The answer lies in the real methods of Discovery Charter School. School leaders INSIST on providing students material FAR beyond grade level and watching them “go through the heart of darkness” in order to arrive at the answer. Many students, however, do not make it through that darkness and shut down. This, however, does not dissuade the co-leaders from proceeding with ridiculous amounts of ridiculous work. This maintains the sense of control fostered by co-leader Barbara Weiland shouting orders from the stage on everything from class dismissal (“We’re ready to shuffle off the buffalo.”) to discipline issues (“Make sure you check his work. He likes to write down nonsense.” or “[Calls student out by name over a P.A. system], turn around ALL THE WAY AROUND.” ) or quality of instruction “[Teacher's name, also called over P.A.], wrap it up. They should be writing.”). Teachers are reprimanded nearly as often, and in the same way, as students. All instructions come through a P.A. system with Weiland speaking into a wireless microphone. It is part prison, part motivational speaking seminar.

The bottom line is this: Discovery Charter School exists so that Barbara Weiland has a space to perform. Whether students perform or not is of no concern. If students fail to grasp the material, it is because “they don’t look at it when they leave” or “they want to be served.” It is, however, never the responsibility of the teachers or administration. That these students are underserved minorities living in an Abbott District and that they are in these teachers classrooms is a sad contingency. What matters is the LEGACY. The performance. The acting. Some students become quite good at it. Others are able to fly under the radar. Some even are conditioned enough to spit out whatever they are fed with a reasonable amount of confidence. A few are even able to analyze and synthesize material they have learned.

However, if you have teachers working in an area in which they are NOT SPECIALIZED, in an environment with NO CLEAR RULES and ABSOLUTELY NO CONSEQUENCES where students are as likely to be yelled at for raising their hand to go to the bathroom as for calling another student a “bitch”, where the curriculum sometimes changes on a weekly basis and other times focuses on a single subject–without students having classes in any other subject–for over a month, where students sometimes will have a class for 20 minutes and other times will write spelling words for 6 hours, where students are openly hostile toward administration and teachers because they recognize that what they are learning is not valuable to them, you cannot have learning occurring. And, at Discovery, it is CLEARLY NOT.

*While Discovery Charter School, according to its state “report card” registers all students as either “proficient” or “advanced proficient”, it is clear that these results do not indicate what the student has learned, as many students have not mastered fundamental grammar, mechanics, spelling, or punctuation. Something doesn’t add up.