On Blaming the Victim

 Jon Sackler, chairman of ConnCAN and board member of Elm City College Prep and Achievement First charter school, sent me the following comment in a recent email:

Re: "blaming the  victim"...
 
Having closely observed Achievement First  schools for the past five years, I've come to believe that great schools stand on four indispensible legs: a well-designed curriculum; effective use of data to track student progress and teacher effectiveness; the ability to select and shape a great staff; and a strong and consistent system of values embraced and actively promoted by the staff that defines the culture inside that building.  
 
For some reason we have difficulty talking about the last piece, but without it school culture and student behavior will be defined by the standards of each student's household and community.  Solid execution of the processes that define culture is as demanding as any of the other processes that define the institution.  In the case of Achievement First, it includes a myriad of well-defined elements: Morning Circle; Town Meetings; Scholar Dollars; REACH (Respect, Enthusiasm,  Achievement, Citizenship, and Hard Work) and the 20 or so rules associated with practicing REACH; the school uniform (which is earned by the students based on their individual behavior); a language of achievement ("climbing  the mountain to college"); and so on.  When processes like these are consistently and  intelligently implemented, the serious issues of poor student motivation  and disruptive behavior are largely ameliorated and residual problems are  manageable.
 
These practices are not unique to Achievement  First schools: many of them were copied from KIPP, which no doubt copied from  others.  The baffling question about public education is why obviously  effective practices like these are not widely adopted by district-run  schools.