Confessions of a black school reformer
Here’s a post about a new book on school reform — “The Garden Path: The Miseducation of a City — by Andre Perry — that smacks opposing sides of the debate. This was written by Natalie Hopkinson. a contributing editor to The Root DC. E-mail her atNHopkinson@hotmail.com. This appeared on The Root D.C.By Natalie Hopkinson
The principal wanted the boy expelled.
“We can’t teach every child because Clarence is a terror,” he pleaded to the discipline committee. “He disrupts the environment.”
But the CEO of the charter school network balked. “Terror? He’s a 9th-grader who got into a fight. What about the bottom line? We don’t get rid of kids for childish behavior. We teach them.”
The CEO, who like the principal, was a black man with a Ph.D added: “You know what happens to boys who are expelled. They’re out of school with nothing constructive to do. Eventually they see judges…This is about giving kids a chance.”
This exchange, described in “The Garden Path: The Miseducation of a City,” written byAndre M. Perry, was fictional. But as revelations about mass expulsions at D.C. charter