Hundreds of students walked out of the Lincoln Park High School campus of North Star Academy, New Jersey’s largest charter school operator with more than 6,000 students in Newark and Camden, Chalkbeat Newark reported. Student organizers and former teachers then gathered outside of City Hall and gave speeches about a culture of anti-Blackness at the school.
Several students said that multiple Black teachers have left the school over the years because they felt overworked and undervalued, according to Chalkbeat. “It’s very upsetting for us to build bonds with our teachers … and see them chased out by the school,” a senior at Lincoln Park High School told Chalkbeat.
North Star Academy is the flagship school of the Uncommon Schools charter network and one of the oldest and highest-achieving charter schools in New Jersey. In 2019-20, 83 percent of North Star students were Black, 15 percent Hispanic, and more than 86 percent were economically disadvantaged, according to Chalkbeat.
On standardized tests, students at North Star Academy routinely outperform peers in wealthier districts, reported Chalkbeat, but such gains take a toll, according to students. “They do provide us with a good education, and we are getting into these great schools,” said Aubria King, a junior at Lincoln Park, in the Chalkbeat story. “But it comes at a cost and that cost is our mental health and the way that we’re being treated.”
The protest at Lincoln Park recalls a walkout at Amistad Academy in New Haven, Connecticut, the flagship school of Achievement First, another "no-excuses" network of charter schools. That walkout in 2016, The New Haven Independent reported, was precipitated by similar student feelings of marginalization. According to theIndependent, "a racially insensitive climate had led most of the black teachers [at Amistad] to leave and to indiscriminate discipline."
In 2019, the Independent reported that the principal at Amistad, Morgan Barth, was caught on a school security camera shoving a student into a corridor wall. The Independent posted the video, and Barth was forced to resign.
Given that Achievement First's co-CEOs, Doug McCurry and Dacia Toll, were aware of that video before the Independent published it, they, too, in time were forced to step down. McCurry resigned several months later, reported Chalkbeat. Toll moved on a year later, according to an internal memo circulated to the Achievement First staff.
The “no-excuses” philosophy has come under particular scrutiny since the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 brought institutionalized racism to the forefront of education policy debate. Several well-known "no-excuses" charter networks, including Noble Charter Network in Chicago and KIPP, have renounced their philosophies. Noble, in particular, termed the philosophy in an email to alumni “assimilationist, patriarchal, white supremacist and anti-Black.”
In 2019-20, according to Chalkbeat, “nearly 19 percent of North Star students received suspensions—a rate about six times higher than the average across New Jersey or in the Newark school district.” Current and former students and staff members at Uncommon Schools have shared their experiences through an Instagram account called Black at Uncommon, reported Chalkbeat, describing “a school culture that felt overly controlling” and “unwelcoming to Black people.”
“We believe in and tell our students that their voice matters, and we respect their peaceful protest,” a North Star spokesperson said in a statement after the demonstration, adding that school officials “look forward to listening and working/discussing in the coming days to address student concerns and collaborate with students and families on the challenges raised.”
In July of 2020, the president of Uncommon Schools published a letter to the school community acknowledging the accounts of negative experiences at some schools and promised to take immediate action. According to Chalkbeat, the steps included hiring a diversity, equity, and inclusion consultant, reviewing curriculum to ensure that it is culturally relevant, and training employees to create a school culture “where all students and staff feel respected, valued, and cared for.”
- A. Thomas and S.E. Abrams