American Indian Public Charter School
Dom
structured school, and a coherent curriculum. However, I question
Will's claim that the Democratic Party is the "handmaiden" of pseudo-
educators.
<<Unfortunately, powerful factions fiercely oppose the flourishing.
Among them are education schools with their romantic progressivism --
teachers should be mere "enablers" of group learning; self-esteem is a
prerequisite for accomplishment, not a consequence thereof.>>
===============================
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/20/AR2008082002947.html
Where Paternalism Makes the Grade
By George F. Will
Thursday, August 21, 2008; A15
OAKLAND, Calif. -- Seated at a solitary desk in the hall outside a
classroom, the slender 13-year-old boy with a smile like a sunrise
earnestly does remedial algebra, assisted by a paid tutor. She, too,
is 13. Both wear the uniform -- white polo shirt, khaki slacks -- of a
school that has not yet admitted the boy. It will, because he refuses
to go away.
The son of Indian immigrants from Mexico, the boy decided he is going
to be a doctor, heard about the American Indian Public Charter School
here and started showing up. Ben Chavis, AIPCS's benevolent dictator,
told the boy that although he was doing well at school, he was not up
to the rigors of AIPCS, which is decorated with photographs of the
many students it has sent to the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented
Youth. So the boy asked, what must I do?
Telling young people what they must do is what Chavis does. With close-
cropped hair and a short beard flecked with gray, he looks somewhat
like Lenin but is less democratic. A Lumbee Indian from North
Carolina, he ran track, earned a PhD from the University of Arizona,
got rich in real estate ("I wanted to buy back America and lease it to
the whites") and decided to fix the world, beginning with AIPCS.
Founded in 1996, it swiftly became a multiculturalists' playground
where much was tolerated and little was learned. Chavis arrived in
2000 to reverse that condition. Charter schools are not unionized, so
he could trim the dead wood, which included all but one staff member.
David Whitman, in his book "Sweating the Small Stuff: Inner-City
Schools and the New Paternalism," reports that in Chicago from 2003
through 2006, just three of every 1,000 teachers received an
"unsatisfactory" rating in annual evaluations; of 87 "failing schools"
-- with below-average and declining test scores -- 67 had no teachers
rated unsatisfactory; in all of Chicago, just nine teachers received
more than one unsatisfactory rating, and none of them was dismissed.
Chavis's teachers come from places such as Harvard, Dartmouth,
Oberlin, Columbia, Berkeley, Brown and Wesleyan.
AIPCS is one of six highly prescriptive schools Whitman studied, where
"noncognitive skills" -- responsible behaviors such as self-discipline
and cooperativeness -- are part of the cultural capital the curriculum
delivers. Many inner-city schools feature a monotonous chaos of
disruption. AIPCS -- Oakland's highest-performing middle school --
stresses obligation, not self-expression. Chavis, now "administrator
emeritus," is adamant: "Everyone says we should 'preserve our
culture.' There is a lot of our culture we should wipe out."
A visitor to an AIPCS classroom notices that the children do not
notice visitors. Students are taught to sit properly -- no slumping --
and keep their eyes on the teacher. No makeup, no jewelry, no
electronic devices. AIPCS's 200 pupils take just 20 minutes for lunch
and are with the same teacher in the same classroom all day. Rotating
would consume at least 10 minutes, seven times a day. Seventy minutes
a day in AIPCS's extra-long 196-day school year would be a lot of lost
instruction. The school does not close for Columbus Day, Martin Luther
King Jr. Day or César Chávez Day.
Every student takes four pre-AP (Advanced Placement) classes. There
are three hours of homework a night, three weeks of summer math
instruction. Seventh-graders take the SAT. College is assumed.
Paternalism is the restriction of freedom for the good of the person
restricted. AIPCS acts in loco parentis because Chavis, who is cool
toward parental involvement, wants an enveloping school culture that
combats the culture of poverty and the streets.
He and other practitioners of the new paternalism -- once upon a time,
schooling was understood as democracy's permissible, indeed
obligatory, paternalism -- are proving that cultural pessimists are
mistaken: We know how to close the achievement gap that often
separates minorities from whites before kindergarten and widens
through high school. A growing cohort of people possess the pedagogic
skills to make "no excuses" schools flourish.
Unfortunately, powerful factions fiercely oppose the flourishing.
Among them are education schools with their romantic progressivism --
teachers should be mere "enablers" of group learning; self-esteem is a
prerequisite for accomplishment, not a consequence thereof. Other
opponents are the teachers unions and their handmaiden, the Democratic
Party. Today's liberals favor paternalism -- you cannot eat trans
fats; you must buy health insurance -- for everyone except children.
Odd.
Juan M
George Will has been an apologist for privatizers for generations.
"Dom" <DR...@teikyopost.edu> wrote in message
news:5008a9f0-c214-4615...@x41g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...
Herman Rubin
Juan M <jdmollan...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Consider the source.
>George Will has been an apologist for privatizers for generations.
Is he an apologist or an advocate? I am an advocate,
because I see no way the public schools can do a
decent job. The public schools are so set against
real academic excellence that even a genius can be
turned off by them. A bright child is likely to be
ahead of the teacher in a few weeks of the term.
We need to teach sound academics, not just memorization
and routine, and expect the students to be able to use
the material in subsequent courses, instead of excessive
review. This should hold even if the courses are in
different fields. The concepts persist, even if the
details are lost, and the details can be recovered
quickly. But the teachers cannot teach the concepts,
because they can no longer think that way.
>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/20/AR2008082002947.html
Here is a boy who is willing and able to learn. The public
schools cannot accommodate him; he needs an academic school.
The same holds for the bright children of those in other low
socio-economic classes, where the culture is even against
academic excellence.
It is those, and the ones from other groups, who we need to
educate. The Joe Sixpacks cannot understand this attitude,
of willing to spend time in learning instead of playing with
their so-called "peers", who merely are at the same age. Nor
can the educationists running the schools, or most of the
teachers they have trained; trained, and not educated.
.................
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University
hru...@stat.purdue.edu Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558
Jeffrey Turner
> In article <nfudnSDNgYEZ0SrV...@centurytel.net>,
> Juan M <jdmollan...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Consider the source.
>>George Will has been an apologist for privatizers for generations.
>
>
> Is he an apologist or an advocate? I am an advocate,
> because I see no way the public schools can do a
> decent job. The public schools are so set against
> real academic excellence that even a genius can be
> turned off by them. A bright child is likely to be
> ahead of the teacher in a few weeks of the term.
Then why do public schools outperform private and charter schools?
Study: Public schools outperform private schools in student achievement
May 10, 2005
A new study turns conventional wisdom on its head about the academic
performance of public and private school students, finding that public
school students significantly outperform their private school peers in
math after controlling for demographic and socioeconomic factors. The
overall achievement advantage held by private schools is attributed to
the stark differences in student body demographics and socioeconomic
status between public and private schools, according to the study by
researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The
researchers examined 4th graders’ and 8th graders’ math scores from the
2000 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
http://www.nsba.org/site/view.asp?CID=421&DID=35915
--
When tyranny is law,
Revolution is order.
--Pedro Albizu Campos