{"id":83122,"date":"2022-08-22T11:23:56","date_gmt":"2022-08-22T16:23:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=83122"},"modified":"2022-08-22T11:23:56","modified_gmt":"2022-08-22T16:23:56","slug":"the-emancipation-of-no-expectations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=83122","title":{"rendered":"The Emancipation Of No Expectations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I listen to NPR, on occasion. I do it so you don’t have to. Freedom isn’t free. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And in and among the hours and hours of bald-faced Democrat public relations and PR, you find the occasional nugget of brilliance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On occasion, that brilliance is utterly in spite of any original intentions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such is this hour-long documentary by one DJ Cashmere – which I thought was a hip-hop stage name for a moment, but is in fact the name of a nebbishy-sounding former high school teacher at “Nobles Street School”, a “chain” of Chicago-area “no-nonsense” charter schools. Cashmere went on to become a journnalist…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…under which guise he came back to report on<\/a>, as “APM Reports” says:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this hour, DJ, who is white, revisits his old school as it tries to reinvent itself as an anti-racist institution. And he seeks out his former students to ask them how they felt about being on the receiving end of all that education reform, and what they think now about the time they spent in his classroom.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

While I eschew the term “dog whistle” as a way of slighting other points of view, the story is full of terms that both sides have staked out, for and against. The blurb notes “At the time, Noble followed a popular model called “no excuses.” Its schools required strict discipline but promised low-income students a better shot at college.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That discipline included uniforms, plus some pretty rigid behavioral expectations; being late, disruptive, or tardy with homework was not tolerated; detentions flew like spitballs for infractions, not only of disciplinary rules, but for being in class late or having uniforms out of spec. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

No education model is a panacaea<\/em>, but Noble Street had good results – good enough that close to 10% of Chicago families, overwhelmingly “of color” and low income (just like Twin Cities charter schools) put their kids in Noble Street schools. There were exceptions. When dealing with human beings, nothing is ever foolproof. But pretty much every objective measure – graduation rates, test scores, college acceptance rates, crime rates – showed the concept worked well for most kids. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…well, the blurb mentions the dramatic peak; management at Noble Street changed. Noble Street’s “no excuses” values were patriarchal, colonial and, despite the overwhelming approval of the overwhelmingly of-color clientele who’d voted with their and their kids’s feet to get into Noble, “white supremacist”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so they changed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As to the results?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can listen to the story here<\/a> (I can’t embed it, unfortunately). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like all human behavior, there are as many sides to the story as there are people. But it’s a lede that one might suspect public radio would bury, and you’d be at least partly right. The results that parents were looking for – the sort of accomplishment based measures that modern Big Left has called “patriarchal” and “white supremacist” – didn’t fare well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s worth an (occasionally infuriating) listen. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I listen to NPR, on occasion. I do it so you don’t have to. Freedom isn’t free. And in and among the hours and hours of bald-faced Democrat public relations and PR, you find the occasional nugget of brilliance. On occasion, that brilliance is utterly in spite of any original intentions. Such is this hour-long […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=83122"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83159,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83122\/revisions\/83159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=83122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=83122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=83122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}