$5 Fines
Posted: February 21st, 2012 | Author: Michael Goldstein | | 24 Comments »
Laura is an MTR alum who teaches in the Noble Charter School network in Chicago. They’ve been in the news recently, for a $5 fine controversy. From the Chicago Tribune:
There are a lot of reasons for Noble’s success. One is its strict disciplinary policy. A student caught chewing gum earns a demerit. Late to class—that’s not tolerated. Untucked shirts and untied shoes—not allowed. You don’t shout or throw things in the lunchroom. And so on. It’s a matter of respectful personal conduct.
A student who gets four demerits within two weeks must attend a three-hour detention class and pay a $5 fee for the class. Get more than 12 detentions — you really have to work at that — and you land in a discipline class that carries a hefty $140 fee. Rack up 25 to 36 detentions in one school year and you have to attend two discipline classes. Fee: $280.
Why is this in the news? According to an Associated Press story:
Critics say Noble is nickel-and-diming its mostly low-income students over insignificant, made-up infractions that force out students administrators don’t want.
“We think this just goes over the line. . . . Fining someone for having their shoelaces untied [or] a button unbuttoned goes to harassment, not discipline,’’ said Julie Woestehoff, executive director of the Chicago advocacy group Parents United for Responsible Education, which staged protests last week over the policy after Woestehoff said she was approached by an upset parent.
Last year the fines totaled almost $190,000 across several campuses.
PURE, along with a group called VOYCE (I’m guessing this isn’t what Gates Foundation had in mind when funding them), organized some protests and called the local TV news stations. As an insurgency effort, I have to give them props — they got a ton of attention.
What does the Tribune editorial board think?
There’s a wearying little game going on in Chicago. As the Chicago Public Schools and the Illinois Legislature grow less tolerant of failure in education, as they push for status-quo-shaking change in schools, the defenders of the old ways of education get more nervous. They try to undermine reform in nickel-and-dime fashion, picking targets here and there. This is a case of that.
Nothing poses a greater threat to the status quo than charter schools. So charter schools get targeted with nonsensical claims like this, that Noble Network is “dehumanizing” students.
If these schools are dehumanizing students, why are students lining up to go to them?
What does Woestehoff dismiss as “nothing that really matters”? Crucial keys to personal success. Focus. Discipline. Respect for others.
All those little violations — gum chewing and rowdiness and tardiness — matter. They matter because good conduct creates an atmosphere of responsibility and accountability in a school.
I asked Laura for her view, as a teacher in the Noble network. She says:
Why do I support the $5 fine for a detention? It’s simple: investment — and not the financial kind. Some parents don’t have the time or energy to be concerned that their child is earning detentions. They’re happy letting the school do the disciplining and letting the students serve the time. As soon as it costs money, the parents start caring. Not only that, but the students start caring as well. Suddenly, families and schools are working on the same team to help students become responsible, respectful, professional, and disciplined.
And it works. But don’t take an adult’s word for it. For us, it’s too often biased and political. All you have to do is ask a Noble student. The vast majority of my students vehemently defend their school and its policies because they realize that everything we do is for them and their future. And if $5 is a real financial burden, then these kids are lucky that they attend a school where their teachers care so much that we would give it to them if they asked.
If you don’t believe it, check out the Be Noble group on Facebook or come on in to one of our schools. I can guarantee our students will impress you.
I showed my 21 junior advisees this interview, and they were outraged. They want to post comments, take photos, and maybe even make a video to tell everyone how amazing Pritzker is. If they put something together this week, I’ll be sure to share it.
Per Laura, I did check out the Be Noble facebook page. It is a stream of Noble alums and students supporting the strict policy.
I enjoyed this one in particular.
Jesus Villalba wrote:
I was not the smartest, popular, or the most athletic when I attended Noble Street. I was a procrastinator, but what I learned from Noble is to be determined.
….I attended Noble, not with the best state of mind. Spending multiple fridays in detention, some saturdays, alongside Mr. Tobin talking about our discipline troubles among many other students. There was a point where I had a detention-free friday, and I did not even know what to do.
After all these detentions, Mr. Tobin finally got in my head. That you got to earn everything in life, and prove everyone wrong. That you only have yourself in life, but that’s all you need in order to overcome.
I also appreciate that Noble Staff never gave up on me, especially Ms. Angelica Alfaro. They gave an opportunity of a life time and have college expirience in high school.
I did not take full advantage, and I am regretful for that.
After I graduated, with a cps average GPA, I had no intentions to attend college (MG note: cps = chicago public school, i think — this may imply that he transferred and didn’t graduate from Noble).
However, Ms. Angelica Alfaro was presistent to at least attend community college until I gave in. I cherish and will always be grateful for her persistance. I started off at a Chicago Community College and worked my way up to an university, and only have around twenty credit hours in order to obtain my Bachelor’s Degree in Graphic Design for studio art/commercial and advertisement. And for someone with my struggles, we do not have many options in a corrupt world that benefits the rich and enrages the poor.
Today, I still continue to work, continue to study, in order to become the person I had the opportunity to be at Noble. From trash to class. From “slang” to being articulate. From a boy to a man.
I’m a working progress, and only getting better. I will be a somebody! Somebody that my mom would be proud of! Somebody that my little brother could look up to! And someone that is Noble status!
And an alum named Jasmine Hernandez, who seems to be at Cornell College studying to be a vet, wrote:
One of the members from PURE referred to the Noble discipline system as “dehumanizing.” The term ‘dehumanizing’ is to deprive someone of human qualities and is associated with a negative connotation. That is a very strong word and incredibly inaccurate.
Receiving demerits for things like eating Hot Cheetos and chewing gum is far from dehumanizing anyone. It is to show students that there is a place and a time to do certain things and even more that instead of filling their bodies with junk food, try something that is way healthier and better for them.
I remember going on a college trip with Mr. Milkie my junior year at Pritzker and we stopped at a gas station for a break. I came to the counter to check out with a bottle of soda, a bag of chips and gum. He suggested that I try getting something a bit more nutritious and he even offered to pay for whatever I wanted, while jokingly adding “I’ll let you keep the gum”. That very situation made me mindful of what I was unconsciously putting into my body. His rules and even little suggestions on our health show he truly cares for his students both inside and outside the class room.
Such an uproar is happening toward this “issue”, yet a lot of this energy should be put into trying to alter the CPS schools where graduation rates are appallingly low and the college entrance rates are even lower. Everyone is entitled to state their opinion, and have rights, but there is not one rule in the Noble handbook that deprives students of those rights.
As I previously asked on a different post, I must ask every one of PURE and even current Noble Network students who are encountering these situations now: what will you rather have (be enrolled in)? A school that is filled with thriving students who are well on their way to graduating from a prestigious high school, attending college, know how to conduct themselves and are very educated individuals, or a school that has little discipline, with students that are satisfied because it is what is easiest at that moment, but not being as prepared for college or perhaps not even having the opportunity to attend college.
Good question, Jasmine.
I’d add another observation. Just as anti-deficit hawks within the Democratic and Republican party do not seem to be able to join together, anti-misbehavior hawks within “ed-reform” and “veteran district teacher” camps are similarly unable to find common cause.
That is, the cry for better school culture comes from many savvy urban teachers. Here’s a recent very popular EdWeek essay:
But they refuse to talk about the elephant in the room because it has become politically incorrect to do so.
And that elephant is this: bad behavior, student apathy, and absenteeism are the real reasons schools “fail.”
If every child listened in class and did their schoolwork, most would be successful learners….
When teachers attempt to discuss disruptive, violent, mean kids, they walk a razor-sharp line between professional discourse and whining. One wrong step and their careers are in shreds. They know this.
So they don’t talk about it. And thus no one acknowledges — least of all the corporate reformers who create education policy in this country — that Johnny is hyped on caffeine, strung out on drugs, glassy-eyed from video-gaming, has no self-control, talks back, uses foul language, neglects to bring materials to class, refuses to do schoolwork, or is rude beyond belief. No one acknowledges that as a society we are not only at a loss as to how to discipline kids, we often enable their bad behavior.
The writer, Kelly Flynn, would not describe herself as a charter advocate nor hater.
In my view, the real opportunity is a sort of “bi-partisan” effort on school culture, uniting everyone who “Gets It” on the challenges and opportunities of establishing positive school culture.
This alliance would omit traditional allies for “each side”: progressives who tend to oppose all meaningful discipline policies, and choice advocates who are uninterested in other aspects of district reform. My commenter John Thompson, who has long taught in tough Oklahoma schools, has sometimes called for this sort of unity.
Charter critics tend to argue that impressive charters, like Noble, which build a strong school culture, achieve that entirely through student selection and de-selection. Not through teacher effort. The numbers cut against that claim: about 91% of Noble kids return each year, which is higher than the Chicago district schools.
Our teachers don’t issue $5 fines. But I wonder if we should. Maybe on the optics side, simply have all $5 fines go to student council for travel and such.
I was surprised to see that this was the topic chosen as bad enough to protest. Especially because it is a charter school — you know the policy going in and you can choose to leave it. It would be harder, if not impossible, to enforce this at a “regular” public school.
If anything, I think it shows one of the reasons that successful charters are successful — they have more latitude to conduct school-wide programs like this, with the administration backing them up.
If these were actions that students weren’t in full control of, that would be different too. But these seem to be targeted directly at things in the student’s control at any given moment.
Nowhere in the article does it say there aren’t positive reinforcers, either, which seems to be what the protesters seem to be assuming.
Jen, you raise an interesting point. Would it be tougher to enforce this policy at a regular public school? Absolutely.
But would it be impossible? I wonder.
A little Googling.
1. Salem High in Virginia Beach fines kids $35 if they leave their car in the parking lot.
2. Klein Independent School District in Texas fines students $15 for using cell phones. According to a 2009 article, over 2 years, the district has collected $100,948 from students.
3. Windsor High in Connecticut began fining kids $103 for swearing.
Do you think that adding the fee would make that much of a difference in MATCH behavior? I think the jump from out of control CPS/BPS to in-control charter is the bigger leap, not the jump from no fee to yes fee. There might be an incremental gain to be made, but would it be worth it?
I think one of the areas that I don’t hear much about is how schools with traditional demerit/detention systems can wean kids off of them before they go to the next level, be it HS or college. I think this is another part of “the next frontier” for no excuses schools. Some kids internalize the system, so leaving it isn’t a big deal. For others, the jump is too much to do alone. How can we gradually release kids from these system (and the other systems that we use to keep kids achieving).
When kids graduate and struggle at their next schools, the issue is sometimes that they don’t have the academic skills. But other times, we think they have the skills but aren’t making it for other reason (as you’ve blogged about in the past re: $$). I think working hard without the intense pressure / guidance our schools provide is the next step to helping our kids make it in the real world.
Paul, good point. To me, the key issue on rules and consequences is:
1. Do parents have informed choice? I.e., do they choose X school knowing its rules and consequence system?
2. Even if it’s NOT the consequence system you personally would choose, is it defensible/reasonable?
and ideally
3. Is the school held accountable for its overall student performance?
If all 3 are true, I’d give wide latitude to teachers and their principals to figure a lot of stuff out.
A $103 fine for swearing seems kinda high, but reasonable, and it is a wealthy district.
When I was on the board of a pilot school, the consequence system was basically — zero. Just endless cajoling.
Did I personally believe that was optimal? Of course not. But defensible? Yes.
Did kids drive teachers crazy via misbehavior? Yes.
Did the other teachers at the co-located “regular” school complain about the misbehaving pilot school kids? Yes.
In the long run, was the school held accountable for low kids doing poorly in academics? Yes, to a degree (was merged with the regular district school, lost autotomy).
Over on Facebook the estimable Buffalo Bills fan Robert Pondiscio and his readers are discussing the $5 topic. Reprinted without permission.
Rachel Levy: Being strict, teaching respect for the school rules, and having consequences for misbehavior is one thing. But leveraging fines is quite another.
Robert Pondiscio: I’m agnostic on fines, but I’m broadly supportive of the “no excuses” school culture. Just wondering: how is a fine not a consequence?
Heather Wolpert-Gawron: ”School tone is the cancer the undermines student achievement.” I’m sooo on that bandwagon!
about an hour ago
Rachel Levy: It is a consequence but it’s not an appropriate or just one. Corporal punishment is also a consequence.
Robert Pondiscio: @Heather Amen. I have some issues with the No Excuses schools, primarily around curriculum. I detect a tendency to think that school tone and habits of mind (grit) trump curriculum. But I think they’ve got the culture piece down.
Robert Pondiscio: I’m all for abolishing corporal punishment. I was struck by a student once and he received no consequences whatsoever. That absolutely needs to be abolished.
Jennifer Midgley” Robert, I think I remember you saying you do not support “paying” students for successes? Isn’t this just the flip side? Just read this and am having trouble believing it. The students are the children, we are the adults.
Lola Franco: i am on the fence about this. clearly not a teacher, but if my children break rules, i would make them pay the fine… it’s about personal accountability, and shouldn’t it start somewhere? if not $ then maybe hours donated to clean graffiti, etc?
Robert Pondiscio: I don’t “support” fines. But I think too much is being made of it. In the context of a broadly accountable school culture, I’m not going to criticize it.
Not the same issue, but I also think that having kids be “invested” changes behavior. Example: when I picked up the cost of my students on field trips, they often behaved poorly. Ask them to pick up a few dollars of the cost, and it was a totally different experience.
Rachel Levy Robert: Pondiscio Clearly that student should not have struck you and clearly there should have been a consequence but two wrongs don’t make a right. I think as much as is possible, the punishment should fit the crime. School climate and culture is crucial but I’m not sold on No Excuses (depending on how it’s implemented–I’m not sure that in the long run it engenders a healthy, rich, or sustainable culture. Kids having to keep their eyes on the teacher at ALL times, feet flat on the floor, etc. My children would have a hard time with that. I support high expectations, order, and strictness, but not rigidity and unreasonable expectations.
Robert Pondiscio: @Heather I don’t know the answer, but I can tell you part of it: schoolwide norms and consequences. I will never, never again teach in a school where different rules and standards apply in my room, yours, Jen’s, Rachel’s, etc.
Robert Pondiscio: I don’t disagree, Rachel. I’ve spent a lot of time in No Excuses schools. I’m also painting with a broad brush and in short hand. There are differences between them, and yes, I’ve seen some extremes.
Honestly, though, the worst I’ve seen has nothing to do with discipline and the pace of instruction. I’ve seen some frenetic, high energy, rapid-fire instruction that moves so quickly it’s hard to follow even as a reasonably high functioning adult. For kids I suspect its overwhelming. And unsustainable for teachers.
I had to read the twice in order to really grasp what was going on. At first, I was appalled! Charging kids for behavior incidences?! Upon reflection however, I can see how this system works for some students.
It’s rare to find a cure-all. I wonder about the internalization of these fines. Do the kids really get it? It seems that some do. Do they change their behavior because there is a financial penalty or does it eventually sink in that the penalties in life will eventually take an economic toll? I guess it’s hard to tell until well after they graduate.
I wonder about positive reinforcement, though. There has to be a balance. What does Noble do to reward good behavior?
Interesting and thought provoking, as usual.
I’m for reality-based discipline, but I wouldn’t try to scale up fines. Also, charters, that must often be tempted to push out tougher students, need to be like Ceaser’s wife on this one. I’d also say we shouldn’t just listen to the students who thrive in such a system, but to those who don’t.
Here’s my take:
http://scholasticadministrator.typepad.com/thisweekineducation/2012/02/thompson-excessive-absences-in-charter-schools-point-to-the-wrong-way-.html
This is one of those subjects that, when I read about it, makes me let out this long, mournful, involuntary sigh that makes people near me ask if something is wrong.
Let’s start here: I think the $5 fine is great. I don’t think it’s dehumanizing at all. Good for you, Noble. (I’ll spare all the puns about “noble intentions,” etc.) It probably cuts down on misbehavior a whole lot.
The sigh comes from the thought of trying to enforce this fine at a school at which students did not opt into a “no excuses” discipline system in exchange for some of the benefits charters offer – not the least of which is being at a school where everyone has agreed to pay a $5 fine if they leave their shirts untucked.
I have to agree with Jen: Just trying to enforce a basic uniform policy at a completely non-selective district school can potentially drain all of a teacher’s time… following up on each un-served detention, leaving message after message for parents who don’t think the uniform policy is a big priority and don’t seem concerned even with bigger issues like missing days of school for no particular reason or failing multiple classes. I work at a school with generally good teachers and supportive administrators, but I am more likely to just tell students, “Hey, pull up your pants. Tie your shoes.” It is dizzying to imagine trying to chase students down for a $5 fine every time their boxers are showing.
Perhaps this takes valuable seconds of class time that teachers of low-income students can’t afford to waste in the quest for college-preparedness. Or perhaps the opposite of a “no excuses” school should be called a “pick your battles” school, and that’s what district school teachers are sometimes forced to do.
As for the district schools that fine students for other infractions? I’d like to hear from teachers at those schools and see how this works – and whether it’s working. There are plenty of schools that have rules on paper that aren’t really enforced, and this is in part because enforcement options are limited at schools where students didn’t opt in and can’t be kicked out. Most options involve either staying at school longer (detention) or missing additional class time (in- or out-of-school suspension). Neither of these are real threats to students who don’t plan to serve detentions and don’t mind missing class.
For more insight into how easy it is to collect fines from students, consult any school treasurer in charge of collecting money for lost text books before students graduate. We generally have a list pasted on the wall of the cafeteria each April with about 500 names on it.
No excuses charter schools sound great, but please let’s just be honest when we compare them to non-charter schools. Students who want to make excuses are going somewhere…
Sigh.
Roxanna, totally agree. That’s why I think we miss a big opportunity in cities, where there is already school choice. Like here in Boston. 80 fairly similar elementary schools that parents can choose from in a complicated process that nobody likes.
Why not
a. Allow teachers to choose the schools where they actually support the behavior policies
and
b. Clearly indicate to parents what the rules/consequences are. Then let them choose too.
John,
Good contributions on your blog post.
Have you had the chance to visit any of these schools?
I wonder about this policy as well. Not as a matter of whether or not it should be implemented, but rather how the idea of fining students has become (at least for some) as a reasonable form of discipline while other forms of punishment — standing in a corner, dunce caps, paddles, and janitorial work — have become heresy. What is “reasonable” when it comes to controlling students in schools?
Kelly’s “kids these days” argument suggests that our current generation of children is somehow less polite, less dedicated, and less moral than the ones that preceded it. This is not a new argument. Primary documents from American educators ~100 years ago say very similar things about kids from those days. (Some of those educators used such arguments to justify tracking students, expanding vocational schools, or segregated schooling, incidentally.)
Seen in this light (i.e., discipline as a means of controlling “problem” populations in schools), I wonder how much of fining (parents of) children is tied to stereotypes about minority parents’ perceived disinvestment in parenting and their needing to be “taught” how to parent. Noble claims its policies instill character, responsibility, and citizenship in its students. I wonder if the policy isn’t also subtly punishing parents for not raising their children to conform to “reasonable” behavioral norms. Who gets to define “reasonable?”
“Reasonable” discipline seems to be continuously evolving. We no longer put dunce caps on kids to equate poor behavior with stupidity because we now acknowledge that intelligence and behavioral traits can be parsed. We no longer paddle kids because we have ascribed rights to children that didn’t previously exist and cognitive psychology has generally dismissed corporal punishment as effecting positive behavior change. Now, before any research has been done on the effects of fining (the low-income parents of) children, we seem to be leaping after it as a new way to control our perpetual “problem” populations.
Mike,
No, I haven’t visited those schools but I’d like to. Can you get me an invite?
In January I visited two No Excuses Schools in New Orleans. They were impressive and not dogmatic.
One take-away was a reminder of lost opportunities. In my experience, inner city classroom teachers would have welcomed contemporary reformers, and it is a shame that the accountability hawks jumped the gun and made us the enemy. We, who should be allies, are divided over issues like data-DRIVEN vs data-INFORMED accountability. Where is our Swift to ridicule this bloodletting as a modern civil war over breaking the small or big ends of our eggs?
The person I’m made at is Roxanna. Sounding like a candidate for being our Swift, she let out the sigh that, “comes from the thought of trying to enforce this fine at a school at which students did not opt into a “no excuses” discipline system in exchange for some of the benefits charters offer – not the least of which is being at a school where everyone has agreed to pay a $5 fine if they leave their shirts untucked.”
She also made a point that I’d forgotten. In our district the reason why middle school students aren’t assigned books is that the disappear and we run out of books because, in part, we don’t have the capacity to collect fees for the books.
And then she made made my intended point but she did so with so much better style, “Just trying to enforce a basic uniform policy at a completely non-selective district school can potentially drain all of a teacher’s time… following up on each un-served detention, leaving message after message for parents …”
What burns me, though, is she stole my theme. We’ve got “No Excuses” schools being pitted against, “Pick Your Battles Schools.”
The next battle (that we could pick not to fight) is what is wrong with educators who serve 100% of the people who walk through the door with the methods used by educators who serve 90% to 95% of the people who would walk in the door. We can get bogged down over whether neighborhood schools failure to win the battle over dress codes is due to “low expectations” or we can agree to disagree about the battles we pick in “pick your battles” schools. We could agree that the status quo, which like your pilot school tried to just “cajole,” has no credibility.We have to teach students to be students, and doing so takes respect for all stakeholders.
If No Excuses Schools want to scale up, fines are an option I wouldn’t pick. But if I was a charter advocate, I’d borrow one piece of our “pick your battles” ethos. The battle against neighborhood school educators is one that shouldn’t have been picked, and it should be ended.
I meant to write,
“The next battle (that we could pick not to fight) is what is wrong with educators who serve 100% of the people who walk through the door and who can’t used the methods educators who serve 90% to 95% of the people who would walk in the door.”
Chris K,
Good question: who decides. In this case, it’s the teachers and leaders at a school who decide, combined with the parents who get to decide whether to apply or not for lottery admission.
John, sure. DC, NY, Boston?
Quibble:
You have causality wrong in who picked the battle. Or at least: imprecise. You are correct that some policy folks pit charter v. traditional. However, most people who work in the charters don’t pick any battles. They just vie for survival.
Clarification:
Which are the schools which serve 100% of the kids who walk in the door?
Here in Boston, the typical charter high school keeps about 88% of its kids in any given year, and the typical neighborhood school keeps 83%.
If “serve” means “serve in such a way that the student is back next year,” then who’s at 100%? Your school in Oklahoma?
I taught at the original, flagship Noble campus, with Mr. Milkie as my principal. I think the system works because it is generally transparent and clear. Were you 45 min late to class? Well then you’ll have detention and pay $5. Were you on time and in uniform? Then we’re all set. Everyone can adhere to the same, clear system, and it helps create an orderly place where people all feel free to teach and learn. Teaching at the school also helps reveal that the funds do not enrich the school, but simply cover a portion of the cost of detention.
There is a part of this debate that has troubled me, and it’s the constant message that this policy is wrong because the students are poor. I think it’s because I find that rationale paternalistic. As if to say, “these students aren’t capable of following basic rules like tucking their shirts in an bring on time.” Whether you are going to fine a student to have them serve some other punishment, the point is the same: to teach them new behaviors that will allow them to learn now and be successful later. The students I taught at Noble were more than capable of coming on time to class and using appropriate language. No less capable than I was as a student. I am not comfortable saying that a strict discipline policy doesn’t belong in this school because the students are not wealthy.
The other aspect of the debate that seems paternalistic is regarding these students’ parents. It’s clear that most of the individuals involved in this protest have never been students or employees at the school (there is the same Noble parent who pops up in all the articles). The majority of the parents of Noble’s 6,000 + students have actively chosen this network of schools and its policies. Their presence is a form of endorsement that is not heard in many of these articles and discussions. But there they are, exercising their right to place their children in a school with a strict discipline policy because that is part of what they want.
I must admit that I attended a school a lot like Noble. With that lens in mind, this policy makes sense to me. I wrote the dictionary when my hair was too long, emptied trash cans when I was late to class, had to shine my shoes regularly. Having experienced these things as a student, they just did not seem so unreasonable as a teacher- especially when students were aware of what was expected of them, poor and middle class alike.
A good charter school should offer something different, so that parents, teachers, and students have a real choice. Noble offers that. I sought it out because it provided an environment where I felt I could teach. Parents and students like it because they feel it is a place where they can learn. For critics of the policy, most of whom are distant observers, there needs to be a stronger foundation for their objections than the social class of the students. People in the schools have endorsed the polices, they cross no legal or moral lines, and the schools are both popular and successful. That should suffice. These students work hard and are capable, and this policy helps create an environment where that success can happen.
@Matt – I agree with a lot of what you said. However, I you’re missing the point of much of the controversy. (Or at least from some people at other No Excuses schools who might be curious about the fees). It’s not that I doubt that the kids can behave; it’s whether the payment gets better results than just having detentions. If yes, then there might be value there. If no, then the fees might be seen as a way that Noble pushes out difficult (low-income) families – by putting additional financial pressures on them.
My guess is that the difference in behavior between detention with or without fees would be marginal, in which case adding additional financial burdens to low-income families might be in poor form. However, if I’m wrong, then all power to Noble.
Matt, I appreciate your reply, and I want to complicate your ideas a little.
Race and class figured into my comments because the parents’ race and class figure into Noble’s mission (look at demographics of the student body and the neighborhoods where the schools operate). Many education reformers over the past 100 years have attempted to intervene in the education of low-income, minoritized populations, often with very good intentions and often with curricula and disciplinary philosophies that we would reject today. I don’t think race or class have ceased being factors in the quality and types of education children receive in our country, so I think I have an obligation to raise questions along these lines. I think this is particularly true when a new, high-profile mode of discipline appears that seems targeted to a particular racial group or social class (as in the case of Noble).
You have accused critics of Noble’s system of paternalism, but I think that accusation cuts both ways. One could question the paternalism lurking in a disciplinary philosophy that believes fines are the most efficacious and ethical way to effect behavior change; that other forms of less “strict” coercion (such as a conversation, or even merits and demerits) would be somehow less effective; and, that a “strong hand” is the best way to control populations that would otherwise not listen to “basic” rules. (If the rules are so basic, why do the children need to pay $5 to be coerced to follow them?) In leveling fines, one could infer that rules considered “basic” for some people are not as basic for others. This, too, bears the mark of paternalistic thinking.
As for respecting the parents’ choice, I do, at an individual level. But the choice between CPS and Noble is a false choice because it reduces the list of possible types of education to two (the failing public school or Noble schools). How have Noble’s parents been engaged in the creation or modification of Noble’s disciplinary policy? To what extent were local parents involved in the drafting of the charter or in making revisions? How many parents sit on the school board? Do the schools have PTAs? What roles do they offer parents? If these ideas seem unreasonable, what is assumed about Noble’s parents that makes them so? A “school-knows-best” policy that involves parents to the extent they pay fines for their kids could be seen as paternalistic as well.
Finally, you make a category error by assuming that because the parents send their students to a Noble school, the parents therefore wholeheartedly endorse every aspect of the schools’ systems and programs. Even if this were the case, we would also need to consider the schools’ 33%+ 4-year attrition rate when making arguments about parents’ “choice” being counted as votes of support.
All that said, I think you have some important points. Clearly, many parents have made the choice to send their students to the school. Clearly, Noble has the right to punish students as they see fit. I’d add only that as a public institution operating on taxpayers’ dollars, I also have the right to question Noble schools’ discipline policy, particularly as it relates to questions of how education reform intersects with race and class.
Mike,
I don’t think I have the causality wrong. We in the neighborhood schools did not ask for contemporary reformers, many of whom had been allies for decades, to swoop down and attack us, and some of our most cherished values. I don’t want to go down that road, except to say that the data-driven reform movement has often aimed for “transformational,” not incrmental change. They have sought to blow up the “status quo,” thinking that creative disruption would replace it for all kids. There are two contradictory principles in the “reform” movement. One, is choice, and even though that has made life harder in neighborhood schools because it has created even more intense concentrations of generational poverty and trauma, I try to not criticze charters. I just wish you all would stop letting Duncan et. al claim you are serving the “same kids.” I wish you’d interupt in those situations and say that you serve 90% or 95% of the same kids, and you’d like to serve them all, but acknowledge that the most-difficult-to-educate kids are still being dumped on the neighborhood schools. I wish you all would come to our defense and campaign for alternative services for the most traumatized kids (kids you all don’t have to keep in such impossible numbers).
My big complaint is not charters; its the top down micromanaging and teacher-proofing, and excessive test prep that is dumped on us. I’d hope that educators in charters, who are free to test or not test as much as they want, would join with us against the Rhee/Klein/Bloomberg assault on our profession. Choice is something to be valued, and I would hope that neighborhood schools would be allowed more site-based managment. But I doubt you’d submit the the social engineering that Ackerman, Grier, Huffman, etc. are imposing. If you would’t, speak up for us.
And that gets to the question of how well we serve kids. The obvious answer is not very well. OK there is a more accurate answer but I’m trying to keep my language clean.Who can deny that education has a culture of compliance? You don’t have to agree with Deborah Meier, Diane Ravitch, Larry Cuban (who you just cited) and the others of us who have worked within the system to provide more engaging instruction, better curriculum, better pd, better, and more trusting relationships, And, yes, many in the union have taken real risks to help fire bad teachers. You don’t have to agree that public education needs unions, although if you believe you can have humane instituions for honest inquiry in entire systems, and not have unions and due process, I think you are wishing for something that never has, and never will be. But here’s what you can do.
We in the neighborhood schools have a deplorable record in regard to keeping our kids in school.(I don’t blame charter educators for making things worse, but I do blame your teacher-bashing allies.) If you can’t support the policies that we educators in neighborhood schools believe are the better approach, that’s fine. But listen to what we’re working for, and when you agree with us, join us. If you did, I bet you’d agree with us more than you agree with Rhee, Jeb, and (perhaps) Arne. Our job is hard enough without have to fight both a war against the toughest concentrations of poverty and top down “reformers” who are an existiential threat to the liberal arts, tenure, collective bargaining, holistic and engaging instruction and the principles of peer review.
@mathteacher: Yours is a difficult question, whether this same system would work without the fees, and detentions only (or without detentions, and some other ofrm altogether). On one hand, I think the school would say the fees make detention possible (it pays a portion of the teachers’ overtime to cover the session, putting the cost on the students in detention and not on everyone). Further, the school (and Laura) noted that they have some indications that fines promote a level of engagement that some staff (who were CPS teachers) felt was lacking in detention-only schools.
@Chris: I appreciate that you have raised issues like race and class in a discussion of quality education. I think most folks (yourself included) participate in discussions like these because you would like to see a historically unjust system improve. We agree there. And those who have raised these questions in Chicago are members of the public with the right to ask about the expenditure of public dollars. One of my primary concerns, however, is that the parents who are happy with the school are members of the public, too, and their voice is not really here in all of this. Their choice of enrollment is one way to measure their views, though you are right that this is an imperfect instrument.
Perhaps we have different ideas of what constitutes parental involvement, and this gets to the potential traps of paternalism that we each raised. I argued that choice in enrollment was one form, you cited board membership or PTAs as another possibility. These are but two (and not mutually exclusive) ways that schools can understand what parents want in a school. Choosing from an array of schools, all with different missions and discipline policies, is another, and Chicago has spent a decade moving towards this kind of choice for all parents. In some cases, parents have started schools of their own. In other cases, they have chosen schools like Noble. This array of choices, I think, it much wider than Noble vs. CPS, and offers parents an opportunity to support the schools they like and put pressure for change on schools they do not.
I also want to point out that this is a small portion of the school’s mission that has gotten a great deal of attention. On one level, the discipline policy has been misrepresented (students more often accumulate a series of minor infractions to incur a single, $5 detention). There are also merits and rewards, conversations about appropriate conduct in certain settings, informal warnings, words of encouragement, and without a doubt regular communication with parents. The fee is not the only piece of the disciple policy.
On another level, discipline is not the only tool Noble uses to create a quality school that can address historic injustice in American schooling. Students get opportunities to spend summers at colleges and assistance with the college application and financial aid process. There are regular outings to participate in community service and similar activities that benefit students and the community. There is a bigger picture in their service to students and families that is lost when the schools are known as the places with the $5 fee.
John, for the record:
(I hereby proclaim that) I don’t think charters typically serve “exactly the same kids” as district schools. I agree with your frame: “we serve 90% or 95% of the same kids, and we’d like to serve them all, but I acknowledge (have long said, actually) that more of the most-difficult-to-educate kids are in neighborhood schools.”
In fact to be precise: in the study of Boston autonomous charter schools and district-run pilot schools by Jon Fullerton, Josh Angrist, Tom Kane, et al, both school types had students who arrived roughly 0.2 standard deviations above the Boston district average. Which roughly squares with your number above.
And the concentration of hardest-to-educate kids is not a charter thing, either.
The hierarchy in Greater Boston which has long preceded charters…
If parents very well to do, highest of high end prep school (e.g., Roxbury Latin)
If parents well to do, high end suburban high (e.g., Newton, Weston)
If parents middle class, okay suburban high (e.g., Waltham, Watertown)
If parents low-income but student high-scoring, elite Boston schools (e.g., O’Bryant)
If parents low-income but student okay by BPS standard, “okay” open-admission Boston school (e.g., Brighton)
High schools of last resort (Burke, English) — which have the highest concentrations of hard-to-educate kids.
I would love to see Robert Reich “super vouchers” for these hardest-to-educate kids.
Who the hell knows if the 90-95% number is accurate, but kudos to you guys for putting it out there.
I agree with John re: we’re not teaching exactly the same kids as the district, but feel like the other side is misrepresenting too. They always make it seem like we take the top n% of the kids in district and cruise to good test scores because all of our kids are high achievers. This is patently false.
John, you seem to be pining for more alternative programs within districts. I think that makes sense. Thought experiment: Wouldn’t 90% of students be better off if the 10% most disruptive (not lowest-skilled), were put in their own alternative situation? Now, I know BPS does something this with the McKinley (alternative school, generally for kids who have been expelled from their schools), but I’m not sure if there is much (enough?) benefit to the other schools. I won’t second guess the teachers there, though, as they almost certainly have the most difficult job in the city.
My guess is that when framed this way, a howl of protest will come from the way left, and perhaps rightly so (no pun intended). Societally, it’s uncomfortable to commit these kids, who might be screwed from the get-go with their home lives, to what is probably a dismal future by attending an alternative school. But what if that process could help us get 95% of the rest of the kids to academic proficiency. Would it be worth it then? If 50% of kids in urban areas are dropping out anyway, would this change really make things that much worse for society as a whole?
And perhaps the model for alternative schools like this needs to be opened up to more creative thinking. There are a number of schools doing well with alternative routes in the Boston area, namely Boston Day and Evening (charter), Another Course to College (pilot) and some of the Voc-Tech schools in the burbs.
It makes me think about a much earlier post from MG who wrote about how kids can “escape” MATCH after MCAS for the less rigorous graduation standards in BPS. If we could all get more on the same page about high standards, both academic and behavioral, then the option of leaving for less rigor would be less possible for kids.
Mike,
Now I need that documented by an officer of the court with the prerequisite documentation, not assembled during contract time. Seriously, mathteacher, it bothers me that I’m going up against my liberal friends.
Re this link, there are six charters on the list (for tackling the tough problems?) and I have expereince with three and read about the other in the WSJ.
http://scholasticadministrator.typepad.com/thisweekineducation/2012/02/thompson-holding-charter-schools-accountable.html
[...] role of discipline in charter schools. Lastly, Mike Goldstein of the MATCH Charter School in Boston responds to Noble Charter Network’s discipline policy where students must pay $5 when they are given a [...]
Great article and discussion. I notice that discussions among educators tend to trend towards a search for universal principals. My business mind takes me more in the direction of “market” segmentation and identifying best practices.
Noble serves an important segment of urban poor that can be positively changed within the constraints of current education budgets: Those kids who are not good enough student to get seats in a select public high school, but who have the internal resources and family support to successfully attend a high expectations charter school. The benefit of that effort is that most Noble graduates are actually ready to attend a full-fledged university or college program.
Statements of population equivalency between Noble and traditional high school are not particularly relevant, IMO. What is relevant is that growth numbers indicate that a typical, disorganized traditional high school grad with an ACT of 16 or 17 becomes an organized young adult with an ACT of 20 at Noble.
In wealthy communities parents of middle school children who are not thriving have the option of sending their kids to private school to “shake things up”. Most low income urban middle school students are not thriving. Many are smart kids who just “get by” in school and hang around with friends who have similar behaviors. Noble is the low income parents “private school”. It’s not for everyone, but it is for a sizable percentage of the a cities high school population.
“Can a network like Noble succeed without parent fees?” is the wrong question. The right question is “HAS a school like Noble succeed without parent fees” A school that has been proven to replicate it’s success to thousand of students and many schools. I believe the answer is “no”. From my limited knowledge Noble appears to be state-of-the-art in large scale urban education.
To be effective we need to put more effort towards replicating best practices. We need to find models that best serve specific segments of low income students. I have no idea how to fix urban education. Noble seems to know how to fix a part of urban education. The fact that their solution involves fees isn’t important when compared to lifting a child out of poverty.