Is This Progress?

Normal disclaimers: This is my personal opinion and I’m not speaking in an official capacity for KIPP Philadelphia or KIPP more broadly.

Too many schools who serve black and brown students are profoundly unsafe for kids. Physical fights, verbal abuse, and severe bullying are not just common; they are constant presences that permeate all aspects of schooling. It’s not just bullying in the bathroom or chaotic cafeterias, it’s students being constantly on edge that even in the their own classroom a group of students may rush in and assault you during math class. This is real and it’s heartbreaking and education policy often glosses over the harsh realities many students suffer from.

So I get why teachers and school leaders feel the need to basically take any measure to create a safe learning environment. But schools that approach their own students from a deficit mindset, operating under a belief that giving students any freedom will invariably start the school sliding down a slippery slope towards chaos are doing their students almost as much harm as schools that allow physical violence to define their students’ school experience.

Two recent examples remind me of how far the charter community needs to come in these areas. A few weeks ago, I was talking to a teacher at another local charter school that has a pretty good reputation who teaches early elementary and she shared some details about her school that I found pretty disturbing. Her students are not allowed to talk and socialize at breakfast or lunch; they get no recess, and don’t have PE. Even in the classroom, instruction is super rigid and kids are expected to sit with their hands folded all day with perfect posture. I’m trying to think of a description of this school that is less dramatic than child abuse – remember these are 5 and 6 year olds – but a suitable substitution escapes me.

Secondly, in a recent article in Chalkbeat that summarizes some evolution in charter school discipline practices, a charter school in NYC shows how far they have come by talking about how in prior years students coming to school in the “wrong” color socks were sent to the discipline dean’s office, but now the school helpfully stocks extra socks so students can change and get to class. It’s apparently not an option to allow students to wear whatever color socks they prefer, because of course there are many studies linking sparkly blue socks to students acting out in class or yellow stripped socks to lower test scores so we need put a stop to that immediately. This is not progress that anyone should be proud of. 

Creating schools that are full of love, joy, positive relationships, and that operate from the essential position that kids are inherently good, while at the same time meeting the very real needs that some students bring with them to school caused by poverty, trauma, and racism is not easy. But doing anything less just isn’t good enough and we need to stop acting like it is.