Skip to main content

A Pedagogical Flower Blooms In New Haven

Some teachers and school administrators wait an entire lifetime to receive the kind of accolades liberally bestowed by Kaylani Rosado on the Amistad Academy in New Haven, the mother-school of Achievement First, a network of 32 public charter schools in Connecticut, New York and Rhode Island serving students in grades K-12.

“Too many people,” Ms. Rosado writes, “lower the bar of expectations for students like me. They accept substandard work and objectionable behavior because, deep down, they don't think we can do it, or worse, they believe we aren't worthy of the effort needed to prepare us for college and life. I benefited from a higher bar of expectation from the adults my family entrusted with my education.”


From its very first year, Amistad Academy has shown its students how they might best lift themselves up by their own bootstraps, and the school was and remains the fairest pedagogical flower in Connecticut. – so much so that it has sent out roots far and wide.

We know that the unemployment rate, particularly ruinous in cities, increases in direct proportion to the level of education. A recent presentation sponsored by the Yankee Institute featuring Dacia Toll, co-CEO of Achievement First charter schools and the co-founder of Amistad Academy, vividly underscores the importance of strong schools, particularly in inner cities.

Consider: The unemployment rate among students with less than a high school education is 11 percent -- but only 2 percent among those who have acquired more than a high school degree; 100 percent of the students enrolled in an Achievement First public charter school will gain acceptance to a college or university; 97 percent will matriculate; 50 percent are projected to graduate from college. This last figure may seem slight to some, but in fact the percentage is larger than that of college graduates who had attended school at some of Connecticut's most prestigious and successful high schools.

A number of factors have contributed to the success of Achievement First schools. Most important, according to Ms. Toll, are highly energized teachers, strong success-affirming principals and superintendents invested with the authority to shape a winning staff – though Achievement First is extremely reluctant to let go of any of its teachers, much preferring remediation -- and a team of educators willing to take seriously the advice of Chancellor of Germany Otto von Bismarck: “Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.”

It may be a sign of the times that the near miraculous success of the Achievement First paradigm is not more widely replicated. Ms. Toll, a pedagogue on fire, devoted some of her presentation to batting away common misassumptions: No, Achievement First does not skim the crème de la crème of students from the public education system. Access to Achievement First schools is non-discriminatory and much the same as that of public schools; in fact, charter schools are public schools, with one important financing difference. In Connecticut – but significantly not in New York and Rhode Island – state financing is set about 17 percent lower than public school financing. And that is why Achievement First will not in the future be expanding in Connecticut. This underfunding was hard-wired into the legislation that launched charter schools, and might be corrected were it not for…

But let Ms. Rosado tell the story: “I am continually astounded by the attacks on schools like Amistad and on students like me. What I find most disheartening, and frankly offensive, in all of the conversations about charter schools, and, specifically, Achievement First, is the opposition and outright dismissal of real results…  Charter schools have a target on their backs because they unapologetically do what is in the best interest of children. I believe that says more about our country than it does about organizations like Achievement First. When you disrupt the status quo and produce excellence and equity in a country built on the oppression of others, powerful people who rely on the status quo become threatened. While many jump to publicly bash charters, very few make it a point to speak to those of us who have experienced them. Attending an Achievement First school was the difference between surviving and thriving for me, I will never deny that fact because it makes other people feel uncomfortable.”

In an inner city public school system in which failure is tolerated – inadequate education in such failing schools has been accommodated for the last half century -- any success that threatens the status quo must be resisted: Your success calls attention to my failure. When the last Catholic school in Hartford closed this year, those in Hartford who might have saved such successful schools by instituting a system in which dollars that finance education follow the student breathed a huge sigh of relief. Pedagogical failure can only succeed by the elimination of one’s successful competitors – and THIS is what the under-financing of successful pedagogical enterprises such as the Achievement First network accomplishes.

That under-financing was hardwired into contractual statutes that established charter schools in Connecticut, virtually assuring financial failure, and the doom can only be undone through a change in statutory law. Unless Connecticut adopts a system of school financing in which money follows the child, the pedagogical success of Achievement First will continue to leach from Connecticut to New York and Rhode Island.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Donna

I am writing this for members of my family, and for others who may be interested.   My twin sister Donna died a few hours ago of stage three lung cancer. The end came quickly and somewhat unexpectedly.   She was preceded in death by Lisa Pesci, my brother’s daughter, a woman of great courage who died still full of years, and my sister’s husband Craig Tobey Senior, who left her at a young age with a great gift: her accomplished son, Craig Tobey Jr.   My sister was a woman of great strength, persistence and humor. To the end, she loved life and those who loved her.   Her son Craig, a mere sapling when his father died, has grown up strong and straight. There is no crookedness in him. Thanks to Donna’s persistence and his own native talents, he graduated from Yale, taught school in Japan, there married Miyuki, a blessing from God. They moved to California – when that state, I may add, was yet full of opportunity – and both began to carve a living for them...

The PURA soap opera continues in Connecticut: Business eyeing the exit signs

The trouble at PURA and the two energy companies it oversees began – ages ago, it now seems – with the elevation of Marissa Gillett to the chairpersonship of Connecticut’s Public Utilities Regulation Authority.   Connecticut Commentary has previously weighed in on the controversy: PURA Pulls The Plug on November 20, 2019; The High Cost of Energy, Three Strikes and You’re Out? on December 21, 2024; PURA Head Butts the Economic Marketplace on January 3, 2025; Lamont Surprised at Suit Brought Against PURA on February 3, 2025; and Lamont’s Pillow Talk on February 22, 2025:   The melodrama full of pratfalls continues to unfold awkwardly.   It should come as no surprise that Gillett has changed the nature and practice of the state agency. She has targeted two of Connecticut’s energy facilitators – Eversource and Avangrid -- as having in the past overcharged the state for services rendered. Thanks to the Democrat controlled General Assembly, Connecticut is no l...

The Murphy Thingy

It’s the New York Post , and so there are pictures. One shows Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy canoodling with “Courier Newsroom publisher Tara McGowan, 39, last Monday by the bar at the Red Hen, located just one mile north of Capitol Hill.”   The canoodle occurred one day or night prior to Murphy’s well-advertised absence from President Donald Trump’s recent Joint Address to Congress.   Murphy has said attendance at what was essentially a “campaign rally” involving the whole U.S. Congress – though Democrat congresspersons signaled their displeasure at the event by stonily sitting on their hands during the applause lines – was inconsistent with his dignity as a significant part of the permanent opposition to Trump.   Reaching for his moral Glock Murphy recently told the Hartford Courant that Democrat Party opposition to President Donald Trump should be unrelenting and unforgiving: “I think people won’t trust you if you run a campaign saying that if Donald Trump is ...