school bureaucracy the blob, it s like a java the hut thing that can t be budged. it is the teachers union janitor s union the school board bureau kratz. if you try to make a change the blob says. we don t do that here. we have to requisition downtown. the deputy director of curriculum has to say it is okay. it is crazy. both union leaders escaped the bureaucracy. you went to private school? that s correct. it made me feel i better do pretty good in that school or else. i will confront the union bosses when we return. why can t other people have the choice they have also? why does it cost a third of a million dollars to fire just one union teacher? what is wrong with these people? [ artis brown ] america is facing some tough challenges right now.
we have complete control over the quality of our instruction. when he started his school he was the only employee he drove his car around new orleans until 3 in the morning putting up sooins advertising schools. you see this number right here that was my cell phone. he had to add ties because students to had choose to go there. they didn t just get sent here because they live nearby. we are putting these up every where. he went to people s houses to recruit. living in new orleans we never had that. her song reggie goes to sigh academy. he talked to me and reggie and was explaining to him about the hours and academics of the stuff. when the school opened only a third of the students were proficient on state tests. i know half of them didn t know how to read. now sigh academy test results are among the best in the city even though the school fell from just a bunch of trarls.
paid teachers in oakland, california. but in oakland public schools, you have over 10,000 blacks and not one palsed a.p. calculus. those that passed came from one school, american public indian high school, which is a charter school. not one black passed the calculus? they should be embarrassed. so ben, if you have the power to change one variable in the education equation, what would it be? what do you think is the most urgent change that needs to be made? really, it s two, math and reading. every child in the public school needs an an hour and a half of mathematics and language arts every day. it s that simple. now, ben, there are some people for whom math does not come easily. you hear that right brain/left brain. if you have students in your school that are frustrated
because they don t get it, isn t that possible that there are some kids that are going to be stronger in other areas than math? and they need to focus on that? well, they re stronger because they work. if you re overweight you can say, well, i m overweight, i was born overweight, but you can work on being overweight. if a child comes into our school is overweight, we assign them a tutor because he s overweight. if someone comes in and has trouble with math, oh, you re sleth brain that s an excuse. you need more help. that s what any kid who is low in math, all you have to do is give them a tutor, work with them, give them more help. all right. well, ben, former principal of the american indian charter school there, and author of the book crazy like a fox. thank you for joining us. thank you. that does it for me. do stay with us, up next nbc s brian williams will be joined by hundreds of teachers from around the country for a town hall
take it and we will outperform the other schools is in five years. ben chavis created the model of the american indian charter school right in the heart of a rough neighborhood. [ bleep ]. now, these are hard workers here. the kids at american indian schools now have some of the highest test scores in california. and you can do that on the same amount the state gives every school? we get less. we get less than every other school. the kids in american indian public charter schools are scoring so far above the average for the state for public school children that there isn t even a word for it. they use different techniques from the charters in harlem. here at american indian they pay some kids to tutor other kids. we hire our students and we pay them. thank you. they are excited. they are going to make some money. chair vis is politically