My View: Village School's unfair fate leaves only questions and cautionary tale

Last spring, the Northfield school board voted not to renew the contract of Village School charter school. Village School appealed the decision, and recently the state Appeals Court ruled against our appeal.

I was never confident the school would win. Sometimes, there is no justice in the law.

I was never sure what winning would mean, because the appeal was based on procedures the Northfield school board followed in deciding not to renew the contract.

To me, the heart of the appeal should have been content, not procedure. The suit and the appeal should have challenged reasons the board gave for not renewing the contract: that the school was not safe, that students weren't passing basic standards tests and that the school had not incorporated the standardized curriculum.

Northfield Police Chief Gary Smith claimed the school wasn't safe, based on a spitting and hair-pulling incident he characterized as an "assault." Smith has since shown his motivations for what they are in the widely publicized heroin story. Smith is not interested in working collaboratively to solve community problems. He is interested in self-promotion and self-aggrandizement and will exaggerate incidents to be the Big Bad Police Chief riding in to save the day.

The Northfield board also cited a Village School drug use survey indicating drug use by students had increased.

Are there no incidents of harm and violence at Northfield High School? There obviously is drug use and a problem of increased heroin use. Are these reasons to close the high school?

The Village School community knew about the drug use. The community worked to help these students. We used restorative justice and other programs and helped turn the lives of scores of kids around, kids who otherwise would have been lost. More than one student was on the verge of suicide, and we made all the difference to them.

The Northfield board used students' performance on tests against the school. Yes, students had trouble passing the tests. Some students at Village School had never passed a test in their lives, and probably never would. Most had hardly come to school until they enrolled in Village School. But we worked with the state, even though we despised standardized tests, and most of the students improved from year to year -- data our reviewers praised us for but that Northfield ignored.

Last year, Greenvale School did not make acceptable yearly progress in reading. Was the school closed? Should it have been? What are the 2006-07 test results across the state? They are "disappointing," but Education Commissioner Alice Seagren makes excuses. Will 100 percent of students pass the tests by 2012, which is required by No Child Left Behind? Will all schools in the country be closed or be taken over by for-profit mercenary education companies?

The Northfield board and state Department of Education closed Village School because, they claimed, the school had not completely implemented the state standardized curriculum. The teachers, therefore, must be incompetent and negligent. In fact, we were quite intentional. We were as careful about implementing a program that we believed would harm children's intellectual growth as we were about children's wellbeing. Village School was not interested in children and youth just memorizing facts. We wanted students to ask questions, to challenge accepted thinking, to not accept the world.

One consequence of initiating the suit was that we gained access to all the e-mail between Superintendent Chris Richardson and school board members. It is clear they never intended to give the school a chance. The board ignored independent reviewers' recommendations and ignored testimony of the hundreds who spoke at a hearing. The public hearing was a sham.

Why bring this up again?

Everyone should look to the Village School story as a cautionary tale.

Are standardized tests the way to help children learn? Is a standardized curriculum the best way for children to learn? In Village School, we brought out gifts and abilities of all children. With a standardized curriculum, every child must learn the same thing in the same way. What is the purpose of education? Is it to achieve high math test scores, or is it to help people be good and creative and compassionate and responsible? Is the charter school movement working to encourage reform in education? Joe Nathan and other charter school proponents would reply with a resounding 'Yes.' But who was it that commissioned a study of charter schools that concluded that charter schools are not encouraging reform, only conforming to the status quo in education? How could they not conform, given the restrictive and punitive requirements of testing and curriculum?

Few Village School students returned to district schools once Village School closed. Why would they? They had come from there. They had failed there, or district schools had failed them. Twenty students worked with us during the fall of 2006. Of these 20, six have left school completely, three have transferred or will transfer to another charter school or private school, and one student completed her work this year. We continue to work with Village School students for no pay because we care about them and believe in real learning, not testing or standardization.

Frey, of Northfield, is founder of Village School and has been a teacher there.