“It was nothing egregious, but just that the little things added up: a shirt unbuttoned, shoes not tied, not tracking the teacher with his eyes,” said Moore, adding that her son has an attention disorder. “It’s not normal to treat a young adult as a 2-year-old … kids internalize that.”
Woestehoff and Moore said some families have removed their children from Noble schools because they couldn’t keep paying the fees, though Moore said her biggest complaint is the infractions. Milkie said Noble sets up payment plans and on rare occasions waives the fees, and students never would be held back a grade solely because they couldn’t pay.
Even so, Matthew Mayer, a professor in the graduate school of education at Rutgers University, said a monetary fine is “highly inappropriate” because it likely has no bearing on students’ academic performance and disproportionately hurts poor families.
“It’s almost medieval in nature. It’s a form a financial torture, for lack of a better term,” Mayer said.
Emanuel defended the school, saying it gets “incredible” results and parents don’t have to send their children there. Charter schools are exempt from most district policies.
Parent Tammy O’Neal said her two daughters are excelling at Noble’s Muchin College Prep, and only one ever got detention, for not wearing a belt.
“If a kid is prone to getting in trouble and not taking school seriously, then (the fines are) a steep slope,” she said. “But why don’t you tell your kid to straighten up?”
Chadie Morris, 16, a sophomore at Noble Street College Prep, carries a 3.8 grade-point average at Noble Street College Prep, but figures she has paid $45 already this year for such things as talking in class.
“Sometimes it can be about the littlest things and you can still get demerits,” she said. “Demerits are horrible; detentions are horrible.”
But the aspiring lawyer, who struggled with absences until her adviser and principal persuaded her to come back, looks forward to attending a one-week summer college program.
Other charter school operators in Chicago and elsewhere said they don’t fine students but respect Noble’s academic success and its right to adopt its own discipline policy.
Tim King, CEO of Urban Prep Academies, which operates three high schools for boys in some of Chicago’s toughest and poorest neighborhoods, said he believes “very firmly in a more therapeutic or restorative approach vs. punitive toward student conduct.”
Every student in Urban Prep’s first two graduating classes was accepted to a college or university.
At Knowledge is Power Program, a network of 109 charter schools in 20 states and the District of Columbia, middle school students are rewarded for good behavior with a weekly incentive “paycheck” – fake money that can be redeemed at the school store or used to defray the cost of field trip, spokesman Steve Mancini said. The system is phased out by high school because it’s no longer needed.
Milkie, though, doesn’t plan to change a thing.
“It’s a beautiful system,” he said. “I don’t want to brag, but it is. It’s why the kids are so successful.”
- New research challenges fears about AI in the classroom - February 5, 2026
- How the FY25 funding freeze impacts students across America - July 24, 2025
- ‘Buyer’s remorse’ dogging Common Core rollout - October 30, 2014