Inside story of the charter school cited as an ‘urban education model’ by Bill and Melinda Gates
Phillip Howard is a 17-year-old student who attends Truman Middle College High School. He previously attended the Chicago International Charter School (CICS) Northtown Academy for two years. He completed two years at CICS Northtown before transferring to another high school this year. He spoke to Substance about his charter school experience.
Question: Can you tell us a little about your educational background?
Phillip Howard: I am a 17-year-old senior who will graduate from Truman Middle College this year. I attended CICS (Chicago International Charter School) Bucktown K-8 elementary school for three years. Before that I attended Brenneman Elementary School. I had really good teachers at the Bucktown school, much better than at Brenneman, which is K-5. It is a school I would recommend for my (younger) sister.
Question: And then you attended the Chicago International Charter School Northtown Academy High School on Pulaski and Peterson. What was that like your first year?
Phillip Howard stands in front of the former Good Counsel High School — now the “Chicago International Charter School, Northtown Academy Campus” — at 3900 W. Peterson in Chicago. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.
PH: I started at CICS in September 2004. It was mainly all the kids who went to my school (CICS Bucktown). It was like I never left my grammar school. There were also a lot of white kids from the suburbs. And a lot of girls from Good Counsel. Before becoming a Chicago charter public school, the school was an all-girls Catholic high school. There was only one boy who graduated from that first senior class in June 2005, my freshman year. It’s the only high school in the area in Sauganash. The kids either didn’t get into Northside College Prep, or Taft is too far away. There were about 20 kids in a class and 150 freshmen.
There was [a] teacher who was not very good... She would just give us worksheets and... say, 'You guys are going to fail'. Well of course we're going to fail..."Question: How were your teachers?
PH: My teachers were extremely young; usually they were first-year teachers. I also had some older teachers who knew what they were doing. I’ll give you an example. In my English class I had a teacher. Her name was Ms. M____. She was a very good teacher — you actually learned from her. If you paid attention, you would learn, or else you just didn’t pay attention and you didn’t want to get it. She made it clear we were there to learn and not play games. She was about 35. She had been to a lot of places and could tell you a lot about different people and things. She went to a university in Massachusetts and earned a Masters. She also did editing. If you wrote a paper it had to be really good [to score well]. She didn’t give a lot of A's.
There was another teacher I thought was not very good. Ms. K_____ from Kansas. A lot of the kids backtalked to her. She was emotionally wound up. She would say, ‘You guys are not going to make me quit teaching.’ She would always talk about her life — how her father’s a surgeon and her sister and cousins went to Stanford. She was a part of the Kansas elite. She would just give us worksheets and expect us to know what to do. So we basically just cheated off of everybody. She never taught us how to do a bibliography. She said just do this and this, and then she’d say you did it all wrong. She then told us she moved to Chicago for all the wrong reasons, for this guy who had a motorcycle. She was a horrible teacher. She would say, ‘You guys are all going to fail.’ Well of course we’re all going to fail.
Question: Did you complain about this to the administration?
PH: Some kids complained, but we thought she had a Masters and they wouldn’t get rid of her. She would start to teach whenever the Principal came in. She was an emotional wreck and wishy-washy. I was laughing once in class and she gave me a detention. The kids actually made her cry.
Question: Did she stay?
PH: No, she quit. That was the problem. There was a higher turnover rate for teachers than students.
Question: Why do you think there is a high turnover of teachers?
PH: I guess they didn’t pay them enough cause I would hear teachers complain that I only make what amounts to something like $15 an hour, and if you had a Masters and taught for a long time, then it would be $35 an hour.
Question: What is the racial ethnic make up of the teachers and students at the school?
PH: They were all white teachers, mostly white female. There was not one black teacher and the school had about 10 percent black students. "When I put down that I'm African-American, Mrs. K said, "Oh, come on... you're not black enough."There were about between 30 and 40 percent Latino students, but not one Latino teacher when I was there. There were about two percent Asian, but all the Asian kids left.
The rest of the students were white. When I put down that I’m African- American, Ms. K______ said, “Oh, come on, you’re not African American. You’re not black enough. Your parents must be lying.” Perhaps because I wasn’t dark enough in their eyes. I definitely got a lot more privileges than the other black students. I sent hate mail to the school and a black kid did something much less harsh and he got suspended and they tried to expel him. They just made me sit in the lunchroom. A white girl was caught smoking weed and she lived in Sauganash with all the white people. She got suspended for a week, but still got to go on all the field trips. But after they caught a Latino student (smoking marijuana), he was kicked out.
Question: What was the school’s disciplinary policy in terms of suspensions and expulsions?
PH: When I left the school last year, they started kicking out a lot of students. It was not so many when I was a freshman. The class where I would be graduating now has only 50 kids and they started out with 150 kids. It’s mostly all white kids in the sophomore class. All the Latino kids are in the freshman and senior classes. The junior class is all white too.
Question: How did the different races of students get along?
PH: Not too many of the African-American kids stayed. I think it was because of the culture shock cause there are so many white kids. They were not used to hearing people saying, “Why do you dress like that, you’re not in the ghetto. We call the cops here. The cops are our friends. You have ghetto hair and ghetto shoes and the way you talk is ghetto.” If you don’t sound educated, they’ll eat you up. They would be like if you’re like black, then you got a problem. I felt a sense of racism.
Question: Now you are attending a regular Chicago Public high school? How is this experience different?
PH: It’s a lot more mixed. It’s not so conservative. "Everything they taught you was straight from a book."There are lots of kids from different backgrounds. Lots of the kids are from working class backgrounds. The teachers are pretty cool. They try to help you, like if you need a job, they’ll help. If you need money, they’ll even help you with that.
Question: What role did money play in the charter high school you attended?
PH: At Northtown, there were no free lunches. Most of the kids would qualify for free lunches (at Truman Middle College), but none qualified for free lunches at the charter school. When you hear a girl cry that daddy didn’t let her drive the BMW last night, or I went out clubbing the other night with daddy’s credit card, or I live in the biggest house on the block, it’s a bit too much. A lot of the kids at Truman were working.
Question: Is it true that the Gates Foundation is heavily connected to the Chicago International Charter School you attended?
PH: I met Melinda Gates. There were a lot of rich folks and rich parents coming to my school. A girl at our school was related to the Wrigley family. They got computers and books from Gates and other contributors. We had a lot of computers. They rewired all the school. But when I was there there was just one interactive board on the wall in my math class. Now they want that in all the classes. And all the computers in the rooms and library are brand new. Melinda Gates came for a visit. I had to show these groups around. I was in this elitist group (“Ambassador Club”) where you had to promote the school where you go around and tell good things about it to the guests and make sure all the rooms are in order. We were paraded as model students to Gates. They selectively picked you by how you acted and how you looked.
Question: So you were like Barak Obama — somebody white people could accept because you look clean and attractive and sound well-educated?
PH: Exactly. We would get points for this, being out of class like on a field trip. I didn’t have to eat lunch at the school, they took you to restaurants. I think Melinda paid for one of our lunches. I got tired of it. I "You could easily pay $10 for a lunch..."didn’t like to get out of class and just get an easy A. I’m the kind of kid who wanted to learn something, not parade around the rich folk who want to ooh and ahh and have nothing better to do than drink.
Question: Did the former Catholic school still play a role in the charter school?
PH: In terms of classes or teachers, no. But they rent the school out from the Sisters — a Catholic Convent that was formerly connected to the school. The nuns are selling lots of things like pencils and binders at the school. And the lunches are expensive. I say you can easily pay $10 for a lunch. All these white people who live in the suburbs or the area came in to do the lunches and I would just have to spend more money for lunch.
Question: You say the school is comprised of a majority of white students. Where do they come from?
PH: Many of the students come from the suburbs. For some reason, their parents gave money to the school. One kid’s parents wrote out a check for $50,000 and gave it to the school cause they needed something. I think he was from Wilmette. They were from Wilmette, Evanston and even as far away as Hoffman Estates. A lot of kids were from Park Ridge and Glencoe. I took the purple line to visit a friend in Wilmette and I had to travel over an hour to get to the last stop and then she had to pick me up and drive another three miles to her home.
Question: How many of the kids were from the suburbs?
PH: Out of a total of 600 kids, there were maybe around 300 to 400 kids from the suburbs. And there were some Latinos who had money. Some were from Oak Park. A lot of the freshmen who started out with me left. The sophomore class has the same number of students. They said they wanted to leave.
Question: Why did they want to leave?
PH: They didn’t like the teachers or they thought it was way too conservative. The people who support our school also make the rules up. We have to wear these very preppy uniforms like being in a prep school and you have to have black shoes, black socks, a white Oxford shirt and a sweater vest and a blue tie. Most of the kids at our school are used to it. The uniforms are not a big deal — the shoes had to be black, but if you had nice shoes it meant you had money and if you looked in the parking lot a lot of the kids drove nice cars. The students drove better cars than the teachers.
Question: You talked about your freshman year at the charter school. What happened when you returned for your second year?
PH: My sophomore year came and it’s like all new teachers. I thought since I was a sophomore I would be returning to the same teachers. I said what happened, did the teachers drop out? You are not going to get the same instruction from the teachers who left to go to better schools. All the good teachers left. I just went back (recently) and a lot (of teachers) left again. The teachers there would always say this is the best school or I hear there are things about us in the news. You would believe it if you saw it, but when you’re actually there in it, you no longer believe it.
Question: What kind of sports activities does the school have?
PH: They wouldn’t let us have a football team because they said the insurance costs were too high. The kids were like I’ll pay for it. Then they came up with a new thing where kids can’t give money for programs — it has to be in the budget. The crazy thing is we were all willing to pay for it. We did have a basketball"We would have to write a paper in three days, and they just wanted to get it over with. Kids who were working hard wouldn’t do certain papers cause they said it was too much. You need at least a week to do a good paper. " team which was terrible, and a soccer team and volleyball. We would play against other private schools or small public schools. We would play against schools like North Shore Country Day — a private version of New Trier.
Question: What would be a main reason why you left the school?
PH: The school has been pushing for college prep track, but they didn’t have a middle track. They had honors math, academic math, but no middle ground. Many kids didn’t do well. It was like you work in a job but don’t get rewarded for the work you do. We used to do a lot of papers. Many teachers wanted to just rush through it. We would have to write a paper in three days, and they just wanted to get it over with. Kids who were working hard wouldn’t do certain papers cause they said it was too much. You need at least a week to do a good paper.
Question: Could you complain about this?
PH: Some white people’s kids’ parents were very upset with the school. They would say, “You’re not giving my kids college credit for these classes and you’re saying he’s not doing well and then you get upset that he acts out.” One time I had to see the counselor and it was like being in college because the intensity of the work was so hard. A lot of the teachers couldn’t teach it well probably because they were so new and also because you had a few teachers who were scared — they would teach you and not elaborate. They were there because it was a job. The teachers would always say you have to go to college, you have to get a Masters. They wanted us to be upper middle class making $300,000.
Question: What was the worst thing about the charter school?
PH: I would say overall the fact that they said you shouldn’t be happy with who you are. They always wanted you to step on someone to get by. They wanted you to be an asshole to everybody. If you wanted to help somebody, they would say, “Oh, no, just worry about yourself.” A lot of kids felt bad when they couldn’t get help, like if you didn’t understand the teacher.
Question: You mean cooperative learning was frowned upon?
PH: No, there was cooperative learning. There was way too much structure. It was structure within structure. It wasn’t like we can work together, it was like you could work it out. It’s you for yourself. Everything they taught you was straight from a book.
Question: What was the best thing about the charter school?
PH: My friends. There were teachers who said they’d help me with college and any questions I had about chemistry. My chemistry teacher was really enthusiastic. She always had a smile in the morning, she knew a lot and would help me with college. I still sometimes see her on the train when I go to school and she just smiles.
