The Noble Street Charter School Network has been in the news recently because they assess students fees if they break school rules. Here is a quote from the Chicago News Cooperative website:
The Noble Street Charter School Network collected $188,647 in fines, which it calls “fees,” during the 2010-2011 school year across the 10 high schools it operates. Since the 2008-2009 school year, the organization has collected $386,745 in detention fees and behavior classes.
Noble schools charge students $5 for behavior infractions like “bringing chips to school” and “not looking a teacher in the eye,” and students with multiple infractions must pay $140 to take a behavior-improvement course during summer school, according to information obtained by a trio of student, parent and legal advocacy groups.
Michael Milkie, chief executive of the Noble network, confirmed the numbers and said the money “only partially defrays the costs associated with detention.” Only students with more than 12 detentions in a school year are required to take “behavior courses” in summer school, he added. All of the school’s summer courses cost $140, Milkie said, not just those required for disciplinary purposes.
“Many well-behaved students do not have a good learning environment in their high schools as their education is compromised by disruptive students,” Milkie wrote. “In addition, their education dollars are diverted to addressing the improper behavior of those disruptive students. Noble has changed that inequity by asking misbehaving students to share in the cost of addressing their behavior.”
According to their student handbook, any time that a student earns 4 demerits within a two-week period, he/she is issued a three hour detention and charged a $5 fee to cover the teacher who monitors the detention.
While everyone seems to be focused on the money that is being collected, I would like to focus on the number of infractions that had to take place in order for the school to collect $386,745! Noble does not have a zero tolerance policy. As I stated earlier, the student has to earn 4 demerits within a two-week period in order to be given a detention and assessed a $5 fee. That's a lot of infractions even when you take into account the summer courses that cost $140. What does this say about the number of discipline issues that teachers have to deal with at these schools. If there was no money involved, no one would care about the discipline issues at these schools. Why are so many students misbehaving in school? Why aren't parents teaching their children to behave and abide by the school rules?
People are saying that Noble is causing parents to make choices between basic needs and paying the fees. It seems to me that the students are forcing their parents to make that choice. When your child misbehaves and does not follow the rules, he/she is incurring the fee as a result of not abiding by the rules! As a parent, I would punish my child for not following the rules and costing me money.
Part of education is teaching respect for rules and boundaries. There are rules in all aspects of life. Your place of employment has rules, the grocery store, restaurants, hospitals, etc. If there is business attire dress code at your place of employment, you can't come to work in shorts, a t-shirt and flip flops. Your boss would discipline you according to the company policy on not adhering to the dress code. You can be asked to leave the public library for talking too loud. You will receive a $100 ticket for running a red light in Chicago. Rules are everywhere and they all have consequences.
If the child sees that the parent does not respect the rules, then the child will not respect the rules. I had a conversation with a director of a charter school who had a student who was late for school everyday because the mother said that when she was in school she didn't learn anything during the first period of the day. Parents need to accept the fact that they received the handbook which lists all of the school rules and they are responsible for informing their children of the rules.
If parents find that they can't stop their child from breaking school rules when its costing them money, they should go to another school. They should find a school that does not have such strict rules and fees. Those parents should also seek help in raising their children if they can't get them to obey and respect them. Noble parents obviously, value education or they would not have sought out a Charter School instead of attending their neighborhood school. However, the parents can't just say that they value education but only on their own terms.
As a parent of public school students I get Noble's point about students disrupting the class. My children as well as my friends' children come home regularly talking about who was misbehaving in class and giving the teacher a hard time. I also can relate to some of their strict policies. Too many schools have uniform policies in place that aren't strictly adhered to. Dressing correctly establishes a sense of professionalism. Having eye contact with the teacher while he/she is talking to the student is simply a matter of respect. So much instructional time is wasted on disciplinary issues. The well-behaved students are cheated out of their education by the students who don't know how to behave. If imposing a fee gets them to behave, then its a win, win situation for everyone because all of the students are learning and no one is incurring fees.
The bottom line is, if you can't afford to pay the fees, make sure your child abides by the rules. Abiding by the rules is free, no income required!
Filed under: Education, Parenting
Tags: Behavior Issues, Charter Schools, Discipline, Education, Noble Street Charter School Network, Parenting, Public Schools
