With my prodding, Michael Goldstein, the sometimes guest blogger at Eduwonk and founder of the fantastic (and, I would argue, paternalistic) MATCH Charter School in Boston, writes in to add his two bits to the debate around David Whitman’s new book, Sweating the Small Stuff: Inner-City Schools and the New Paternalism:

I certainly look forward to reading the book. And I think you did a service in publishing it. And I wonder how it will square with Jay Mathews’s book on same topic.

Certainly this nugget is on target. “Unlike the often forbidding paternalistic institutions of the past, these schools are prescriptive yet warm; teachers and principals, who sometimes serve in loco parentis, are both authoritative and caring figures. Teachers laugh with and cajole students, in addition to frequently directing them to stay on task.”

But I’d have to read more to understand what he means by “serve in loco parentis.” And I hesitate with “paternalistic.”

I agree with you that there’s an initial “Uh oh” reaction by school leaders because it’s probably bad marketing for us, Cosby-izing what we do.

But then I think you might not be open to the idea—perhaps you are—that may be legitimate disagreement with the precision of the word, one which is NOT borne out of fear. It sort of feels like your set-up is: Here is the premise, there is a marketing reason for No Excuses leaders to disagree with the premise, therefore when they disagree with the premise it can only be for that reason. When it may be because we don’t think the premise is entirely accurate, irrespective of the marketing implications. Which is why I need to read the book.

If you want an immediate reaction:

1. Is telling a kid to stop talking during class a “parental” action?  I just don’t see it that way.  Most schools, of all classes, do this. What is different is the obsession with execution—the several little things you have to get right in order to have an alert, focused class.

2. Is telling a kid to tuck in his shirt a “middle class value?” Go to a poor black church on Sunday, and to a middle class white church, and tell me who has got the tucked in shirts.

3. “SEED was constructed precisely to remove students from those neighborhoods and inculcate in the youngsters a wholly different set of values than they’d find at home.” But these are two different things, neighborhood and home.

Here’s where precision is important. The average MATCH or KIPP or SEED parent believes in values of “Work hard.” However, she struggles, particularly with an older teen, to sit his butt down at the kitchen table to do that work. She can deliver the message, but she can’t easily go beyond that. She simply does not have enough social capital. (Actually, I think this is often true among single middle class white moms, too. This has more to do with solo parenting.)

When we push a kid, we’re very specifically triangulating a kid through parallel parent outreach, so that we BOTH say the same thing—work hard. The home value of work hard is there. It’s just not enough by ITSELF to overcome negative values in the neighborhood—and especially in pop culture (which is not part of the neighborhood, but arguably as powerful).

What’s interesting about Michael’s reaction—which was similar to Jay Greene’s—is the insistence that parents buy into these schools’ values too—along with an admission that the schools’ values are at odds with the neighborhoods’ values. If true, it raises an uncomfortable question: are these schools guilty of “creaming”? Not in the way we traditionally think about it—perhaps their students and their families aren’t any more affluent, or well-educated, than others in their communities. But maybe families that choose “no excuses” schools share different values than their peers do—values that we might associate with the middle class. Families that, to use Michael’s words, respond positively to Bill Cosby’s message. In my view, there’s nothing wrong with that.

Update: It’s worth reading Michael Goldstein’s (smart) response below in the comments.