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?

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. 

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.