Here’s a piece of mine from the Spring 2005 City Journal. It’s about the remarkable Amistad Academy charter school in New Haven, Connecticut.

I’ll excerpt at some length:

“Who are we proud to be?”

“Amistad Academy!”

“And why are we here?”

“To push ourselves, to learn, to achieve our very best.”

“And who is responsible for your success?”

“We are responsible for our actions; we control our destinies.”

“And what will it take to succeed?”

“Work, hard work!”

This encouraging scene—the “circle chant,” it’s called—is taking place in “morning circle” in the gym of what has swiftly become New Haven’s superstar middle school. The six-year-old Amistad Academy is a charter school, meaning that it’s publicly funded but privately run, so it’s free from some of the centrally imposed strictures, such as union work rules and curricular requirements, that stunt the city’s traditional public schools. Amistad has won national acclaim for blasting the test scores of some of Connecticut’s neediest kids through the roof. While state testing in 2003 showed that only 23 percent of New Haven’s traditional public school eighth-graders achieved mastery in math and that 31 percent mastered English, Amistad had 66 percent of its eighth-graders demonstrating math mastery and 71 percent English mastery—beating even the statewide averages.

…

First come the “apologies” and “recognitions.” On this morning, no apologies are necessary. But Amistad kids routinely must ask forgiveness from the school community for misbehavior: disrupting class, talking back to teachers, failing to do homework. As tough as Amistad is in its behavioral standards, however, it uses recognitions to lavish praise on accomplishments, even relatively minor ones. One teacher recognizes her class for showing enthusiasm for a guest speaker. Another recognizes a student for getting a good score on a grammar test. Toll, who teaches a writing class, recognizes several of her students for volunteering to read their work aloud in class. This practice of communal praising and shaming—all but unthinkable in regular public schools, with their self-esteem fixation and “child-centered” classrooms—tells students that their actions have meaningful consequences.

My favorite thing from my trip up to Amistad, however, was this. Far and away:

Amistad doesn’t just place demands on students; it also requires a lot of educators. But they seem happy to give their all. Sue Walling, Amistad’s young academic dean, bubbles over with energy. “One of my favorite things was when Dacia gave me a key to the school,” she enthuses. Why? Because it made it easier to work late.

At Walling’s old job, in a suburban Connecticut public school district, where she worked for four years, putting in long hours got her into trouble with her union. The union rep told her that working so much set a bad precedent—management could start asking all the teachers to work late. If she absolutely had to work extra, the rep went on, then she should at least hide her car. “I got the whole speech that this is a marathon, not a sprint,” Walling recalls. “I could never go back.”

You got that? Working too hard sets a bad precedent. If you must, please hide it. This is what teachers unions are: disgusting.

Remember that story the next time anybody from a teachers union talks about how hard public school teachers work. Some of them do work quite hard — but only despite the people who pretend to be their advocates.