Concerning AIPCS

Madman, genius or both? Charter school principal's 'tough love' controversial

2007-07-28T19:40:00.000-07:00

By Katy Murphy, STAFF WRITER
Inside Bay AreaArticle Last Updated:07/26/2007 08:51:09 AM PDT

OAKLAND - THE CLASS was in mid-lesson when Ben Chavis, principal of the American Indian Charter School, stopped by during his afternoon rounds.

Instantly, the principal's eyes darted to the corner of the room where an orange cone rested on a chair. Earlier in the day, Chavis had ordered a boy named Mike to hug the cone "like a baby" for the rest of the school year — his punishment for a racist insult.

But Mike had gone to another class, leaving the cone behind. It took a split second for Chavis to realize what the teacher hadn't: The boy had duped them.

Chavis's expression hardened.

"You should have known something was wrong," he barked at the teacher, as her students, and Mike's classmates, looked on. "He's a liar! You can't trust him."

Chavis, an American Indian who grew up in segregated North Carolina, heads the renowned charter school in East Oakland's Laurel District. His approach to education is often described as "tough love" or "no nonsense," but it is often more aggressive, and less predictable.

He can be charming, entertaining and compassionate, but his demeanor will turn on a dime if someone challenges his authority.One teacher compares him to Bobby Knight, the controversial college basketball legend whose antics eventually cost Knight his head coaching job at Indiana University.

Chavis doesn't mind the comparison. He admires Knight's style. And just as Knight's impressive record shielded him for years against allegations of verbal and physical abuse, the awe-inspiring test scores and national attention achieved by the American Indian Public Charter School have protected Chavis from his detractors.

Last month the Oakland school district demanded some answers from the charter school's board about the principal's conduct. It remains to be seen, however, what the tough talk will yield.

Even under pressure, Chavis might well be unwilling, or unable, to dial down his outbursts.

» related multimedia: In his own words: A day with Principal Ben Chavis

One morning in March, Mills College education professor Sabrina Zirkel brought some graduate students to Chavis' famed charter school. She chose the school in part because its outstanding test scores and harsh disciplinary practices strike at the heart of a national debate on education reform.

Zirkel said she expected to see some "tough talk." She didn't expect Chavis to drive one of her graduate students, a 25-year-old African-American man, out of the school after he showed up 15 minutes late.

"He pushed his chest into my shoulder and begun to usher me out of the building, shouting profanities and insults in my face. He called me a '(expletive) minority punk" at least five times and shouted, 'I'm going to kick your ass' at least seven times.'

"He said ... I was a 'worthless piece of (expletive) people have been making excuses for' all of my life," was the account Unity Lewis gave in a complaint letter, echoed by others in his group.

Chavis acknowledges he swore at Lewis and that he called him a "disgrace" to his race. He did so, he said, because Lewis "acted like a fool," called Chavis a "homey" and initially refused to leave the school grounds.

Chavis was hardly chastened by the scathing complaints. In fact, he said, he showed Lewis' letter to his students, and they made fun of its spelling and grammatical errors.

He hooted. "They think he's a loser," he said.

Chavis had little reason to worry that the Mills incident would cause him any problems. The school district, and his own board, had received allegations of belligerent behavior for years.

Zirkel, herself, wondered if anything would come of it.

"Our complaints are new, but these kinds of complaints have been around for some time now," she said. "I think it speaks to the way test scores seem to be the only thing that matter in these kinds of assessments of schools."

On standardized tests, Chavis' kids outscore their Oakland school district peers by leaps and bounds. In 2006, 79 percent of Chavis' African-American eighth-graders tested at a proficient level or better in reading, compared to 20 percent in district schools. The difference in is even more pronounced for Latino students (82 percent vs. 16 percent).

This year, all of his 10th-graders passed the high school exit exam on their first try.

Those figures explain why — just days after the Mills story came to light — Christopher Wright, a regional representative for the U.S. secretary of education, came to the school and lauded Chavis' leadership as a handful of protesters demonstrated outside.

After the National Blue Ribbon ceremony, which recognized American Indian as one of the top 290 public or private schools anywhere in the nation, Wright said he hadn't heard about the Mills complaints. He didn't seem too concerned.

"Obviously, he's doing many, many things right," Wright said.

Oakland's central office administrators, too, have seemed reluctant to interfere. In fact, state administrator Kimberly Statham allowed Chavis to open another school this fall despite the numerous complaints that reached the district office.

In 2004, Chavis ordered a mother off the premises during a tiff over a forgotten lunch she brought to the school. He followed up with a letter in which he gave her a multiple-choice question to explain her behavior:

"1. You are on drugs. 2. You have psychological problems. 3. You are a liar. Could it be that all the above apply to you? I know that numbers two and three are right on target."

District acts

A recent school district inquiry suggests the days of looking the other way might be coming to an end.

The Oakland school district doesn't have the authority to fire or discipline Chavis, since charter schools are independently run. The school's charter requires its board of directors — not the principal, himself — to investigate complaints about employees.

If the school district finds that American Indian has violated its charter agreement, it can shut it down. The chances of the district closing the highest performing public middle school in the city, though, are remote.

In a May 22 letter sent to the charter school's board president, an Oakland schools administrator said she was "very concerned" about the Mills allegations and other complaints. The district administrator, Kirsten Vital, also questioned whether the charter school's board was doing its job.

Rose Lee, the president of American Indian's board, is no critic of Chavis. She describes him as "the best principal that I know of."

When Lee receives complaints about the principal, she said, she simply forwards them on to him.

Lee, whose sons attend the school, said she doesn't believe Chavis would ever harm someone physically, or initiate any sort of verbal attack. Appropriating one of the principal's favorite terms for someone who deserves to be treated poorly, she said, "If you'll be a fool to him, he'll treat you like a fool."

Complicated man

It's easy to vilify someone who refers to black, Latino and American Indian students as "darkies," who will swear at anyone who doesn't follow his rules, and who scoffs at the idea of defending his decisions to an unhappy parent — even when he has a child repeat a grade.

But this is the same man who received a rousing standing ovation from his students during the National Blue Ribbon Award ceremony, the same man whose unorthodox behavior and off-the-wall tales has teenagers howling with laughter.

It's also the same man who took in Marco Escobar — a special education student who barely knew the alphabet — when other public schools wouldn't enroll him, said the boy's mother, Julia Escobar, who stopped by the school to drop off paperwork for her younger son.

"He learned how to read, too," Escobar said about Marco, who is now in high school. "I remember you saying, 'He tries, he tries. I like a kid who tries."'

Chavis has more than his share of enemies, but he is adored by others who admire his unwavering approach to academic rigor and discipline.

One day in late May, a mother named Lucia Espinoza came to the front office to enroll her son. He is a good kid, she said, but he needed a dose of tough talk and consequences. She heard Chavis was the man to do it.

"Somebody has to get these kids by the neck and strangle them a little bit," she said, half-facetiously.

Racial stereotypes

Whether motivated by fear, a love of learning, or both, the students at American Indian Public Charter School show an uncanny level of classroom focus.

One morning in mid-May, the soft plunk and scratch of compasses on paper was the only sound coming from the algebra classroom. They had finished their advanced algebra textbook with weeks of school left. Geometry was next.

Teachers Janet Shewmon and Lifang Lee say the orderly school culture frees them to do their jobs, a departure from past teaching experiences.

"I interned at a school where they hand out rewards for kids who did their homework," Lee said. "Not here."

Chavis does, however, hand out cash for perfect attendance, or for not getting a detention — a deceptively challenging task at the rule-bound school.

He also writes himself a blank check when it comes to racial, ethnic and religious stereotypes, often for entertainment or shock value. His sentences frequently start with "You people."

Interestingly enough, though he espouses sweeping generalizations about people, he loathes more subtle forms of racial classification. Among those is the widely held belief that an influx of Asian students is inflating his school's high test scores.

"That's racist," he fumes. In fact, his black and Latino eighth-graders do better than the Asian kids in reading, although they trail slightly in math.

He argues that with stability, structure and the highest of expectations, every student can master those subjects and succeed — even in a fundamentally racist world that will subject them to stereotypes.

"This may be the kid who has the cure for cancer. How will we know if we don't push him?" he asked.

Imani Williams, a 12-year-old African-American Muslim pupil at the American Indian Public Charter School, remembers the first time she heard her principal challenge a classmate to work harder by referring to his ethnicity.

"It was, 'Don't be a lazy Mexican,'" she recalled.

Imani was surprised to hear it coming from a principal, she said, but no one in earshot seemed to be offended — they understood what he meant.

"He's not calling you a lazy Mexican," she said. "He's saying, 'People are going to stereotype you as that, so don't let them.'"

Imani also said that when another girl made fun of her head scarf, Chavis made her apologize to the entire school during lunch.

"He's a very different person from any other teacher and principal I've met, but I like that," she said.

Bad example

Except for his refusal to incorporate computers and technology into the curriculum, Chavis' philosophy of education is increasingly commonplace in a data-driven era: Load the kids up with reading, writing and math. If they don't get it, give them more.

It's Chavis' style of motivation and discipline that makes some people wonder if he should be in the education business. His arsenal of disciplinary tools not only includes detentions — many, many detentions — and harsh reports to Mom and Dad, but public humiliation.

A sign on the door of the main office sums up his attitude on screw-ups: "No one can be a complete failure at the American Indian Public Charter School. You can always serve as a bad example."

Like Mike.

Before Chavis banished the eighth-grader to the seventh grade and sentenced him to weeks holding a bright orange cone, Mike had called a Chinese-American girl a five-letter word. He then, by his own admission, told her to thank her ancestors for "building our railroads."

Later that day, after Chavis uncovered Mike's ill-fated attempt to evade his punishment, the boy cowered in the hallway outside his class, hugging the cone. Chavis then turned his wrath on Mike's classmates — for being so tolerant.

"You know what? I don't understand you Chinese guys," Chavis said. "Did you hear what he said to (the student)?" They nodded.

He paused, creating an awkward silence.

"Listen, I would shun him," he finally said. "He's a loser."

http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_6148011

Charter's notorious chief quits

2007-07-28T19:37:00.000-07:00

Mild-mannered successor at Oakland school may ease concerns about discipline, racism

By Katy Murphy, STAFF WRITER

Inside Bay AreaArticle Last Updated:07/27/2007 04:46:04 AM PDT

OAKLAND — Visitors to the American Indian Public Charter School will no longer need to be forewarned about its notoriously foul-mouthed and sometimes incendiary director.

Ben Chavis has retired and moved to Arizona after seven years at the high-performing school in the Laurel District. He named a former eighth-grade teacher to take his place.

Lest it be assumed that Chavis was pushed out by a school district inquiry into complaints about his behavior, he explains his retirement was in the works for over a year. Board meeting minutes in March, before the district's investigation, do indeed document his intent.

"Do you think I'm the type to run from these jokers?" Chavis asked. "I love a good fight."

The appointment of a new director, the young and comparably mild-mannered Isaac Berniker, is expected to ease some growing concerns about Chavis' disciplinary policies and use of racial stereotypes to motivate his mostly nonwhite students.

Sabrina Zirkel, a Mills College education professor stunned by Chavis's behavior when she and a group of graduate students visited in March, said she was optimistic about the news.

"I'm hopeful for a change at this school — a change in tone," she said.

Zirkel watched Chavis yell racist insults at an African-American graduate student who arrived 15 minutes late, the first of several incidents documented by the group. Noting that the Oakland school district had begun pressuring the charter school's board to respond more effectively to such complaints, she added, "I hope that his retirement doesn't derail that process."

Kirsten Vital, the school district's chief of community accountability, left the charter school with similar impressions after a visit with two other school officials in June.

In a letter to the governing board, she described instances of "inappropriate and offensive" behavior, including Chavis' use of the words "darkies" and "whities" in front of students. (Chavis, an American Indian, says he thinks those are appropriate terms. He says one of the students' slogans is "Darkies: smart and proud of it.")

"Although we did not observe anything during our visit which would warrant contacting Child Protective Services, we will be closely monitoring the school in the future to ensure that these lines are not crossed," Vital wrote.

Vital's letter asks for the board to explain how it "is monitoring Dr. Chavis' behavior," which should prove a considerably easier task if Chavis spends most of his time out of state.

Chavis' colleague, Oakland Charter Academy Director Jorge Lopez, says the school probably will receive less attention now that its colorful director is gone. But he said he expects American Indian to keep thriving academically under new leadership.

It's not just Chavis' persona that has put the school on the map. The school's test scores and academic model also have received national attention. Most of American Indian's students come from low-income families, and on the 2006 state tests they scored roughly the same as their more affluent peers in Piedmont.

American Indian was honored this year as a National Blue Ribbon School, one of the top 300 public or private schools in the nation. It was the first public school in Oakland to receive that distinction. As a result, some local educators have speculated that Chavis merely "creams" the most promising students from local elementary schools or that he cheats — charges he calls "racist."

"You know how we cheat?" he likes to ask. "Work."

A new middle school opens this year at 171 12th St. in downtown Oakland, alongside a second Oakland Charter Academy. Lopez will oversee both campuses.

Lopez says he is confident the school's model — keeping middle school and high school students with the same classmates and the same teacher for most of the day and focusing on fundamental academic skills — will be effectively carried out with Berniker in charge.

"Isaac is the toughest teacher that Ben has had in a while," Lopez said. "He's not going to go around calling people crazy a— liberal or bulls—- darkies, but the fundamental program isn't going to fall."

E-mail Katy Murphy at kmurphy@oaklandtribune.com. Read her Oakland schools blog at http://www.ibabuzz.com/education.

http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_6477791

Unity LEWIS MY WORD Are Chavis' results worth hurt feelings?

2007-07-28T19:33:00.000-07:00

Article Last Updated:07/06/2007 05:31:15 AM PDT

IT FRIGHTENS me that in 2007, a man who behaves like the only way to reach black people is by degrading, humiliating and disrespecting them is allowed to run a school ("Madman, genius or both?" June 15).

For the past seven years, I have taught in public schools across the Bay Area and on the island of Guam, where the Guam Legislature awarded a resolution for my contribution to students' lives.

I have never had to insult my students, behave violently or use sexist and racial slurs to reach them, nor have I seen other educators successfully motivate students by behaving in this way. In fact, I've seen the opposite.

Degrading students alienates them and destroys their understanding of themselves and others. I wonder then, what damaging effects have American Indian Public Charter School Principal Ben Chavis' teaching tactics and racist forms of punishment had on the lives of young boys and girls?

Chavis exposes his racist attitudes and bigoted viewpoints to the public constantly with little to no reprimand. It is irrational that the principal of a junior high school, where students are at a critically impressionable age, is allowed to teach that it is acceptable to put people down because of their race or gender.

Chavis uses negative racial stereotypes to punish his students in ways that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders fought hard to stop half a century ago. Yet today, because Chavis' students produce high test scores, he is praised more than he is held accountable for his racism.

On March 15, Chavis saw the color of my skin, and before I could even say a word, attacked me. He stood two inches from my face, tried to pick a fight, and spit and shouted racist and derogatory profanities at me in front of my fellow classmates from Mills College and his middle school students.

He tried to empower himself by criminalizing and labeling me another "young black minority punk."

No matter how much Chavis and his school's board try to discredit me about what happened, the fact is my experience isn't the only documented incident of Chavis' absurd behavior.

Other complaints and horror stories have surfaced from teachers who worked at AIPCS claiming they were assaulted, and from parents who say Chavis discriminated against them and their children.

Imagine how many incidents have gone unaccounted for.

Chavis said himself that he sees the world divided in two, "darkies and whities," and that he believes humiliating students with racist taunts is a good tactic for unlocking their potential.

I don't divide my students based on race. Every student I have worked with at every level of education, kindergarten through college, has been unique, with values and needs specific to their uniqueness.

But none of those needs included diminishing their self-esteem by reinforcing stereotypical, hurtful and wrong ideas about who they are.

Unity Lewis, 25, has been teaching in the Oakland public school system for seven years.

Unity LEWIS MY WORD Are Chavis' results worth hurt feelings?Article Last Updated:07/06/2007 05:31:15 AM PDTIT FRIGHTENS me that in 2007, a man who behaves like the only way to reach black people is by degrading, humiliating and disrespecting them is allowed to run a school ("Madman, genius or both?" June 15).

For the past seven years, I have taught in public schools across the Bay Area and on the island of Guam, where the Guam Legislature awarded a resolution for my contribution to students' lives.

He tried to empower himself by criminalizing and labeling me another "young black minority punk."

No matter how much Chavis and his school's board try to discredit me about what happened, the fact is my experience isn't the only documented incident of Chavis' absurd behavior.

Other complaints and horror stories have surfaced from teachers who worked at AIPCS claiming they were assaulted, and from parents who say Chavis discriminated against them and their children.

Imagine how many incidents have gone unaccounted for.

Chavis said himself that he sees the world divided in two, "darkies and whities," and that he believes humiliating students with racist taunts is a good tactic for unlocking their potential.

But none of those needs included diminishing their self-esteem by reinforcing stereotypical, hurtful and wrong ideas about who they are.

Unity Lewis, 25, has been teaching in the Oakland public school system for seven years.

http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_6312154

Link to Friday, July 27 Edition of Nanette Asimov's article on Chavis's departure

2007-07-28T19:08:00.000-07:00

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/07/27/BAG1CR84UM1.DTL&type=printable

Oakland charter school principal steps down

2007-07-28T19:03:00.000-07:00

Chavis' departure follows dust-up with a visiting group

Nanette Asimov, Chronicle Staff Writer

Thursday, July 26, 2007

(07-26) 15:30 PDT -- Principal Ben Chavis of the American Indian Public Charter School in Oakland - who has shocked parents not only by his use of threats and humiliation in teaching, but by his success at sending inner-city test scores sky high -- has stepped down after seven years.

The departure follows a dust-up with a Mills College group visiting the autonomous public school that prompted new scrutiny of Chavis by the Oakland Unified School District.

Chavis said he was leaving anyway. He informed the school's governing board last March 15, according to minutes of the meeting. That was the day of the Mills College unpleasantness.

"I agreed to stay two years, and I stayed seven," he said, adding that he's returning to his home in Arizona, where he has a real estate business and where his children and grandchildren live.

Praise for Chavis and his ethnically mixed school of low-income pupils has come from test-score watchers in Oakland and Sacramento.

When he took over the four-year-old charter school at 3637 Magee Avenue in 2000, it had 34 middle-school students and was sinking fast. The school had no viable test scores and couldn't retain students.

By 2002, the school had tripled its enrollment, and test scores were climbing.

By 2006, more than 150 low-income students -- mainly Asian Americans, Latinos and African Americans -- were among the top-scorers in the state on the California Standards Test.

Last September, Chavis expanded Amerian Indian to include high school. The scores of those students are not yet posted.

Meanwhile, complaints about Chavis' style have also percolated for years, largely overlooked and tolerated because the school delivered such outstanding scores.

"I can't deal with an administration that is a dictatorship," Monica Peoples-Brown told The Chronicle in 2005 after withdrawing her sixth-grade son from the school.

The boy had admitted to calling another child a derogatory name, so Chavis pinned a note to his shirt: "I'm an (expletive)."

"My child was traumatized," Peoples-Brown said.

Lately, the complaints have escalated.

In March, a group from Mills College in Oakland asked to visit the school.

"I had an appointment with the professor, who disagreed with my philosophy," Chavis said.

One of the graduate students joining the professor arrived late, bringing coffee.

"I told him he's a dumbass idiot," Chavis recalled. "An embarrassment to minorities. That's what I said. He came late. White people are on time. What does he think, there's black time? Mexican time? Indian time?

"The clock is white."

Chavis said he saw no reason to hold his guests to a different standard than he requires of his own students.

"If the kids come one second late, they stay an hour after school," he explained.

After learning of that incident and others, education officials from the Oakland Unified School District pressured the charter school's governing board to rein Chavis in. School districts have no direct authority over day-to-day operations at autonomous public charter schools, but can shut them down.

In response to the district's request, the charter school's board fined Chavis $700.

But Kirsten Vital, accountability chief for the Oakland school district, said the response was unlikely to correct the problem. In a July 9 letter to the school's governing board, Vital said she had visited the school in June and observed incidents bordering on educational malpractice, and that came close to child endangerment.

These included an interview with a girl who said she was forced to clean the boys' bathroom as punishment for misbehaving; Chavis' "repeated use of the words 'whities' and 'darkies' in the presence of students"; and Chavis' reference to a former employee as a "white b -- -," also in front of students.

Vital told the board to provide a written explanation by Tuesday of how it will prevent such incidents in the future, and how it would handle complaints.

The minutes of the March 15 board meeting say that Chavis will work part-time at American Indian during the 2007-2008 school year. But Chavis said he will not.

"They don't need me," he said. "I'm not going to be there if I can help it."

E-mail Nanette Asimov at nasimov@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/26/BAGA2R6RN518.DTL