My, Oh My, He’s a Cunning Fox

Ben Chavis is out and about, gloriously soaking up the attention for the “miracles” he has produced. After all, it was Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Milton Friedman-loving bodybuilder-turned-action-hero-actor-turned-governor-of-California, who visited Chavis’ school (one-half mile from my home in Oakland, California) in 2006, and stated:

"I was really impressed; everything I've read about this school is absolutely true," he said after touring the American Indian Public Charter School, off MacArthur Boulevard in the Laurel District. "It is an education miracle."

So who am I to challenge this claim?

One of Chavis’s more recent forays into the national public limelight resulted in an incident lovingly described by Whitney Tilson, a top elite-school-trained investment manager, minor TV business celebrity, and aggressively connected Democratic, "no excuses" charter-school adoring, neo-liberal education reformer who resides in Manhattan posts his family photos for public viewing of YouTube and Picasa, and sends his own children to the exclusive upper West Side private school which served as the inspiration for Gossip Girls.

At a public education forum last April, Tilson witnessed Ben Chavis’ aggressive verbal attack on New York City Council Member Charles Barron. According to Tilson, Barron was approached by Chavis who said,

“You're a mother f-ing black pimp, you're f-ing our kids. Come to the reservation and I'll beat your ass. You want our kids to take Home Ec? YOU should wear a dress!"

Lovely, just lovely – what a great behavior to model for his students who hope to find success in the larger society.

For those of us in Oakland who have been experiencing Chavis for years, hearing something like this was nothing new. I wonder if someone will happen to provoke him while he’s out on his book tour; whatever comes out of his mouth is sure to shock. But I wouldn't be surprised to learn that some of his handlers or ed reform patrons have admonished him to tone down his remarks. His words may titillate some people, but will repulse many more others.

Chavis’ cocky, rude public personality is not the biggest pet peeve I have about the glamorization of the American Indian Public Charter Schools. It’s that no “miracles” have been produced at the schools, yet the myth keeps getting perpetuated.

One of Ben Chavis’ major "innovations" is that he has narrowed the type of student (and parent!) who uses his schools. I’d describe his technique as "lower income parent ability grouping," along with careful culling of high performing, brown-skinned kids, such as the children of the local public elementary school principal.

Chavis has never shown that he can wrought change with the original type of student who attended AIPCS before his arrival, and these are the students who are the most needy, most resistant, and most challenging.

To me this very important detail is the one I try to impress on people by revealing the demographic changes and some personal anecdotes, such as the astonishment of a local public middle school teacher I knew who upon learning that that one of her former sixth grade students (who had transferred to AIPCS for seventh grade and was quoted in the paper remarking how well he was doing there) said, “But he was a straight-A student when he was here!”

For some reason, my argument (which I think is a very good one) rarely gets a direct response from AIPCS/Chavis defenders. They just continue on in their unbroken stride of praising the school and its accomplishments. The next level of discussion never gets reached, which is: Since traditional public schools must serve ALL types of families and students – making it impossible for them to duplicate the Chavis model – is there anything at all in the AIPCS story which could be used to make positive changes elsewhere?

Honestly, we must face the fact that Chavis’ magic only works with compliant students and parents. If they aren’t sufficiently compliant, they either don’t apply to the school, or they withdraw from it when they realize that what goes on there is just too much.

Automatically, the school contains a set of students and parents who are pre-dedicated to doing exactly what Chavis demands in terms of school assignments, attending school, and behaving well.

What principal wouldn't succeed under those circumstances?

The school’s approach is well known by now. Students and parents are required to commit to a behavior contract, of which there is the expectation of strict adherence. Parents and students are made aware of the specific consequences for not meeting those expectations, then the school is given full authority to act in whatever way it needs to in order to enforce the expectations.

For the students/parents who stray off course, Ben Chavis' model is to apply intense pressure on them in an attempt to force compliance, and I’m sure it works in many cases. Humiliation and fear of being humiliated can work wonders; it's a well-known torture tool.

The consequences for non-compliance probably range from reasonable to intolerable, depending on one’s personal view. I personally wouldn’t mind if my children were forced to pick up garbage if they were caught littering, but I would have a huge problem if the principal dressed them down by screaming profanity in their faces.

At any rate, the pressure does become so intense at AIPCS that students and parents will withdraw from the school if they are unable or unwilling to comply. Over time, this distills the school's population into an ever-more-compliant and timid set of students and parents; a certain factor in making test scores rise.

Just think what all our schools would be like if they only contained students and families who had been whittled down to be the ones who were most compliant? This situation is probably every principal’s and teacher’s ultimate fantasy.

So the next big question for me is why doesn’t my school district give the traditional public schools some sharper teeth so they can demand and enforce compliance, too? And how much, realistically, could students and parents be actually forced to comply? I’m talking about forcing them to show up in classes on time, where they are forced to do the assigned work and behave appropriately. No excuses. What happens to the ones which don’t comply might have to be actually addressed at some point.

I will say loud and clear that many urban secondary school parents and teachers long for stronger, more consistently-followed discipline policies at their schools. For some reason, there is a lack of motivation at administrative levels, and a lack of manpower or know-how to implement the policies which exist. Rather than taking the time to become involved and pressure the schools to deal with this situation, many of the most compliant and responsible parents just flee the system to the suburbs or the charters – causing mechanical erosion of the public schools.

In the meantime, public school districts could either make a choice of just sitting by and watching more and more of their most compliant and responsible families get siphoned off by charter schools which are permitted to operate by different rules, or they could become proactive and find a way to give their traditional public schools sharper teeth for competing with the charters. Or, the districts could actually insist that charters take, and keep, their fair share of the most difficult-to-educate students.

Ben Chavis presence in the media is all about sensationalism. The attention he constantly gets is totally out of proportion to his accomplishments because, given the big picture, only a tiny number of students have ever attended his schools. It’s as if no public school students in Oakland have ever produced high test scores, which just isn’t true. They’re out there, you know, just not collected in one spot.

So despite his 15 minutes of fame, Chavis overall contribution to improving schools and public education reform will prove to be negligible, because it will be impossible to take his cherry-picking approach to scale. And although in my opinion many schools could definitely use more structure and consistent discipline, it's only the dream of people like Tilson – who are quite out of touch with the realities in these schools – that widespread strict compliance can be forced upon the hungry, neglected, and very angry children of our vast underclass.

A few weeks ago, when Chavis’ commentary entitled, “Who says public schools need more money?” appeared on CNN.com (a feat no doubt arranged by his book promoters; I guess a movie, mugs and t-shirts are next), he failed to mention that his own schools have been the recipients of generous supplementary funding courtesy of the Walton Family Foundation.* It is known in Oakland that when Chavis was on-site as the AIPCS principal, he only drew a negligible salary because he had considerable personal income sources from elsewhere (property ownership). That difference probably accounts for how he helped pay for some extras at his school, like giving cash rewards to students. No extra money needed, indeed.

Here’s one last piece of local gossip about AIPCS recently relayed to me by another local parent. It might be true or not, but the source is definitely reliable. Apparently, an AIPCS student who was sick with Swine Flu and was coughing blood a few weeks ago was told by the school to “come anyway.” What a great example of “no excuses” perfect attendance, which is worth any cost to some, I suppose.

*Information from the National Center for Charitable Statistics:
2005 Form 990 (for grants given in 2004)

- American Indian Public Charter School = $20,000
In 2004-05, the total student enrollment was 150 kids. Only one school was in operation. From his Walton sources, Chavis received an additional $133.33 to spend on each student that year.

2006 Form 990 (for grants given in 2005)
- American Indian Public Charter School = $230,000
In 2005-06, the total student body was 196 kids. Only one school was in operation. From his Walton sources, Chavis received an additional $1173.47 to spend on each student that year.

2007 Form 990 (for grants given in 2006)
- American Indian Public High School = $230,000
In 2006-07, the total student body of this high school was 72 kids. Two schools were in operation that year, AIPCS and AIPHS. From his Walton sources, Chavis received an additional $3194.44 to spend on each student at his high school that year.

I would expect that Chavis applied for/and received additional financial support from other pro-charter organizations, but these figures are all I had quick access to.

The Disadvantages of an Elite Education

Periodically I’ll take a look at Whitney Tilson’s blog. The first time I became aware of Tilson was when word went out about his account of Ben Chavis’ verbal attack on New York City Council Member Charles Barron at Sharpton’s National Action Network EEP forum. Chavis, Oakland’s notorious and poorly-behaved American Indian Public Charter School founder, had been invited to sit on the panel.

According to Tilson, Chavis approached Barron and said, “You're a mother f-ing black pimp, you're f-ing our kids. Come to the reservation and I'll beat your ass. You want our kids to take Home Ec? YOU should wear a dress!"

For those of us in Oakland who have been experiencing Chavis for years, hearing something like this was nothing new. But then there was Whitney Tilson’s enthusiastic response of, “I LIKE this guy!”

Tilson's day job is as the founder and managing partner of a New York company that manages investments. He also writes about financial investing and is a minor TV business celebrity. He has posted some of his appearances on YouTube.

In addition to the things above, Tilson's super-intense hobby is being involved with education reform-minded things. He co-founded Democrats for Education Reform, and is on the board of directors of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. He has spoken to Philanthropy Roundtable members, guiding and reinforcing their K-12 education philosophy. Tilson is a huge fan of Joel Klein, according to whom he meets regularly, he adores Michelle Rhee, and Jay Green gives him praise.

Whitney Tilson was the first person to join Wendy Kopp as a founding member of Teach For America. He is the vice chairman of KIPP Academy Charter Schools in NYC. All-in-all he is a big pro-charter, pro-voucher cheerleader of TFA and KIPP; possibly the ultimate neo-liberal education reformer of our day.

Tilson explains on his blog that his parents spent most of their careers doing international development. His interest in education came about because of both the work of his parents and from his experience with TFA.

“I remember the many times, going back to my teenage years, that she [his mother] reminded me of all the good fortune I’ve had in my life and told me that I had a duty to give back and make the world a better place.”

A photo posted online reveals that he was a high school student at Northfield Mount Hermon School (where today's current tuition, room, and board charge is $43,400+, and $30,500+ for day students). He attended Harvard, and eventually Harvard Business School. His education trajectory is very much like Duncan and Obama's.

Tilson invites his readers to look at the photos and videos of KIPP celebrations which he has posted online. I was surprised to see them intertwined with photos and videos of his personal life, and have no idea why someone involved in a controversial, public topic would do such a thing. But since he made them available to the world and I'm a curious person, I thought I’d take a look. I’m fascinated with trying to understand the make-up of people who think so differently from me. For some reason, or the other, I keep looking for a bridge.

The photos and videos feature the travel and activities of an extraordinarily privileged American family; Machu Picchu, Kenya, Prague, Jackson Hole, skiing, golfing, water skiing, private plane flying, white-water rafting, paragliding, and on and on and on. It strikes me that Whitney Tilson is one entitled dude. Incidentally, I learned that his children attend a private school who a mother described as "one of the most elite girls’ schools in the nation." It has a student to faculty ratio of 7:1 and its tuition is around $34,000/year. No public schools will be experienced here.

This all brings me to a fascinating and useful article I discovered during my googling of “elite schools,” The Disadvantages of an Elite Education by William Deresiewicz, a literary critic and former Yale professor. I love how he begins his piece:

It didn’t dawn on me that there might be a few holes in my education until I was about 35. I’d just bought a house, the pipes needed fixing, and the plumber was standing in my kitchen. There he was, a short, beefy guy with a goatee and a Red Sox cap and a thick Boston accent, and I suddenly learned that I didn’t have the slightest idea what to say to someone like him. So alien was his experience to me, so unguessable his values, so mysterious his very language, that I couldn’t succeed in engaging him in a few minutes of small talk before he got down to work. Fourteen years of higher education and a handful of Ivy League degrees, and there I was, stiff and stupid, struck dumb by my own dumbness. “Ivy retardation,” a friend of mine calls this. I could carry on conversations with people from other countries, in other languages, but I couldn’t talk to the man who was standing in my own house.

Here are nine additional excerpts which not only relate to Tilson and TFA, but also to the current state of education reform, the vision of which has been conceived, and is being pushed, by our nation’s elite. The article also gives us a clue as to why other social classes are being excluded from participating in important conversations about their own schools. Deresiewicz writes:

(1) It’s not surprising that it took me so long to discover the extent of my miseducation, because the last thing an elite education will teach you is its own inadequacy. As two dozen years at Yale and Columbia have shown me, elite colleges relentlessly encourage their students to flatter themselves for being there, and for what being there can do for them. The advantages of an elite education are indeed undeniable. You learn to think, at least in certain ways, and you make the contacts needed to launch yourself into a life rich in all of society’s most cherished rewards. To consider that while some opportunities are being created, others are being cancelled and that while some abilities are being developed, others are being crippled is, within this context, not only outrageous, but inconceivable.

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(2) The first disadvantage of an elite education, as I learned in my kitchen that day, is that it makes you incapable of talking to people who aren’t like you. Elite schools pride themselves on their diversity, but that diversity is almost entirely a matter of ethnicity and race. With respect to class, these schools are largely—indeed increasingly—homogeneous.

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(3) At the same time, because these schools tend to cultivate liberal attitudes, they leave their students in the paradoxical position of wanting to advocate on behalf of the working class while being unable to hold a simple conversation with anyone in it. Witness the last two Democratic presidential nominees, Al Gore and John Kerry: one each from Harvard and Yale, both earnest, decent, intelligent men, both utterly incapable of communicating with the larger electorate.

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(4) My education taught me to believe that people who didn’t go to an Ivy League or equivalent school weren’t worth talking to, regardless of their class. I was given the unmistakable message that such people were beneath me. We were “the best and the brightest,” as these places love to say, and everyone else was, well, something else: less good, less bright.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

(5) [Elite universities] …select for and develop one form of intelligence: the analytic. While this is broadly true of all universities, elite schools, precisely because their students (and faculty, and administrators) possess this one form of intelligence to such a high degree, are more apt to ignore the value of others. One naturally prizes what one most possesses and what most makes for one’s advantages. But social intelligence and emotional intelligence and creative ability, to name just three other forms, are not distributed preferentially among the educational elite. The “best” are the brightest only in one narrow sense. One needs to wander away from the educational elite to begin to discover this.

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(6) Elite institutions are supposed to provide a humanistic education, but the first principle of humanism is Terence’s: “nothing human is alien to me.” The first disadvantage of an elite education is how very much of the human it alienates you from.

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(7) The second disadvantage, implicit in what I’ve been saying, is that an elite education inculcates a false sense of self-worth… It’s been said that what those tests [SAT, GRE, and other numerical rankings] really measure is your ability to take tests, but even if they measure something real, it is only a small slice of the real. The problem begins when students are encouraged to forget this truth, when academic excellence becomes excellence in some absolute sense, when “better at X” becomes simply “better.”

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(8) One of the great errors of an elite education, then, is that it teaches you to think that measures of intelligence and academic achievement are measures of value in some moral or metaphysical sense. But they’re not. Graduates of elite schools are not more valuable than stupid people, or talentless people, or even lazy people. Their pain does not hurt more. Their souls do not weigh more.

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(9) This is not to say that students from elite colleges never pursue a riskier or less lucrative course after graduation, but even when they do, they tend to give up more quickly than others… Because students from elite schools expect success, and expect it now. They have, by definition, never experienced anything else, and their sense of self has been built around their ability to succeed. The idea of not being successful terrifies them, disorients them, defeats them. They’ve been driven their whole lives by a fear of failure—often, in the first instance, by their parents’ fear of failure.

We need to have a public discussion about the extent of the patronizing contempt for the middle-class-on-down held by some of those in the non-public school using elite, and how it is manifesting itself in the way our public education system is being treated and where education reform is being headed. The People who actually use the public schools, and the providers who work in them, are being excluded from important decisions on both the local and national levels.
The response by the elite is always about how much they are trying to "help." Sorry, I just don't buy that, especially because so many of the reforms are being pushed onto communities after the elite arranges for general public input to be forcefully disengaged.*

Before a reader charges me with inciting class warfare, I hope they realize how much class tension is already there, and growing by the minute. Think of these entries as reports about what is going on at the ground level.

*Remember Joe Williams' (Tilson's buddy) description in his report for the Center of Education Reform of a desirable "politics free zone" conveniently created by the state control of Oakland's school district, and which opened the door for Eli Broad's reform ideas to be implemented?