs should first target the teacher with the least seniority or classroom experience which makes it clear that tenure is not the way to go.

Overall, polls like this are extremely beneficial to everyone as a society. The first step to change is acknowledging. 

Germanwings Crash Calls For Change In Mental Health Protocols For Airline Pilots

“I can assure you, the kid had problems. I’ve never seen anything like it in 30 years as a teacher.” This line is from the English subtitles of an Argentinean fictional short film by Damián Szifrón’s called Relatos salvajes. The teacher is speaking of a man named Gabriel Pasternak, a mentally unstable pilot who has arranged for every person that has ever wronged him to be on the same plane. In less than a 10-minute scene, Pasternak crashes the plane, killing everyone he seeks revenge on.

This short film was released in theaters at a very hypersensitive time—just days after a supposed mentally ill Germanwings pilot crashed a plane of 149 people into the French Alps, leaving no survivors. People across the world were outraged that a pilot of a public airline would intentionally kill innocent people while on the job. The tragic crash implores that the mental health of aircraft pilots needs to be handled differently.

Being 30,000 feet in the air at the discretion of two pilots is a matter that requires trust. As ordinary people that fly on commercial flights, we need to know that we are in safe hands. That comes with trust in our pilots and trust overall in the airline.

According to the Federal Aviation Administration, medical certificates are only required for pilots who want to fly solo. To get this certificate, pilots have to be examined by FAA approved examiners and the exam includes mental health standards. 

However, for Airline Transport Pilots, the pilots that fly the planes that we travel on, the current medical protocols differ by airline. 

Kyle Bailey, President of Bailey Consulting International, said that in the United States, pilots undergo a “first class medical exam” every six months. The exam encompasses a full physical including blood samples, drug tests, and checking heart rate. However, there is no psychological testing in the majority of routines. Bailey said there may be a brief psychological exam upon hiring, depending on the airline, but none following.

The airline that employed the German pilot, Andreas Lubitz, revealed that he had previously suffered from “deep depression”. An investigation disclosed that Lubitz saw a professional psychiatrist and that his psychiatrist had given him a note instructing him not to fly on the day of the crash. The note was found ripped up in his apartment and understandably so. If he was deemed too ill to fly, then he may have very likely been too ill to hold the responsibility of that note.

Instead, the responsibility should have been on the airline as the employer. There needs to be a system in place that would allow professional therapists or psychiatrists the right to reach out to employers when things become this serious with patients.

By no means, do we want our society to make the issue of mental illness any more negative than it already has. Current laws protect citizens from work place discrimination by allowing them to keep medical issues, such as mental health, private. This is necessary for equal employment opportunities, however, when issues are as grave as a person being a threat to society—such as this plane crash, an employer should be notified. This doesn’t mean that the particular unstable person should be fired and forced into a financial hardship. Instead, we as a society should take care of them through healthcare disability until they are better because getting better is possible.

The fact of the matter is mental illness is more common than society likes to admit. History of “deep depression” is not a remote condition to this one man or to the sole career of pilots, but instead to every size, shape, and color of human in any and every career. It is unfortunate that lives had to be lost in order for this issue to be brought into the limelight, but good can come from this tragedy.

In the Relatos salvajes short film, the mentally unstable pilot killed every one that had wronged him. In the Germanwings reality, the mentally unstable pilot took innocent lives. When reality becomes worse than fiction films, it’s time for change.

The Power of the Hashtag

Hashtags weren't even a thing a less than a decade ago--my parents barely know how to reference it properly today, but in its short lived career it has managed to take over the social media world.

In 2007, the pound sign (#) was introduced to social media platforms allowing users to type it before a word in order to tag it or in other words, add it to a group of that subject. For example, on Instagram I can "#VEGAS" and my picture will show up on a search with everyone else who "#VEGAS" as well.

Hashtags connect people.
In a way, hashtags have made it possible for people to connect and share on a level that had never been reached before. Hash-tagging (a word likely made up by this hashtag era) "JusticeForMichaelBrown" on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, and such connected people all over the world to share their thoughts and feelings about an unarmed black boy that was shot and killed by police.

Hashtags spread news.
I can easily say something I saw or what I think about a particular subject on Twitter, but it will only get seen by a few of my 180 Twitter friends scrolling through that day. When I add a hashtag or three in it, it becomes accessible to the entire Twitter world. It's revolutionary because information can spread in seconds in comparison to decades ago. If I see Justin Bieber selling marijuana at the bus stop, I can post it to social media hashtag a few things and soon the whole world will know. Personally, when I'm stuck on the freeway and pass a huge accident, I'll tweet it with the hashtags of the name of the freeway and Los Angeles or traffic--hoping to possibly spare someone from the agony.

Hashtags start movements.
A few months ago, a transexual by the name of "Sister Roma" on Facebook was deactivated by Facebook for not complying with their "real-name policy". It made sense that Facebook would have this regulation because they want their communication platform to be legitimate, safe, and credible. However, Sister Roma said this was the name she truly identified with and took to social media with the #MyNameIs. Thousands of people saw the hashtag and joined the movement. The hashtag eventually lead to Facebook changing their policy.

Hashtags can be abused.
Sometimes people abuse hashtags for their own personal gain. These people are often called "Hashtag Whores". They post a picture and then they add 25 hashtags on it to gain followers or likes. If someone on social media hashtags #LikeForLike or #FollowForFollow... they will likely get unfollowed by me. I'm on social media for friends and information, not for a popularity contest.

The Truth on Skid Row

A few weeks ago, a homeless man was shot and killed by the LAPD on Skid Row. Within a day, the entire nation knew about it because of a video that had been posted on Facebook. It sparked enormous controversy. Some people instantly protested, ‘Police brutality.’ Another police shooting of what appeared to be an innocent population was all too familiar. The question was posed: How could the police shoot and kill such a helpless man in the lowest of economic classes in America?

Then the LAPD essentially said, “Well wait, the homeless man was not being compliant with the officers and during a physical altercation, he attempted to take one of the officer’s guns”… which then put their lives in danger. We know from what happened in Ferguson, an officer will not be reprimanded by the justice system for using deadly force if he felt his life was threatened.

People then said that the man was obviously mentally ill and officers have no right to just shoot people because they are acting abnormally. Did the officers really feel like their life was threatened by a homeless man struggling with mental illness?

After a few days, more information was obtained on the man who was killed. He had stolen a french man’s identity, had served time in prison for attempting to rob a bank, and while in prison he had been assessed by doctors to have a mental illness. When his sentence was over, the government tried to send him back to “his country”, but France would not comply. They had no other choice but to let him out on the streets—which is a scary thought if you look at the bigger picture.

Looking into this story, I walked the streets of Skid Row--as shocking as that may sound to the average. I spoke to members of the community, and while it was agonizing to breath the many scents of the street, I got to know a few of the homeless people.

Many are severely mentally ill, like blatantly severely mentally ill—walking and running the streets, dancing on sticks like strippers, stumbling into walls, and much more. I saw people injecting themselves with drugs and others rolling blunts. However, not one once of me was frightened. There were certain areas that were friendlier than others. I walked by one area with my camera and a man told me that I had to leave because I wasn’t authorized to be there…whatever that meant. For the most part, residents on Skid Row said they liked their lives and their friends there. It was a community.

Herb Smith, the president of the nonprofit Los Angeles Mission works with this very community every day. He says that he’s seen an increase in the mentally ill on the streets of Skid Row and he thinks there’s been another dumping of patients from mental health institutions.

The issue of mental illness on Skid Row wasn’t a question to me, it was evident. I  wanted to know why so many homeless people on Skid Row didn’t like the police presence there. Where was the LAPD doing to best handle this mentally ill population? There had to be another side to this Skid Row story.

LAPD Senior Lead Officer Deon Joseph has been working the Skid Row streets for 17 years. I took a walk with him and two of his officers on their daily patrols and to say in the least, I found the other side. I found way more issues present than met the eye.

While many of the residents greeted Joseph and the officers as friends, many calling Joseph “Uncle”, Joseph said he knows many of them so well because he has arrested them at some point in the past.

Joseph said that the people who are on the streets aren’t normally those that are homeless. The homeless people are in the surrounding housing facilities and missions, trying to get off the street. Those that are on the street are either selling drugs or using drugs, many of which don’t live there, but come because they know that’s where they will make money off their products.

Joseph said that he knows there are mental health institutions from Vegas and other places that are dropping their patients off. He knows nearly every face within that 50-block radius they call Skid Row and when a cluster of new people show up in hospital socks with wristbands and such, he knows where they came from.

Joseph says that the drugs on the street is what is heightening this populations mental illnesses and causes many of them to act out. The clinicians from the Los Angeles Department of Mental Health that work with the LAPD on the streets can’t even talk these people down because the drugs have them on a whole other level, Joseph says.

Joseph told me to turn off my camera and he walked me through a small park. The park reminded me of my family reunions. There were grandmas and grandpas, dogs and kids. There was music playing, they were eating and playing boardgames as if it were a picnic. When we got a distance away from the park, Joseph told me why, in the middle of Skid Row, there was a park where not one person seemed homeless. It was run by a gang, the old ladies were the leaders, and all they did was sit there and play games and eat until their money came back to them from their drug runners. He told me a story of a homeless man that had walked into the park to collect some cans, who was later found beaten so bad he nearly lost his eyes. No one was allowed in that park that was not working for the gang. Remember earlier when I mentioned the man who told me I wasn’t authorized to be there? I was standing right outside that park gate when he said that.

Joseph told me other stories of violence on the streets. He told me that the streets were run by bloods and crips and laws don’t permit the LAPD to do much about it. He said that advocacy groups argue for the rights of the homeless on Skid Row to have porter potties and other facilities, but all that means is more hubs for the gangs to run and sell their drugs. He said the gangs are even making it nearly impossible for those living in the housing there to get off the streets. The housing often includes sober living programs, but the gangs go door to door trying to sell their new product and those that refuse, trying to get sober, are then beat up right there or found and brutally beat later somewhere nearby.

After walking the streets with the LAPD officers, I felt so naïve for previously walking the streets and talking to people. Joseph assured me that the people there will know who you and if you’ve ever even done a single hit of a drug in your life just by looking into your eyes. He said they leave me alone because they know I’m not a customer. Then he goes on to mention another issue of racial profiling, that he himself said he had been a victim of while growing up. He said they wouldn’t mess with me because I had the typical white girl look that society cares about. He said they see me and they know that if they harm me, society will care and they will get in trouble, but if they harm an average black person, society will likely not value that life and there will be little to no consequences.

Joseph says that society is truly falling short in attending to many of the issues on Skid Row, including the mentally ill with taking them out of facilities and putting them on the streets, the gangs with the laws that don’t allow officers to remove any person’s belongings such as a couch, the helpless homeless people with the laws that the use of some drugs misdemeanors—and not even making some of the awful drugs on the streets illegal. Officers on Skid Row don’t just play the role of a police officer, they are also forced to be mental health clinicians, drug specialists, safety enforcers, regulators, friends… it’s a job many wouldn’t want, but officers down there, like Joseph, are invested in the people and feel a divine calling to do what they can to help those who are struggling on the streets of Skid Row.

To view my official report on this subject you can visit: Annenberg TV News

Education for Homeless Children

“A homeless count last week in Los Angeles likely missed many children under five who are often hidden from view and yet are among the most impacted by their homelessness.” -KPCC

One night while online, I read this intro to an article on the KPCC website. My entire world immediately stopped. 

When we think of a homeless person, we often think of a middle-aged or old man, unshowered, often with a mental illness such as schizophrenia and a drug addition. We don’t think about a 4-year-old child or even a high school student applying to college.

That’s why I chose to delve into this issue and do my own reporting on it.

I met a girl at UCLA named Angela who was once homeless. Her mother struggled with mental illness. Her father had to take time off work to take care of her mother and her as a child. When he went back to work, the his particular job of designing with a pencil, the field had moved to a computer and unfortunately he didn’t know how to learn that skill. Her parents divorced when she was 11 and when the recession hit in 2007, they lost their home. They motel hopped until her dad’s credit ran out. By her 17^th birthday, in her junior year of high school, they were moving from shelter to shelter.

As previously mentioned, children are often overlooked when it comes to the topic of homelessness, but they are among the most impacted. They are in the most critical time for building the most important foundation of success for the rest of their lives: education. 

The Homeless Education Consultant from the Los Angeles County Office of Education, Melissa Schoonmaker, says that there are 67,000 children in Los Angeles County in the same situation that Angela was, homeless. That’s 22% of the entire population of homeless children in the US. Out of 50 states, that's an extremely high percentage for just one city.

LA County is comprised of 80 school districts, each one with a certain number of homeless children and each one trying to help that child stay in school and get a quality education.

The initial biggest issue for school districts is identifying which children are homeless. The state definition is broad. Under the McKinney-VentoAct, a child is homeless if they are sleeping in a place that is not meant to be slept in, such as an office or garage, and if they are living doubled or tripled up with relatives or other family members. However, under the Urban Housing and Development laws, a child is homeless if they are on the streets or in a shelter. Therefore, it is difficult to help families and children with federal assistance. 

The next biggest issue is reaching the children and their families. In Angela’s case, she didn’t tell any of her faculty or teachers. She didn’t want anyone to know because she says school was her escape. School was where she got to be the smart one and looked up to. Pride and social stigmas play a large role in hindering families from accepting help. Angela didn't have wifi or even a printer at the shelters, but she never wanted special treatment from her teachers. She would try to get all of her homework done whenever she had internet access and she would get to school early to print. When it came to applying for college and scholarships, she would call her friends and dictate her essays to them over the phone.

The biggest and most prominent issue for school districts is funding. As I mentioned, LA County holds 22% of the homeless children population, but it is very far from 22% of the nation's funding. School districts are funded by the government. The state of California gets very little money from the US government and that money is then distributed amongst school districts in various counties. The question is, how do they choose which districts get money? It’s not based on the number of homeless they have in their schools or the average income of the residents—it’s based off of who writes the best applications for grants. Schoonmaker says it depends on what they say they will use the money for, how they’ve used money before and how past use of funds has worked for them/improved the education of homeless children.

The bottom line here: Out of 80 school districts in Los Angeles County, the state of California only gave out grants to SIX SCHOOLS— and that’s 6 schools not districts.

Schools districts rely on any help they can get to keep homeless children in school and give them a fair chance at a good education and really, just making it to high school graduation. Schoonmaker says that statistics show a homeless student may start high school, but the numbers drop as they get into 10^th, 11^th, and 12^th grade. She says when school is too hard for a child and education is their last priority-- compared to priorities like worrying about their next meal and where they’re going to sleep that night, they end up dropping out of school.

Lisa Nunes, a middle school principal in Torrance, says that kids who don’t have a permanent home and have been moved around either in foster care or shelters, often have major gaps in their education. When kids show up at a certain school, the school places them in a grade level based on their age—not where they stand academically. This has a significant affect on their entire education. Nunes says many times it's difficult to figure out what the child learned at previous schools and has to place them in classes, hoping that teachers will work together to help that child. This reminds me of the movie The Blind Side, where Michael Oher was placed in high school, but was functioning at an elementary level of academia.

Nunes says her school’s approach to this issue is putting the children in a class similar to study hall where a teacher can help students in that same grade level one on one. She also says that when teachers collaborate and work with a student to help them excel, they do better. As EduNation Revolution has touched on, teachers should have heart. Nunes originally became a teacher because she wanted to make school a safe place for children. Just by talking to her, you can really tell that she has a passion for the kids' education and personal development-- and she really has dedicated her career to helping children succeed.

While schools do their best to provide an equal education to all students and prepare them for success in life, the system just doesn’t make it easy.

The homeless liaison for the ABC School District, Tim Catlin, says that he and many other districts pull on all the resources they can get.

This past Friday, Feed The Children donated boxes of goods to the county to be distributed between districts and given out to the homeless children at the schools. The boxes contained things like backpacks, school supplies, snacks, and Disney books. Donations like these are what help children have the chance at fitting in with their peers and staying current with the curriculum.

Angela says she wouldn’t have even made it UCLA if it weren’t for a nonprofit tutor that she had at her homeless shelter. He was from School On Wheels, which sends tutors to help homeless children who can’t stay after school to get the help they need because they have to be at the shelter by check-in time to secure their bed space. Angela's tutor got her through calculus AP and even took her to his college, where she saw a college campus for the first time. She says he inspired her dreams of going to UCLA and made her believe she could do it.

There are many other nonprofits that donate goods to schools, give grants, and provide a safe get-away for homeless children. However, not every child ends up at UCLA like Angela. I think the system could use so much more help and innovation--from the government to the districts, even to the people who have money and are willing to help, but don’t know how. If this issue became as prominent in the media as ALS has, maybe more children could have a chance at graduating and pursing careers to break the cycle of homelessness.