The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Allison Steele recently did a lovely feature the Camden School District’s innovative practices on school suspensions. Here’s two key graphs: 

Camden is one of a growing number of school districts nationwide that are experimenting with alternatives to suspensions, including training teachers in de-escalation techniques and, in one elementary school, a “calm room” for time-outs.

District officials say the early results are promising: As of late February in the 2015-16 school year, 1,005 students in the district had been suspended, according to spokesman Brendan Lowe. This year, that number was 436.

Good for the school district, and good for Camden resident Sean Brown who was pushing this for quite some time before it changed. The article also touched on the “no excuses” schools that continue to open in Camden, including Mastery: 

LaQuanda Jackson, principal of McGraw Elementary, a public-charter hybrid Renaissance school in East Camden, said her school no longer follows the no-excuses model.

“Kids should come to school and feel joy,” she said. “And the no-excuses policy is lacking in that.”

Now, she said, administrators work with staff on recognizing implicit biases around race and other perspectives, and help them build relationships with students. The previous model, she said, sometimes built walls between student and teacher.

“It worked for Mastery for a while,” she said. “But as with all things, when you know better, you do better. We learned there was a better way.”

First of all, this is great to see. And to the extent it’s true, it’s wonderful news. But it also points out the hypocrisy of the continued growth of Renaissance Schools in the city. These schools — Mastery, Kipp and Uncommon — were specifically brought here because of their No Excuses model and the results associated with it. Mastery has been trying to move away from the model, but finding its scores drop as a result — as this wonderful piece by WHYY titled “Has Mastery Lost its Mojo?”

After year one of this change, Mastery’s test scores plummeted. The same was true at schools across the state — the new batch of tests was expected to be more difficult than their predecessors. Mastery’s braintrust noticed, however, that their math scores seemed to drop further than most.

The network’s leaders didn’t panic. They’d already accounted for some growing pains during this organization-wide pivot. Plus, there were all sorts of positive indicators in terms of student retainment, discipline trends, and teacher satisfaction.

Then the second year of test scores came out this summer.  Little changed. Mastery schools were still, on the whole, performing worse than they had prior to the shift away from “no excuses.” The pattern was especially obvious in mathematics.

Up and down the organization people were devastated.

KIPP in Camden is going through a similar process — trying to offer more arts and move away from prescriptive, test-prep based education with high disciplines — but still suspending students at a much higher rate than its peer schools. 

The No Excuses model was always predatory — scores went modestly up through a disciplined regiment that prioritized test scores over both children and children’s learning.

Remember this the next time Camden politicians try to sell a miracle to the city — this miracle was built on the back of a model that these schools now readily acknowledge that “no-excuses policy is lacking” joy. And now these schools are shifting their models and struggling like the rest of their peers. 

This week we’re going to see teachers and staff fired from the Camden School District, in large part because Renaissance Schools continue to expand and dollars follow students. But the reason these schools were brought here — the results that come from no excuses schooling — is now readily acknowledged as a problematic model that seeks to police students. This was a shame when it happened. It’s even more of a shame now.