Student Walkouts at "No Excuses" Achievement First Flagship

The New Haven flagship for the Achievement First fleet of paternalistic segregated charter schools is under attack by the same students that the school was meant to culturally and politically sterilize.  

This is good news for those who believe that all children deserve humane learning environments, even if they are poor.  The story is reported here, and below is one of the many comments by concerned community members.

posted by: Samuel T. Ross-Lee on June 1, 2016  8:19am

N.B. Redacted Version

The hypocrisy and manifest gullibility in the comment[s] on this story are astonishing.  The AF Charter is more than a private institution illicitly using public funds, but it is also an institution based on a racially biased paradigm.  The paradigm is meant to “modify” the behavior of African-American students into an image acceptable to the White people who own this company and whose sense of entitlement apparently knows no bounds.

AF is a “school” whose most prominent pedagogical tool is treating Black children as if they are inherently flawed and must be “fixed” by the most draconian methods allowed all under the tutelage of the most unqualified instructors assembled and assigned.

In short, Achievement First is an inherently racist institution.  And the people commenting here so far are either ignorant of that fact or are unwilling acknowledge it.

Where is the soft racism expressed here that advocates for “structure”  ever applied to educating White students?  The structure mentioned here is a type of control that is applauded when applied to African-Americans and matched with the media-driven images of us as savages who must be controlled in the first place.  AF-style Charter Schools are lauded for re-shaping these kids before they become what they never were for the comfort (and profit) of people who created the stereotypical images in the first place.  AF-style Charters are for many White liberals and gullible African-Americans socially acceptable private prisons African-American parents and politicians who are so desperate for “school choice” that these types of schools are acceptable to them are playing with the fragile egos and spirits of our children by placing them into the hands of a White hegemony that barely believes that our children are human in the first place.  But the warnings and the research is available to them on this.  They have only themselves to blame for ignoring it.

The Rev. Mr. Samuel T. Ross-Lee

Guest Post: Relay Graduate School of Education: A Policy Brief

Posted by the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools on January 6, 2016.
This year the Philadelphia School District used training videos on classroom management from The Relay Graduate School of Education as part of its New Teacher orientation. The principals of Blaine and Kelley Elementary School (recent turnaround schools) are enrolled in Relay’s principal training program.

Relay Graduate School of Education is a teacher/principal training program based in New York and founded by people who had little experience or training in education. The school has opened a Philadelphia/Camden branch and has a partnership with Mastery Charter in the Philadelphia region. Since it appears to be extending its reach inside the Philadelphia School District we felt the need to explore Relay’s history and influence.

Kate Peterson, a graduate student at Arcadia University, has looked into Relay’s founders and programs. Her findings are posted below. We want to thank Kate for her thorough research and for allowing us to post it.


Relay Graduate School of Education Policy Brief

by Kate Peterson
January 2, 2016

Relay Graduate School of Education is a stand-alone school based in New York City. It began as Teacher U in 2007, when Dave Levin, co-founder of KIPP Public Charter Schools, and Norman Atkins, co-founder of Uncommon Schools, decided to develop a program that would supply their charter schools and others with high-quality teachers, which they deemed as scarce. They partnered with the founder of Achievement First, Dacia Toll, to create their program. Receiving $10 million from Larry Robbins, founder of the hedge fund Glenview Capital Management and current board member of Relay, and $20 million from the non-profit The Robin Hood Foundation, the three charter school leaders partnered with Hunter College in New York to implement their program (Relay Graduate School of Education, 2015h; Barbic, 2013).

In 2011, it was renamed Relay Graduate School of Education and was granted a charter by the New York State Board of Regents (Relay Graduate School of Education, 2015h). Partnering with the New York City Department of Education, they began training district public school teachers. After its claimed success with this program, Relay spread to other major cities including New Orleans and Newark (Barbic, 2013). Today, in addition to these cities, Relay has branches in Chicago, Houston, Memphis, and more recently Delaware and Philadelphia/Camden (Relay Graduate School of Education, 2015a).

Norman Atkins is currently the president of Relay and has been associated with several charters. He received a B.A. in history from Brown University and a M.A. in educational administration from Columbia. He began his career as an independent journalist (Uncommon Schools, n.d.). From 1989 until 1994 he served as the co-executive director of The Robin Hood Foundation in New York City, a prominent donor to Relay as well as to numerous charters in New York City, including Uncommon Schools and KIPP (Uncommon Schools, n.d.; The Robin Hood Foundation, 2015). Then in 1997, he co-founded and co-led North Star Academy Charter of Newark. In 2005 he co-founded Uncommon Schools, a charter management organization that currently manages 44 charters. Atkins now serves as board chair for Uncommon (Uncommon Schools, n.d.). Additionally, along with Dave Levin, Atkins co-founded and is a board member for Zearn, a non-profit online math program designed for kindergarten to eighth grade based on the Common Core standards (Zearn, n.d.). Zearn also receives funding from The Robin Hood Foundation (The Robin Hood Foundation, 2015).

Click here to read the rest of the article. 

Parent Corroborates Abusive and Illegal Conditions at "No Excuses" Charters

Thanks to Norm Scott, some amazing video has been posted that details the zero tolerance penal regimen used at the "no excuses" Achievement First charter schools in New York.  

This clip below, which runs 28 minutes, features a parent who served for four years on Achievement First school board before she finally got fed up and pulled her child before he entered high school.  

The testimony in this video corroborates the conditions documented by former "no excuses" teachers, whose stories form a central part of Work Hard, Be Hard: Journeys through "No Excuses" Teaching.

Achievement First Charter School Parents Speak Out: Why they removed their children Part 1 from MORE-UFT/GEM on Vimeo.

No doubt this video will become crucial in a lawsuit that has just been filed against Achievement First in Crown Heights.  Apparently, the "lawsuit waiting to happen" has just happened.

Special education students at a Brooklyn charter school did not get mandated services and were punished for behavior that arose from their disabilities, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court on Thursday.

• The suit, filed on behalf of five students at Achievement First Crown Heights, described a “systemic failure to provide them a free appropriate public education, in violation of their rights.” It said that students did not get physical therapy and other services for weeks at a time, and that a student with autism was disciplined for not looking in the direction a teacher instructed or for hiding under his desk.

In addition to the charter network and the school, the suit also named the New York City Department of Education and the New York State Education Department, asserting they failed to make Achievement First, a network with schools in Connecticut and Rhode Island as well as in New York City, live up to its responsibilities.

“Kids with special needs not only should be granted accommodations for their needs, but they must be under federal and state law,” said Michelle Movahed, a senior staff attorney at New York Legal Assistance Group, a nonprofit group that is representing the students and their families. “This is not just a question of doing the right thing.”

Charter schools are publicly financed, but privately run, and they are required, like regular public schools, to provide individual learning plans for children with special needs.

The suit comes at a time when charter schools, especially those in the Success Academy network, have come under scrutiny for their enforcement of strict behavior codes, suspending even the youngest students. But advocates and families say that in both charters and traditional public schools, it can often be a struggle to ensure children with disabilities receive the services to which they are entitled.

A spokeswoman for Achievement First said on Thursday that the organization was reviewing the lawsuit. In a statement, she strongly defended the Crown Heights school’s record with special needs students.

“We serve a substantial number of students with both modest and significant special education needs, and our school leaders, teachers and other professionals work tirelessly each day to serve all our students well,” Leonore Waldrip, a spokeswoman for the charter network, said in the statement. “Most of our students who receive special education services are experiencing real growth, and we have high levels of overall parent satisfaction.

“That said, we constantly strive to improve our program and, in particular, have made significant improvements in our special education supports in recent years,” she said.

Dottie Morris, who has two children at Achievement First Crown Heights, said she had been battling with the school for years on behalf of her son, a third grader identified in the suit by his initials, D.W., to protect his privacy.

Ms. Morris said that despite her repeated requests, it took Achievement First more than two years to provide a paraprofessional to help her son. This school year, the suit asserts that Achievement First and the city’s Education Department did not provide D.W. with occupational therapy for about five weeks and physical therapy for two months, and that no makeup sessions have been arranged.

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Achievement First Crown Heights has also punished D.W., who is autistic, for “behaviors that are caused by, or have a direct and substantial relationship to, his disability,” according to the complaint.

D.W. was punished by the school for not looking where he was instructed to, or for “perceived misbehavior in the noisy, crowded cafeteria, an environment that can be overstimulating to children with D.W.’s diagnosis,” the suit said. His punishments have included being sent, as a third grader, to a second-grade classroom.

The complaint describes this approach as part of Achievement First’s strict approach to discipline. It quotes the network’s website, which describes a policy of “sweating the small stuff.”

“In many urban schools, teachers and leaders ‘pick their battles,’ only addressing egregious instances of poor behavior,” the website goes on, according to the complaint. “Achievement First, on the other hand, has adopted sociologist James Q. Wilson’s ‘broken windows’ theory that even small details can have a significant effect on overall culture, and we believe that students will rise to the level of expectations placed on them.”

That approach does not work for her son, Ms. Morris said. “They treat all the kids the same,” she said. “There’s no differentiation if you have special needs.”

A spokesman for the state’s Education Department said it did not comment on pending litigation. A spokesman for the city’s Law Department said lawyers had not yet seen the suit on Thursday afternoon.

KIPP Administrators Sitting Atop Kindergarten and 1st Grade Children

I talked with a 28th former KIPP teacher last evening to hear her story, and she was as eloquent and upset as any of the rest.  

Mandy spent a year in a West Coast KIPP, which was in its first year of applying KIPP's punishing penal-style pedagogy to segregated kindergarteners and first graders (60 percent Latino and 40 percent African-American). 

Until a month ago, Mandy thought she would be returning to this KIPP school that she had learned to dread, but she landed a teaching job in a public school in July. 

Mandy is now dealing with what she describes as PTSD-like symptoms, and she is re-learning what it is like to have rights and choices and that precious commodity, time--time to take care of herself and to have relationships with family, her boyfriend, and friends.  Time once more to enjoy life and work.

Over half the KIPP teachers and support staff that began the year with Mandy left, too.  Mandy described a micro-managing, demanding, and ruthless school leader who was inflexible, out of touch, manipulative, and without empathy.

Like many other former KIPP teachers, Mandy's health suffered while she was there, and she became an alien to herself--willing to go along with ways of teaching and treating children and parents that ran counter to her deepest values.

Mandy's story will be shared in depth at a later date, but for now I wanted to share another element of "No Excuses" charter school teaching that no one hears about in the media.  

We have heard about KIPP's isolation chambers for children, but we have not heard about adult administrators sitting atop 1st graders and kindergarteners who are being physically restrained.

Mandy had seen this physical restraint practice before, when she worked for Achievement First, a charter chain started by Doug Lemov and based on KIPP's grueling indoctrination system. 

Here a short clip from our conversation last evening:

Q: . . . who are the people who are doing the restraining, and what did it look like? 

A: It happened any time a child was so out of control behaviorally.  Um, I don't actually know what their measure was for restraining a child because sometimes they would let a child destroy a classroom and just walk around, and other times, in my mind, [restraint was used] for a behavior that was more minor in terms of an infraction, but they would restrain them.  So I have no idea what it was for, but a lot of times it was used if a child tried to hit or hurt the dean or the principal, which is funny, not funny, but a little ironic because these children who were having these behavioral issues would hurt the teachers, and we could do nothing.  

But when the child started to attack the Dean or the Principal, they were able to defend themselves.  So they would take the student by their wrists and cross them in front of their chests, and a lot of times they would be sitting on the ground, and they would put their legs on top of the child, so if you can imagine, the adult is sitting with their legs open, the child is sitting up against them, their arms are crossed like a pretzel over them, [the administrators'] legs are on top of the child, and just kind of sitting there holding them and the child thrashing, saying, "let go of me, you are hurting me."

And they would say, "if I let you go, will you sit nicely, will you calm down," or, "if you just sit nicely, it won't hurt--you are hurting yourself." 

(Long pause)

Q: And did this happen often?

A: I would say so.  It didn't happen as often as it did when I worked at Achievement First in __________, but it happened pretty regularly.

My book, Work Hard, Be Hard: Journeys through "No Excuses" Teaching will be published later this year. 

IPS and the National School Board Buyout

By Doug Martin

Although the local powers-that-be who funded the members who won the Indianapolis Public School board 2014 election are well known and mentioned in my book Hoosier School Heist (Al Hubbard, David Harris, Bart Peterson, the Chamber, Eli Lilly’s John Lechleiter, Anne Shane, and Christel DeHaan of Tony Bennett scandal fame, to name a few), some of the wealthy outsiders who bought the IPS board in 2014 are relatively new to Indiana.  These new funders last year loaded the campaign chests of IPS candidates LaNier Echols (Carpe Diem charter school’s dean), Mary Ann Sullivan (former lawmaker and present Democrats for Education Reform national board member), and Kelly Bentley (Democrat for Education Reform member), who were all elected. 

But the IPS board race was just one buyout for these newest IPS wealthy funders.  In fact, these same well-to-do out-of-staters have been buying mayors, governors, and school boards all across the US to further the school privatizing agenda. 

Some of these campaign donors, it appears, mean to cement in place Rocketship and KIPP Indy, which are both scheduled to open a dozen charter schools in Indy in the next few years. 

Another wealthy campaign contributor is surely hoping to plant his affiliated charter school francize, Achievement First, in Indianapolis in the near future. 

Many of these wealthy funders, too, are tied to Stand for America, a group which was not required to tell taxpayers the exact cash it dished out to buy the IPS board seats for Sullivan, Echols, and Bentley (see Amos Brown's excellent write-up on this here), although Alternet’s Anna Simonton claims that Stand for Children’s “nonprofit and political arm… together spent over $21 million last year in order to elect 78 state-level and 15 district-level “’education champions.’”

All in all, Simonton traces some of the out-of-state funders behind IPS’ 2014 election as part of a vast movement by the extremely wealthy to recently buy school boards in New Orleans, Denver, and Los Angeles.  Let’s look at a few other cities besides these that the IPS board donors have infiltrated.

BAIN CAPITAL AND THE BLOOMBERGS

Although I mention Bain Capital (started by Mitt Romney) and Stand for Children’s cozy relationship in Hoosier School Heist, it was the recently retired managing director of Bain, Mark Nunnelly, who helped elect school privatizers to the IPS school board and many other public school boards across the country. 

Mark Nunnelly gave $1,000 to Kelly Bentley, $1,000 to LaNier Echols, and $1,500 to Mary Ann Sullivan’s campaigns.  Nunnelly also has supported Stand for Children and funded the Black Alliance for Educational Options/DFER Newark mayor Cory Booker, all mentioned in my book.

Nunnelly is on the board of directors of KIPP charter schools with Emma Bloomberg, the daughter of former NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg.  Emma is chairman of the board of Stand for Children’s national outfit.  With Mind Trust help, KIPP Indy is scheduled to open several new schools in Indianapolis. 

Emma Bloomberg played a role in the DC state board of education election, and she chairs the Teach for America-founded Leadership for Educational Equity, the group which gave $5,000 to LaNier Echols, the IPS candidate who also received $650 (see page 3) from TV show princess and major anti-teacher tenure operative Campbell Brown.  And if all of this were not enough, former mayor Michael Bloomberg, upset over lost money to Tony Bennett’s 2012 campaign, pulled through a few days before the IPS board election and gifted Mary Ann Sullivan $2,500.

BIG OIL GIRL TO THE RESCUE

The daughter of a rich Oklahoma oilman, billionaire Stacey Schusterman is the CEO of Samson Energy, a real estate leader, and a supporter of Stand for Children. She gave $500 (page 10) to Mary Ann Sullivan’s IPS campaign last year and $1,500 (page 6) to Bentley’s. 

Along with Walmart’s Carrie Walton Penner (whose husband Greg, as I point out in Hoosier School  Heist, helped buy the IPS board election of 2012), Schusterman sits on the board of the Charter School Growth Fund.  Besides dismantling public education in her own state, along with Achievement First trustee Jonathan Sackler, Schusterman funded Marshall Tuck for the superintendent’s office in California, the young and handsome corporate darling who, despite tons of money, lost the election.

Hedge fund manager Alan Fournier didn’t have to worry about funding the IPS board race last year, as he did in 2012.  Schusterman took his place, and they both worked together to influence the New Jersey school board race last November, too.

Schusterman also gave $25,000 to Stand for Children’s election campaign in Washington state in 2012.

LINKEDIN WITH FACEBOOK

Billionaire LinkedIn’s CEO Reid Hoffman and his wife Michelle Yee each gave $1,000 to Kelly Bentley (page 6), $1,000 (page 4) a piece to LaNier Echols, and $1,000 each to Mary Ann Sullivan’s IPS board campaign (page 2).

Hoffman and Yee funded Tobias Read’s campaign, an Oregon state representative who was one of the sponsors of a charter school bill which passed in 2011.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg helped Tobias Read, too, for he used to work with her and Larry Summers in Bill Clinton’s Administration.  Summers, if we remember, helped set the rules to deregulate Wall Street which led to the big crash of 2008. 

Sheryl Sandberg is a member of Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.  Along with Intel’s Arthur Rock, Sandberg funded a school board member for the Duval County Florida school board race last year.  And Sandberg, Rock, Greg Penner (Carrie Walton’s husband who helped buy the IPS school board in 2012), were behind the school board privatization movement in Atlanta recently, too, supporting four candidates who were elected.  As Alternet’s Anna Simonton writes:

[Arthur] Rock is not the only name on the reports with financial power and a less than obvious connection to Atlanta Public Schools. Greg Penner of the Walmart empire, Dave Goldberg of the Sheryl Sandberg empire (they’re married), and Kent Thiry of the DaVita kidney dialysis empire (it sounds inglorious, but he pulls in $17 million annually), are among the names that had some Atlantans scratching their heads this election season.

Billionaire Arthur Rock (a board member of TFA’s Leadership for Educational Equity), Greg Penner, and Alan Fournier (who gave money to IPS school board candidates in 2012), among others, poured money into a small town school board race in New Jersey recently.  

And Rock and Bain Capital’s Mark Nunnelly also helped buy school privatization during a school board race in California. 

Arthur Rock gave $5,000 to LaNier Echols’ campaign (page 3)

PUTTING SACKLER’S ACHIEVEMENT FIRST FIRST, REGARDLESS OF ZIPCODE

In 2014, investment manager and real estate mogul Jonathan Sackler handed Mary Ann Sullivan $2,500.

Sackler, a board member of the New Schools Venture Fund privatizing outfit, is the trustee at Achievement First, a nationwide charter school managing organization.  He is also a director at 50CAN, a corporate school group funded, in various states, by Bill Gates, the Bush Foundation, Arthur Rock, the Walton Family Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, and many others involved in privatizing Indiana schools. 

Along with Arthur Rock and other IPS board donors, Sackler threw money into the Minnesota school board race last year, as well.  Beth Hawkins, at MinnPost, writes that “The Minneapolis Progressive Education Fund has received $100,000 from former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, $90,000 from Teach for America board member Arthur Rock and $25,000 from Jon Sackler, who sits on the boards of the education advocacy groups 50CAN and Students for Education Reform”.

Sarah Lahm, from In These Times, gives us a hint at what is going on here.  Keep in mind that Rocketship is set to operate in Indianapolis, and Arthur Rock, Facebook’s Sandberg, and others partner with that charter school company:

What do investors like Bloomberg, Rock and Sackler stand to gain by pouring money into the Minneapolis school board race? While national charter school chains such as Rocketship do not operate here, the city’s school district recently entered into the state’s first-ever “district-charter compact” with local charter school chain Hiawatha Leadership Academies. This compact was borne out of a 2010 District-Charter Collaboration Compact signed by Minneapolis Public School administrators, local politicians and charter school operators. In the future, Minneapolis Public Schools spokesperson Myrle Croasdale tells In These Times, the district is “open to developing partnerships with outside stakeholders.” Perhaps this willingness helps to explain how the Minneapolis Progressive Education Fund has attracted such big-dollar outside support for school board candidates.

Sackler, in fact, even bought the Providence, Rhode Island, Obama-supported mayor, giving over $25,000 to Democratic Jorge Elorza in 2014, who won the election.  Elorza “sat on the board of the Achievement First Mayoral Academy until he entered the race for mayor.” 

Sackler and others actually own Connecticut governor Dan Mallory, as Jonathan Pelto has noted time and time again, and 50CAN influenced the Bridgeport, Conn. Board of education election, too.

For the Austin, Texas, school board race, Sackler helped IPS board funders Schusterman, Nunnelly, Campbell Brown, and the Leadership for Educational Equity. 

As a side-note, Tindley charter school’s Marcus Robinson sits on the board of directors of the Achievement First Charter Network Accelerator.

MORE HEDGE FUND DEMOCRATS

The hedge fund manager front group DFER also played a role in the IPS race.  National board member Mary Ann Sullivan was helped by Democrats for Education Reform, which handed over $1,100 (page 10), and DFER’s Joe Williams (detailed in Hoosier School Heist), gave $250 (page 14).  Education Reform Now, which is closely tied to DFER, gave Bentley $600, and DFER gave her $1,100 (page 6).

For more insight and campaign funding details on the IPS board race of 2014, see Gary Welsh’s excellent blog post here.