Horror Inside: A No Excuses Charter School #SCW
It’s school choice week! Today Cloaking Inequity has an exclusive story written by Jennifer Ventimiglia, a veteran charter school teacher. She describes the “no excuses” practices and teacher quality issues plaguing the first charter school established in Oakland.
The story has two parts. Tomorrow I will run the conclusion.
When I agreed to work at Oakland Charter Academy (OCA) this past fall, I had no idea I would be agreeing to submit to an archaic and punitive belief system authored and directed by a man who calls himself the “The King”OCA first opened as Jingletown Charter in 1993. Jingletown was the first charter school granted in Oakland and one of the first in California. It sought to create a safe alternative for neighborhood kids with a vision based on community involvement, multiculturalism, and bilingualism. As The King tells it, however, when he went to visit the school before a job interview in 2004, “Kids were running around like fools,” and “It was the biggest crock of shit” he had ever seen in his life.Only having recently relocated to the Bay Area myself, I cannot attest to what the school was like at this time, however, I can speak to what this charter school has become.On the first day of school about 200, 6th-8th graders nervously gathered in the cafeteria, huddled together around long benches. There was a low, excited murmur as the new Site Director stood to address the student body. “Shut up! Shut up!” were his first words, Horror Inside: A No Excuses Charter School #SCW – Cloaking Inequity: