Shocker number two: This report on Oakland’s incredibly successful American Indian Public Charter School comes from the ultra liberal Los Angeles Times:
Not many schools in California recruit teachers with language like this: “We are looking for hard working people who believe in free market capitalism…Multi-cultural specialists, ultra liberal zealots, and college-tainted oppression liberators need not apply.”
That, it turns out, is just the beginning of the ways in which American Indian Public Charter and its two sibling schools spit in the eye of mainstream education. These small, no-frills, independent public schools in the hardscrabble flats of Oakland sometimes seem like creations of television’s “Colbert Report.” They mock liberal orthodoxy with such zeal that it can seem like a parody.
School administrators take pride in their record of frequently firing teachers they consider to be underperforming. Unions are embraced with the same warmth accorded “self-esteem experts, panhandlers, drug dealers and those snapping turtles who refuse to put forth their best effort,” to quote the school’s website…
Among the thousands of public schools in California, only four middle schools and three high schools score higher. None of them serve mostly underprivileged children.
At American Indian, the largest ethnic group is Asian, followed by Latinos and African Americans. Some of the schools’ critics contend that high-scoring Asian Americans are driving the high test scores, but blacks and Latinos do roughly as well — in fact, better on some tests…
The short answer is that American Indian attracts academically motivated students, relentlessly (and unapologetically) teaches to the test, wrings more seat time out of every school day, hires smart young teachers, demands near-perfect attendance, piles on the homework, refuses to promote struggling students to the next grade, and keeps discipline so tight that there are no distractions or disruptions. Summer school is required.
Back to basics, squared
We’re not sure what gives us more pleasure: the success of the school or the turmoil it must cause over at the California teachers union headquarters.
Source: LA Times via Ace of Spades
