Achievement First Secret # 3 – Treat kids like scholars?

According to the Achievement First website, this person is part of their leadership team:

Chi Tschang – Regional Superintendent

Mr. Tschang is responsible for driving high student achievement by overseeing a portfolio of schools and supporting Achievement First principals in developing and implementing rigorous academic programs and positive school cultures. Previously, Mr. Tschang founded KIPP Academy Fresno, a 2008 Title I Distinguished School in California. In addition to serving as principal for five years, he also taught fifth-grade history, sixth-grade math and seventh-grade English. Prior to that experience, Mr. Tschang taught history for four years at Boston’s Academy of the Pacific Rim charter school. After college, he participated in City Year, where he lived in a housing project and tutored fourth graders in south Providence. For his work in Boston and in Providence, he was profiled on the Oprah Winfrey Show and in the New York Times #1 best-seller, What Should I Do With My Life? Mr. Tschang holds a B.A. in history from Yale University, and is the recipient of several distinctions including the Comcast National Leadership Award.

Now, this caused quite a stir in New York because after a few run in with parents, it was discovered that Mr. Tschang was run out of a KIPP school in Californa for a raft of bad treament of students.  From The New York Post:

A Brooklyn charter school administrator who gave up his old gig in California amid charges that he had been physically and emotionally abusive to students is at it again, fed-up parents told The Post.

Just over a year into Chi Tschang’s role as assistant superintendent of middle schools for the Achievement First charter school network in Brooklyn, a student’s mother said he aggressively grabbed an 11-year-old boy he was kicking out of class last month.

READ THE CALIFORNIA REPORT

“[Tschang’s] not supposed to do that,” said the AF Crown Heights mom, who asked to be identified only as Lorna. “He’s supposed to speak with his mouth, not grab him.”

Several other parents at the Crown Heights school questioned Achievement First’s judgment in hiring an educator who resigned as head of KIPP Fresno, part of the Knowledge Is Power Program charter network, in February 2009 after an investigation into his disciplinary practices.

Achievement First officials, who have fielded complaints about their strict discipline in the past, stood by Tschang, despite the ruckus raised earlier this year when he took a misbehaving Crown Heights student home in his car.

That incident prompted the network’s co-CEO, Doug McCurry, to write parents a six-page letter in May that qualified Tschang’s move as a misunderstanding of school policy.

The letter also said Achievement First’s review of Fresno’s investigation found it to be factually inaccurate, “bogus” and conducted by a district that was biased against charter schools.

“During his entire tenure in Fresno, Mr. Tschang never hurt a single child,” Dacia Toll, co-CEO of the Achievement First network, told The Post. “In fact, he was beloved by the students and parents at his school, so much so that hundreds of them took to the streets to protest his resignation.”

Tschang resigned following a report issued in December 2008 in which the school district of Fresno, Calif., found that he had pushed students against the wall, repeatedly yelled at them and instituted various forms of punishment that “exceeded the bounds of the law.”

This included a charge that he forced a student to crawl on his hands and knees and bark like a dog, according to the district probe.

Tschang had allegedly punished a whole fifth-grade class by stuffing them into two bathroom stalls and placed misbehaving kids outside the school building for hours at a time in extreme heat or rain.

He even channeled Oscar the Grouch on one occasion by dumping a garbage can over a student who was clowning around.

According to the Fresno investigation, Tschang admitted to placing “an empty, clean trash can over his head for a few minutes while I was talking to him.”

In response to an allegation that he had picked a student up, held him against the wall by his neck and dropped him, Tschang told probers, “I don’t remember picking up and dropping a student, I do remember shaking a kid.”

A message left at a number listed for Tschang Friday was not returned.

Fresno district officials dismissed the characterization of their probe as biased, noting it had been conducted by an independent investigator.

Additional reporting by Erin Calabrese
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/brooklyn/school_big_bullies_kids_tYDkSueDY2zXz7GDx6H70H#ixzz1VwfOyaSO