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NY Times, June 14 2014
New Chairman of Board at N.Y.U. Is Announced
By ARIEL KAMINER
New York University has announced a new leader for its board of
trustees, one of the largest and most powerful in American academia:
William R. Berkley, an insurance industry executive currently serving as
a board vice chairman.
Mr. Berkley will have the title of chair-designate until October 2015,
when he will officially succeed Martin Lipton, who has overseen the
university’s ambitious and controversial expansion in New York and
around the world.
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In addition to his roles at N.Y.U., he has been active at Georgetown
University, where he helped found the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace
and World Affairs. In the New York metropolitan region, he has played a
role in the charter school movement, as chairman of Achievement First,
which operates 25 schools in three states.
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http://dianeravitch.net/2013/07/10/achievement-first-boot-camp-for-kiddies/
Achievement First prides itself on its high test scores, but recent
stories report that these charters are also distinguished for
startlingly high suspension rates. Half the 5-year-olds were suspended
last year.
Dacia Toll, the Ivy League-educated leader of the charter chain,
promised to cut the suspension rate in half. Instead of suspending the
kids, apparently they will get even tougher on them in school.
I have always wondered how privileged white college graduates learned to
be so hard on impoverished black children. It is highly unlikely that
what they do in these boot camps reflects their own home life or schooling.
Here is the drill in the AF charters that gets higher test scores:
“There is an urgency in the tenor of the classrooms at Achievement First
schools; a sense that every second must be used for learning. Even on
the last day of school at the Hartford middle school, a history teacher
has a tightly structured lesson that students are clearly enjoying. She
uses a timer to ensure that small tasks — like moving the desks into a
U-shape for discussion — don’t take longer then necessary.
“The schools also have a language of their own that expedites
communication and students, for the most part, respond like a precision
team. A teacher at Bridgeport elementary schools tells her students to:
“SLANT, fold your hands and make a bubble.” Translation: Sit up
straight, listen, ask and answer questions, nod to signal engagement and
track the teacher with your eyes. And the bubble? Purse your lips and
fill your cheeks with air — a move that ensures quiet.
“For years, the Achievement First students in Hartford, New Haven and
Bridgeport, have outperformed their peers on state tests in almost all
grades and subjects. On a recent visit to Achievement First’s middle
school in Hartford, a strict disciplinary code was evident.
“In a large lecture hall with stadium seating — the “reflection room” —
two or three students who had been removed from class for behavioral
reasons sit quietly under the supervision of a staff member.
“At the front of the room, the consequences of breaking the rules and
the rewards of not doing so are spelled out on large posters that
proclaim, “You’re not a born winner, you’re not a born loser. You’re a
born chooser. Make the Right Choice!”
“And in most classrooms, two or three students wear a white shirt over
their blue school uniform, signaling that they are in “re-orientation” —
a disciplinary measure that permits them to stay in academic classes but
forbids interaction with peers and removes them from special classes
like music or physical education.”
There is something Orwellian about that “Reflection Room.” I wouldn’t
let my children or grandchildren go to such a school. Would you?
A comment posted on the article by Carol Burris, the principal of South
Side High School in New York:
“As a public school principal, if I engaged in such practices, I would
be fired. No middle class suburban parent would put up with the
systematic humiliation of their children. The “culture” is more aligned
with a communist nation than our nation.
“As for the “reflection room”–that is in-school suspension and for state
accounting purposes, it should be counted as such. These practices may
develop compliant children controlled by fear, but they will not develop
leaders who have learned self-control.”
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