48 Time December 6/December 13, 2021
On Jan. 31, the electrical engineer and
Navy veteran fired off an email to a
group of fellow parents and activists in
the Boston suburb of Malden. “Remote
learning has given us added insight into
what stands for instruction based on
American Culture!” Henry wrote. “The
banning of this text from the curricu-
lum should be a plank in our platform.”
The book in question was The Adven-
tures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain’s 1876
classic of American literature—a work
approved by the state of Massachusetts
as part of the public-school curriculum.
But when Henry’s missive reached an
employee at the agency that oversees
Mystic Valley Regional Charter School,
the official agreed with his complaint.
“This is horrible,” wrote Olympia
Stroud, a program coordinator at the
Massachusetts department of elemen-
tary and secondary education (DESE).
“How long have these books been in
the curriculum?” Stroud forwarded
the concerns to a supervisor, Benie
Capitolin, who called the matter “heart-
breaking.” “If our system can’t protect
Black and brown students from unsafe
environments,” Capitolin wrote, “how
can it possibly educate them?”
For 23 years, Mystic Valley’s aca-
demic record has been undeniable. Its
students are disproportionately lower-
income kids from communities of color,
yet its test scores and graduation rates
routinely rank among the state’s best.
Charter-school rankings place it in the
top percentiles nationally. The school’s
1,500-person wait list is nearly as large
as its K-12 enrollment, and attrition is
so low that few students are admitted
past kindergarten.
Under Massachusetts law, charter
schools, which are publicly funded but
privately operated, are supposed to be
judged solely on their academic success,
faithfulness to their charter and orga-
nizational viability. But Mystic Valley’s
future as an institution is now in doubt
because of an approach to teaching that
has fallen out of fashion. The school’s
educational mission focuses on “the
fundamental ideals of our American
Culture,” with an emphasis on the na-
tion’s founding documents. As set out
in its state-approved charter, it aims
to “embrace the melting pot theory by
highlighting our citizens’ and students’
commonality, not their differences.”
Yet to avoid perpetuating racism,
many educators, administrators and
parents now believe it’s insufficient
to ensure that everyone is treated the
same. A few years ago, as national de-
bates about racism and history inten-
sified, DESE added a new “cultural
responsiveness” standard to its evalu-
ation of charter schools, defined as “an
approach to viewing culture and iden-
tity as assets” in order to “acknowledge
and actively draw upon diverse back-
grounds [and] identities.”
To Mystic Valley, this new criterion
seemed like an attempt to impose race
consciousness on a proudly egalitarian
school. When administrators expressed
concerns that its charter was incom-
patible with the new cultural stan-
dards, the state insisted there was no
issue. Yet in May, when regulators con-
ducted an interim performance review,
they informed the school that it wasonly “partially conducive to learning”
because of its approach to culture and
identity. A draft report issued in Sep-
tember marked the school as not fully
meeting the new standard. Mystic Val-
ley has sued the state over the cultural-
responsiveness criteria, which it fears
could put its charter in jeopardy.
Such reviews are supposed to be un-
biased and free of outside influence. But
according to a trove of emails the school
obtained through a public-records law-
suit, DESE employees were secretly co-
ordinating with the school’s critics, in-
cluding the Henrys, the NAACP and
local racial-justice activists uncon-
nected to the school.
The critics appeared to strategize
with the state officials to go after Mys-
tic Valley. In their emails, the activists
advocated a “stealth approach,” using
“cloak and dagger” tactics. And DESE
went along, adding employees to the re-
view team who were concerned about
the school’s racial climate, then delib-
erately delaying the review for months
to allow parents to submit official com-
plaints. When none materialized, the
department created informal focus
groups that they packed with the same
complaining activists, then incorpo-
rated the groups’ feedback into its re-
port, the documents show. In another
email, Stroud praised the activists for
their work to “help expose Mystic Val-
ley.” (DESE declined to comment, citing
the school’s pending lawsuit. The state
attorney general’s office is also review-
ing complaints of alleged racial discrimi-
nation at Mystic Valley, according to a
spokeswoman.)
Other parents at the school, many of
them working-class people of color who
see it as their child’s best chance at suc-
cess, are disturbed by the conflict. Many
are terrified Mystic Valley will be forced
to close. “We have always been evalu-
ated with flying colors,” says Alex Dan,
the school’s director, a former English
teacher and swimming coach. But now,
“there’s this vague mandate to follow a
new approach that we feel is the oppo-
site of what’s made us so successful as
a school and wonderful as a country.”The Teaching of race in American
schools has become a front-burner polit-
ical issue. New laws regulating curricula‘There’s this vaguemandate to followa new approach thatis the opposite ofwhat’s made usso successful.’
—ALEX DAN, DIRECTOR, MYSTIC VALLEYNATION
Eric Henry couldn’t believe what
the fifth-graders at his triplets’
school were being assigned to read.