A new discipline system at Brooklyn’s Excellence Boys Charter School has some parents angry. (PIX11)
Graduates of LaGuardia HS’s jazz program gathered to honor Justin DiCioccio, its founder. (City Room)
A story about the growth of charter schools in Williamsburg has a strong point of view. (Village Voice)
To mark a year in the rubber room, teacher Mr. Portelos read his former students’ names. (YouTube)
Researchers who studied city charter schools also found that schools’ early patterns persist. (CREDO)
A former education reporter is leaving journalism to improve schools for low-income students. (Russo)
A teacher with 10 years as his school’s UFT chapter leader is the most senior one in the Bronx. (JD2718)
A mother says she’s having her son repeat kindergarten since she couldn’t start him late. (Insideschools)
A teacher tries to balance assigning writing assignments with not ruining his life. (Starting an Ed School)
Andy Rotherham has backstory on school sports for students with disabilities. (School of Thought)
Ellen
On Rotheram article: my son, who is deaf played baseball, basketball and soccer on his local high school teams. He was the first deaf student to do that and the first deaf student in the school. He made the team because of his athletic ability. Some students and parents thought he was given an unfair advantage because he was deaf. Folks wondered if he could really do it. Many agreed they were wrong but a few were upset that he took away the place of a typical student. Without these opportunities I don’t think he’d have ever really entered into his high school community and had the rewarding experiences he did have…not counting the regular ups and downs of the teen aged years, broken hearts, etc., etc.
He still loves and plays some sports and snowboards but as a 35 year old he’s slowed down. Maybe he was a pioneer, maybe he wasn’t, but it’s part of his history now and made him look around the world to see what he could do, not what he couldn’t do. He didn’t know he was “blazing a path”. He didn’t see the politics in the situation. We tried our best to keep above the roiling and boiling but I’ll tell ya it was a political statement by us, by the coaches and by the school. It was lot to put politics on the back of a teen aged kid.
All I can say is yea! They finally got the word out to all of the reluctant, recalcitrant, doubting Thomases.
A.S.Neill
Re: A new discipline system at Brooklyn EBC. Students treated like prisoners? It’s really a cultural thing the way you look at it. I went to one of the oldest elite private schools in the US and once was found the ringleader of a homework cheating group in 6th grade (falsely) but was never offered a chance for an explanation. But the punishment was swift. On the day all students wore the school sweatshirt, we were publicly shamed by being the only ones conspicuously wearing regular shirts all day. My point is that elite private schools (at least when I was there) took moral codes of honor very seriously and character development equal in value to academic studies. Everyone played sports – you didn’t have choice since learning teamwork as also important for your development. If a parent objected, I assume the school would have told the parent to find another school, since our school was striving for excellence and by and large it worked.
Flerp
Was that ok?
wgburg
Why do you frame the Village Voice article as having a “strong” point of view rather than a “community” point of view?
Ronald Terrell
Perhaps because there are plenty of people in the “community” of Williamsburg with a different point of view?
wgburg
There are always people with different points of view. But this is a story of a community coming together with grass roots parents, community based organizations, and all of their elected officials on the same side. “Strong” in this case implies that the story is biased.
A.S.Neill
Sure, why not? If you want students to act morally, it has to be taken seriously and start at the top. Sure, the DOE has a disciplinary code for students but the extent of dishonesty I have seen among Principals and APs is extraordinary, up to and including the Mayor, where it seems any means justifies the ends.
Flerp
I’m thinking of “externalities” that result from the policy. Are they irrelevant? Would it be good if a policy like that were in effect at NYC’s public schools? Leave aside the legal issues. Just in terms of policy, would it be desirable if individual schools had the same latitude to kick out students that your alma mater used? Would it make those schools better? How would you propose to handle the “externalities” (i.e. what to do with the students who get the boot)? Would the benefits outweigh the costs?
I’m not trying to lead you down a garden path; all these questions are serious, and I don’t know the answer.
A.S.Neill
good questions Flerp. First of all, my school didn’t kick me out. It was just shame for a day and never raised again. As far as I knew they never kicked anyone out. Looking back, the interesting thing was that there were a lot more “dumb” rich kids than you might suspect (yea, political correctness and special ed hadn’t arrived yet). But if you were in, you were in. If you really bombed academically, you were asked to go to summer school, and if you didn’t do well there, you would be held back a grade. But before all that happened, teachers were expected to tutor struggling students one on one outside regular classes (which happened to me). There were no counselors APs, or phys ed, although some teachers were head of department but taught as well. They did have very small classes though. Usually under 15 students and I think 12 was the norm. The school itself was small when I went there maybe 400 students 1-12 and is now over 250 years old.
My point originally was just to compare cultural differences. There was emphasis on a well rounded student, physically (everyone was required to play on a sports team with academic teachers as the coaches), morally (as in my example and there was required interfaith chapel too) and not just academics. No one was ever disciplined with a detention, but they did have mandatory study hall before sports, and it was a very long day for students and teachers.
Essentially, the culture and community was very stable. Teachers certainly weren’t ever fired for age discrimination, since there were a lot of old buzzards there, a new teacher was unusual, and a relative of mine who taught at the very top private school in the US, was honored by the school in many ways when he retired after 40 years, and in fact, I know that the school continued to give him small honors even years after that. And he was not the exception.
I really don’t know what to make of this comparison to the DOE, or even charter schools which have a 25% yearly teacher turnover. Money is obviously different but the cultures are obviously different too, Take from it what you want. But I really don’t have any answer how to change culture,.
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