The Advocate: “Wesley Nakamura is teaching a sophomore algebra class at Carver Collegiate Academy in New Orleans East. A student near the front of the room raises his hand and asks to go to the restroom. Things go badly from there.
Nakamura prepares to hand over a hall pass but asks the student if he might not want to wait a few minutes. He might miss an important point. The boy, already standing, mumbles something barely audible, and Nakamura straightens. “That’s not how you talk to me,” he says firmly.
The discussion continues for another few moments, and the boy leaves for the restroom in a huff, jerking open the door with a loud thud. He doesn’t even seem to notice that sitting in the back of the room is the school’s principal, Jerel Bryant, who quickly moves to the door and calls him back for a chat.
“I don’t wanna talk!” he yells before Bryant escorts him down the hall and outside for a private discussion.
Though in some ways a typical high school scene, an incident like this encapsulates a lot about the charter school organization that runs Carver — why, by many measures, it has been hugely successful, and also why it is so persistently controversial.
The group, called Collegiate Academies, runs three high schools in New Orleans and has produced some of the best academic results in the city. Its philosophy, as with many charter schools, centers on holding students to a high standard in both academics and classroom behavior.
But this sort of “no excuses” model has also left Collegiate — and other groups like it in New Orleans — open to criticism. Its schools have some of the highest suspension rates in the state. And last month, it was hit with a formal civil rights complaint from a group of students and their families alleging a “harsh and punitive” discipline culture.
Too many students, the families argued, are being taken out of the classroom for “very minor infractions, such as speaking disrespectfully to a teacher.”
In one way, the argument between Collegiate and its critics is a dispute about plain facts. The complaint makes specific accusations, even alleging at one point that a teacher called an autistic student “stupid” and encouraged classmates to throw paper at him.
Sorting out the truth of these claims is difficult for a number of reasons. There are no names given in the complaint; statements are attributed to “Student L” or “Parent J.” And school staff for the most part cannot comment on specific allegations because of federal privacy laws, though broadly speaking they deny most of the complaint’s assertions.”
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