A few years ago, if a student arrived at an Ascend elementary school wearing the wrong color socks, she was sent to the dean’s office to stay until a family member brought a new pair.
Now, the school office is stocked with extra socks. Students without them can pick up a spare pair before heading to class.
It’s a simple shift, but part of a revolution in the culture at Ascend, which oversees five charter elementary schools, three middle schools, and a high school in Brooklyn. Making sure students and parents were sweating the small stuff, once integral to the network’s philosophy, was simply producing “too many unhappy children,” Ascend’s CEO Steve Wilson explained recently.
“We’ve moved sharply away from a zero-tolerance discipline approach,” Wilson said. “We believe a warm and supportive environment produces the greatest long-term social effects.”
[For more of this story, written by Monica Disare, go to http://www.theatlantic.com/edu...s-discipline/473247/]
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