KIPP's rebranding

A little more than a decade ago, teacher union organizers in the midst of an organizing drive at a KIPP charter school in Brooklyn, used KIPP's slogan, "Work hard. Be Nice" against the school's anti-union leaders. They launched a national campaign urging KIPP teachers everywhere to get organized under the slogan of "Be Nice."

Now, feeling the impact of the continuing Black Lives Matter protests, as well as criticisms of sexual abuse and racism coming from within their own ranks, KIPP, one of the first "no excuses" charters, has announced they are dumping the slogan altogether. The move is in many ways, comparable to the name changes being considered under pressure, by Major League Baseball's Cleveland Indians and the NFL's Washington Red***ns. It could easily fall under the heading: Giving up a little to hold on to a lot.

But whether the superficial rebranding will mean an end to KIPP's abusive discipline practices remains to be seen. For example, they have so far failed to adequately address the allegations of sexual harassment and assault of girls of color by one of their founders, Mike Feinberg which they kept buried until the Me Too movement emerged and he was finally fired.

They don't have a replacement yet. Here is part of their statement: "We are replacing it. We are not going to rush this part. Aligned with our shared mission and vision, we know we need to lift up a slogan that better represents the tomorrow we are hoping to build, together."

— Laura Hernández (@lehernandez02) July 2, 2020

Unimaginable in this day and age, but true...The Texas Tribune reports that Feinberg's teaching credential has been restored by some administrative judges who claimed there wasn't enough evidence to justify revoking Feinberg's state certification over an allegation of sexual misconduct from more than 20 years ago.

According to the Tribune:

The case, though, only examined one of the claims that KIPP said prompted Feinerg's firing. The hearing did not examine two other allegations of sexual harassment by two additional adult KIPP alumni.

“This proposal for decision does not change the circumstances of Mike Feinberg’s departure from KIPP,” said a KIPP spokesperson, referring to the recommendation.

All this leaves me wondering what crime you would have to commit in order to have your teaching license pulled in TX?

KIPP and KOPP join Duncan in telling parents to boycott schools until gun law is passed

CHICAGO (WLS) -- It's been another violent weekend in Chicago, with at least 6 people killed and 32 others hurt in shootings across the city. [None shot in school.]

KIPP leaders and other corporate school "reformers" like Arne Duncan and Peter Cunningham, are telling public school parents to "pull their kids out of school until we have better gun laws."

The boycott proposition received momentum online, including support from parents and the founder of Teach for America, Wendy Kopp... 

...“I’m in — let’s pick a date and start a movement no politician can ignore,” replied Jim Manly, the superintendent of KIPP Public Charter Schools in New York City.

After taking 14 years before firing their co-founder for sexual misconduct, it's no wonder that KIPP charter network is now forced to offer cash and prizes to parents as recruiting gimmicks. But their call for parents to boycott public schools, even in the wake of the Santa Fe school shootings, smacks of opportunism.

As brother Fred Klonsky points out in this morning's blog post:

For many Chicago young people, their public school is among the safest places Chicago parents can send their children each day. But more to the point, those like Cunningham and Duncan have a dismal history in proposing ideas for public school parents and  as public policy for others to follow.

 Yes, we need strong gun control laws passed. No, that's not likely to happen with Trump in the White House and Republicans (many on the take from the NRA) controlling both houses of Congress without pressure from mass protests in the streets. Telling parents to keep their children home until that happens may be provocative, but it's hairbrained. Not serious. Poor leadership as usual.

In the same breath they propose it, they are already walking it back. 

“It’s wildly impractical and difficult,” Duncan said. “But I think it’s wildly impractical and difficult that kids are shot when they are sent to school.”

 “We will see whether this gains traction, or something does, but we have to think radically.”

Yes, r-r-r-radically indeed. But there's nothing radical about punishing public schools for the sins of the politicians.

I'm recalling how Duncan and Cunningham blasted the tens of thousands of activist parents who actually won some important victories for their children by opting-out of school testing madness.

But Duncan claimed the opt-outers were simply...

"white suburban moms who—all of a sudden, their child isn't as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn't quite as good as they thought they were."

I also recall how, when Democrats had even a slim chance to pass gun-control legislation during Obama's first term, Atty. General Eric Holder was told to "shut the f**k up" by none other than Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

Oh, and speaking of guns, remember how Duncan tried to militarize the D.O.E. back in 2010? His purchase of 27 assault rifles had me wondering back then, if we needed an assault weapons ban on Arne?

I think Duncan's and the reformers' credibility as advisors to public school parents has been used up. Maybe it's time for them to to hold that thought. 

DACA, KIPP, CORPORATE CIVIL RIGHTS...

DACA DEADLINE IS TODAY, AND NOTHING WILL HAPPEN: Today is the day that the protections for the “dreamers” begin expiring, and CNN reports that nothing is going to happen to protect them in Congress today or in the near future.

What took so long?

Mayor di Blasio's "peacemaker" with the charter school lobby is the new chief of policy and public affairs at scandal-ridden KIPP. Richard Beuery, who is African-American, was targeted last year in racist emails by Dan Loeb, one of the city’s most prominent supporters of charter schools. But now, with the overdue firing of KIPP co-founder Mike Feinberg in response to allegations of sexual misconduct with former students, the organization is badly in need of a brand makeover. 

#TIME'S UP...There's still no explanation forthcoming as to why it took KIPP so long to get rid of Feinberg. He was "involved" with a former KIPP student, employed by KIPP Houston in 2004, which led to a "financial settlement" at the time. KIPP has to explain how it is that they just learned about it now? 14 years later? Until then, good guy Beury is left trying to put Humpty Dumpty together again. 

After listening to former Trump campaign aide Sam Nunberg being interviewed by MSNBC's Katy Tur, I came away convinced that the man is batshit crazy and surmising that the rest of DT's campaign staff must have been made up mainly of unvetted grifters, hustlers and outright foreign agents. Nunberg has been subpoenaed by Robert Mueller to testify before the grand jury, but tells Tur he will risk jail and won't testify. He also tells her that special prosecutor Mueller likely has the goods on Trump. 

What's he afraid of? Sounds like a man who woke up with a horse head in his bed. 

All this confirms my belief that Mueller can bring down DT and his whole grifter family if he really wants or dares to. That's a big IF. It also leaves me wondering how bad the Clinton campaign must have been to win the popular vote by 4 million and still lose the election to this bag of dicks? 

Citizens United...UCLA Prof Adam Winkler writing in the Atlantic, tells us how U.S. law intended to protect the rights of African-Americans and other minorities became all about the “Civil Rights of Corporations.” 

KIPP Guru Seligman helped develop GITMO interrogation techniques

Thanks to reader Dienne (see comment below) for pointing out the role played by KIPP guru Seligman in developing interrogation techniques used on the prisoners at Guantanamo. While Seligman denies working for the SERE Program or directly for the CIA (he was granted a $31-million no-bid Army contract to provide “resilience training” to US soldiers), his own experiments, using electric shocks on caged dogs, heavily influenced the Bush Administration's use of torture techniques.

First read this from the Times story on KIPP:

Toll and Levin are influenced by the writings of a psychology professor from the University of Pennsylvania named Martin Seligman, the author of a series of books about positive psychology. Seligman, one of the first modern psychologists to study happiness, promotes a technique he calls learned optimism, and Toll and Levin consider it an essential part of the attitude they are trying to instill in their students. Last year, a graduate student of Seligman’s named Angela Duckworth published with Seligman a research paper that demonstrated a guiding principle of these charter schools: in many situations, attitude is just as important as ability.

And by "attitude" they mean...

KIPP guru, Seligman

Then there's this from Wikipedia's page on Enhanced Interrogation Techniques like the SERE Program at GITMO:

The psychologists relied heavily on experiments done by American psychologist Martin Seligman in the 1970s on learned helplessness. In these experiments caged dogs were exposed to severe electric shocks in a random way in order to completely break their will to resist. Mitchell and Jessen applied this idea to the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah.[39][50] Many of the interrogation techniques used in the SERE program, including waterboarding, cold cell, long-time standing, and sleep deprivation were previously considered illegal under U.S. and international law and treaties at the time of Abu Zubaydah's capture.

KIPP founder Levin says he considers Duckworth’s work an indication of the practical side of the “character” education he and Toll and Atkins are engaged in.

The sad part of all this is that some parents believe that this type of behavior mod is just what their kids need to straighten them out. KIPP's well-heeled corporate backers also believe these techniques are just the medicine for poor black and Latino children. Not for their own kids, of course.

Seligman, described as politically conservative by a psychologist who knows him well, once threatened his fellow academics who, he claimed, were “forgetting” 9/11. 

Millie

This from The Edge Foundation's website:

“It takes a bomb in the office of some academics to make them realize that their most basic values are now threatened, and some of my good friends and colleagues on the Edge seem to have forgotten 9/11,”  

 In that post, Seligman was arguing that any science advisor to the president “needs to help direct natural science and social science toward winning our war against terrorism.”

I'd like to get our dog Millie, to bite Seligman on the ass. But alas, she's too mellow. I hope Seligman hasn't gotten to her.

KIPP's child abuse for other people's children

KIPP padded cell for kindergartners

Since their start in Houston in 1994, KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) charter schools have been the most celebrated of the No Excuses schools.

But reports that a KIPP charter school in N.Y. is locking children in a padded cell in order to "calm them down" are just the latest example of the charter chain's long record of child abuse and mis-education targeted primarily at African-American and Latino children.

The Daily News reports that a kindergartner and first grader at KIPP Star Washington Heights Elementary School were emotionally damaged after being put away in a padded walk-in cell used for 'time out.'

“He was crying hysterically,” said Teneka Hall, 28, a full-time Washington Heights mom whose son, Xavier, was rushed to the hospital after he panicked and wet himself while he was holed up in the padded room. “It’s no way to treat a child.”

I didn't have to look at the picture of the terrified youngster and his mother to know that they were African-American. It's hard to imagine this happening in white, middle class, public schools.

Teneka Hall and son Xavier

But these brutal forms of discipline have become routine for KIPP where strict obedience and sit-still-and-nod (I call it bobble-head) instruction lies at the heart of the curriculum. Much of it is based on KIPP's system for classroom behavior created by founders Levin and Feinberg. It's called Slant, which, according to the N.Y. Times,  instructs students to sit up, listen, ask questions, nod and track the speaker with their eyes. To me, it's all about breaking down their will and behavior modification.

Slant is based on the writings of a pop psychologist from the University of Pennsylvania named Martin Seligman, who studied the conditioning of dogs and then authored of a series of self-help books about positive psychology.

No divergence is permitted and deviants are quickly labeled, punished or expelled. KIPP has the highest student attrition rate in the nation. I recall one KIPP school where African-American children were made to sit on a bench with a sign around their neck that said, "CRETIN." KIPP leaders say they would rather  push out 60% of their kids than “coddle” them.

My friend and early childhood ed expert Deb Meier calls it "military style" discipline aimed at "humiliating them into compliance." But I must say that even as a military recruit, I was never debased in the fashion of KIPP's Washington Heights Elementary School.

While it's true that not all KIPP schools (I have visited several and have worked with some former KIPP teachers) faithfully follow this routine or its most abusive aspects, there is still enough of a history here to warrant an investigation and a revocation of KIPP's charter and public funding.

A twist on "separate but equal"

This from the N.Y. Times Mag piece on KIPP:

The [KIPP affiliated] schools that Toll, Atkins, Levin and Feinberg run are not racially integrated. Most of the 70 or so schools that make up their three networks have only one or two white children enrolled, or none at all. Although as charter schools, their admission is open through a lottery to any student in the cities they serve, their clear purpose is to educate poor black and Hispanic children. The guiding principle for the four school leaders, all of whom are white, is an unexpected twist on the “separate but equal” standard: they assert that for these students, an “equal” education is not good enough. 

Kahlenberg on so-called 'High-flying, high-poverty schools'

Don't miss Richard Kahlenberg's provacative piece in American Educator (Winter 2012-2013) which examines the roles of poverty and racial segregation and their impact of student learning. Kahlenberg takes on those who exaggerate the effect of "high-flying, high-poverty schools" or those [like Michelle Rhee--m.k.], who consider poverty to be mainly an "excuse" made by bad teachers who fail to produce high standardized test score results in poor, segregated schools.

Kahlenberg also takes a fair, but critical look at KIPP charter schools in particular, which have been held up as living evidence by the no-excuses crowd. One thing new I learned is that among KIPP graduates, two-thirds have failed to earn a bachelors degree, "a level of failure, one of KIPP's founders, Mike Feinberg, called 'unacceptable' given the group's goal of 75% college completion."

One area where I may disagree with Kahlenberg is on the optimism he shows regarding new "integration by socioeconomic status" plans which have been put in place after a conservative Supreme Court banned most racially-based affirmative actions plans. Kahlenberg says the new approach is a cost-effective, legally sound strategy that can promote racial diversity while narrowing the achievement gap.

We shall see if that's even its intent. 

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Won't Back Down

In Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and other cities, Democratic mayors have feuded bitterly with teachers’ unions and at times come to see them as enemies. And at a meeting of the United States Conference of Mayors in June, Democratic mayors joined Republican ones in a unanimous endorsement of so-called parent trigger legislation, about which unions have serious reservations. -- Frank Bruni, NYT, "Teachers on the Defensive."

KIPP Superiority?

"What’s bad is the pretense, and KIPP’s constant touting of itself as superior to the public schools on which it dumps its rejects, and reaping of vast amounts of private funding from sources that are undoubtedly sold on the belief that KIPP is working miracles with all segments of low-income communities." -- Caroline Grannan on Ravitch blog, "The KIPP Boast"

Krugman on Christie

New Jersey’s own Chris Christie will be the keynote speaker at the RNC, where he will be billed as a guy who gets things done. According to reports, however, one thing he won’t be talking about is the state of the New Jersey economy. -- Paul Krugman, "Comebacks"

Zero percent

A new poll suggests that Mitt Romney may achieve the nearly impossible: He may receive even less than the tiny 4 percent of the black vote that Sen. John McCain won four years ago...But as conservatives regained power — aided by the white South's shift from solidly Democratic to solidly Republican — black voters went the other way. As my father used to say, "We didn't leave the Republican Party, the Republicans left us." -- Clarence Page

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Dr. Cornell West

"If Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. were alive today, he would be on Freedom Plaza."--Upon his arrest in D.C. protest

Sen. Bernie Sanders

"Now that Occupy Wall Street is shining a spotlight on Wall Street greed and the enormous inequalities that exist in America, the question then becomes, how do we change the political, economic and financial system to work for all Americans, not just the top 1 percent?" -- Huffington

KIPP gets an "F"

"I still find it very difficult to vote for two more schools when their first school, which got all these praises, is an F," -- Jacksonville school board member, Tommy Hazouri

Taxing the rich?

“I suggested 80 percent. A tremendous number of wealthy people haven’t given much of anything.” -- Billionaire industrialist Jon Huntsman Sr.

The new Social-Darwinism

Charter schools for those with "highest potential"

Robert Schwartz's post today on Huffington, "Why Charters and College Access Programs Should Cream," is but the latest incarnation of Social-Darwinism applied to current public education policy. Such theories were popular in the late Victorian era in England, America, and elsewhere.

The basic notion was--and still is--that the strongest or fittest should survive and flourish in society, while the rest --- not.  The theory was chiefly expounded by Herbert Spencer, whose ethical philosophies were grounded in an elitist worldview and received a boost from the application of Darwinian ideas such as adaptation and natural selection. In its most extreme form, Social-Darwinism was used to justify eugenics programs aimed at weeding "undesirable" genes from the population. While we usually associate such theories with Nazi Germany, we have always had our home-grown versions within U.S. academia and politics.

President Obama, while on the campaign trail in 2007, was a vocal critic of Social-Darwinism as practiced by the Bush administration in their economic and tax policies. But you don't hear much on that topic from him these days, especially when it comes to school reform policies. After all, what is Race To The Top except a refined form of survival of the fittest?

Schwartz calls on corporate America to further bankroll charter schools like KIPP, ICEF, Yes Prep, and Aspire as elite schools for those students with "high potential," while relegating public schools to "focus on what they've already been doing for the past decade"-- moving those with lesser potential "from below basic to proficiency."

"You see," writes Schwartz, "our urban and rural schools have been doing better at educating lower achieving African American and Latino students in their attempt to close the achievement gap."

Schwartz, a Teach For America (TFA) alum -- no shock there-- directs the so-called Level Playing Field Institute. He actually performs a service by articulating the anti-democratic social theory behind many current corporate reform policies. However, his plea to U.S. corporations to increase their support for school re-segregation and creaming via charter schools is redundant. The corporate world, including power philanthropists like Gates, Broad, Walton and Bradley, is way ahead of him in this regard. It was the Bradley Foundation, in fact, that underwrote the publication of The Bell Curve, by Charles Murray which was based on the Social-Darwinist theory that black and Latino students lacked the academic potential held by white and Asian students and therefore should be tracked away from college preparatory programs.

Schwartz knows from where he speaks. Until recently, he was Chief Academic Officer for Inner City Education Foundation Public Schools (ICEF)  in South Los Angeles. He claims to have led "the strategic expansion of the academic program from three schools with 500 students to 15 schools with almost 4,000 students."

I couldn't help but notice this story about ICEF, which is the embodiment of Schwartz's social-Darwinian theory. It seems that after years of financial mismanagement, ICEF went bankrupt, leading to yesterday's lock-out of hundreds of  students at their Lou Dantzler Preparatory Charter Middle School. According to ABC News, "The Inner City Education Foundation (ICEF) that runs the charter school and leases space from the Boys and Girls Club was having problems paying its bills."

Clipped from: abclocal.go.com (share this clip)

So it seems that even for the chosen few with "high potential," Social-Darwinian theories don't necessarily deliver the goods and their promised "level playing field" is not so level after all. Buyer beware!

Aside: Schwartz, being a TFA grad and all, should really learn how to spell the word Institute in the title of his own organization. I hope it's corrected by the time my readers read this.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Marcus Yam for The New York Times

A sign at 168th St. and Broadway in Manhattan announcing enrollment for KIPP Star Elementary, a charter school.

Educator Takes On Charter Chain

"There is a quiet but fierce battle going on in education today, between the unions that represent the public school teachers and the hedge-fund managers who finance the big charter chains, between those who trust teachers to assess a child’s progress and those who trust standardized tests, and occasionally it flares out into the open over something as seemingly minor as the location of a school." -- Michael Winerip, NYT

Biden visits Delaware high school

Biden acknowledged that “beating up unions” had become en vogue for some, but credited the key role unions were playing in improving Howard High. “Do you know what these guys did?” Biden asked. “They said, ‘We’ll take a chance.’" -- Education Votes

Experience makes teachers better

"Having $40 billion or $50 billion does not mean you know how to engage, entertain, inspire, motivate and educate a classroom of 25 10- and 11-year-olds for 6½ hours each day. Have any of these people even set foot in a classroom in the last 20 or 30 years, other than for the occasional photo-op?" -- Edward Johnson, teacher at West Elementary School in Sycamore, Il 

Al L.A. rally

"This is a direct attack" on all unions and the entire middle class, Mitchell shouted, warning that similar policies could soon be introduced by politicians in California, which is grappling with an estimated $26-billion deficit. "An injury to one is an injury to us all!" -- Mahlon Mitchell, president of the Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin.

Florida for sale

"The Florida Legislature proved this past week, once and for all, that it is the utter Whore of Babylon." -- St. Pete Times columnist, Howard Trolxer

Heading into the weekend...

Think-tanker declares victory over unions

Right-wing think-tanker and professional union-basher (used up my Friday hyphen quota), Jay Greene has declared victory over the nation's teachers unions.  Following last week's Republican election victories, Greene blogged, "We won! At least we've won the war of ideas."

The L.A. Times, as expected, took Greene's handoff and ran with it. But their declaration of victory over organized labor may prove to be premature reminiscent of George Bush's infamous aircraft carrier speech.

Yes, these are tough times for union teachers. But let's not forget how many of the important Democratic victories last week, in Illinois, Nevada, and California, to name but a few, couldn't have happened without strong teacher union support. And let's not forget that it was teacher union resistance to Mayor Bloomberg's school closings and the lawsuit filed by the union and the NAACP that ultimately led to Chancellor Klein being run out of town.

"To say that we're under attack is an understatement," Los Angeles teachers union vice president Julie Washington told an angry audience of her members recently. "This is a wakeup call for all of us."

Jim Horn reminds WaPo's Jay Mathews what he left out in another of his fawning columns about KIPP.

 Actually, Jay has chopped off a half hour for some reason (embarrrasing maybe?), since the study he refers to above, “San Francisco Bay Area KIPP Schools: A Study of Early Implementation and Achievement,” clearly notes the 9.5 hour school day (almost half of which is spent on math and reading), the 60 percent increase in school time overall,  and the 65 hour work week for teachers.  What Jay does not mention, too, is the winnowing effect over time that eliminates the weak and recalcitrant "miscreants" in order to maintain the KIPP brand that people like Mathews promote without noting KIPP's abusive psychological sterilization program or the KIPP attrition rates for both students and teachers that would be entirely unsustainable and unacceptable in regular public schools.School Matters)

Eugene Robinson--Why don't they fight back?

Wednesday night, I gave a talk at Indiana State University. "You watch," said a man in the audience, "the Democrats are going to cave on the tax cuts for the rich, just like they caved on everything else." Sure enough, on Thursday I awoke to read the Huffington Post's interview with White House senior adviser David Axelrod, in which he appeared to signal that Obama - with great reluctance - might have to accept an extension of George W. Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans after all. (RCP)

A letter to Pres. Obama

Ira Socol gets a little too personal for my taste, but his questions are tough and to the point (Schools Matter). He's basically calling out Obama and Duncan, and in a way, all of us, by asking if some of the privately-managed charters they so highly tout, are only good  for other people's children? For example, if KIPP's Slant system of instruction, which tells kids to sit still, nod to demonstrate your compliance, and speak in unison according to the script, works well enough to deserve millions in i3 funding, why not send your own kids there?

What research is it, Mr. President, that Secretary Duncan cites to indicate that the students of KIPP Academy Lynn Charter School deserve so much less - of life, of creativity, of respect, of freedom, than your daughter's classmates at Sidwell?

Am I a Luddite? No

I love my i-phone as much as the next guy. I've been Tweeting all morning, haven't I? And here I am at 6 a.m., on a perfectly good Thursday morning, tied by a thousand threads to the blogging machine. I hope I'm still around in 2020 when I'm sure all kid's will have tracking devices sown into their clothes (skulls?) like the elementary school kids in Contra Costa.

So why am I so unimpressed with all the latest chatter about "innovation" by the education experts over at the National Journal? It's not that I don't find it interesting. I do (wonder why I'm not on the invited list?). I'm especially interested in the tepid responses to Arne Duncan's i3 innovation grants which basically poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the pockets of long-established Duncan favorites like KIPP (are time-outs "I am a miscreant" signs around kids' necks, really innovations?), TFA, and New Leaders.

The problem I have with the whole discussion is that innovation is equated only with technology (Tom VanderArk is even selling ipads). Missing is the total absence of words like, "equity," "democracy," and "community."

Case in point: the early small-schools movement was a real driver of ed-innovation. Why no mention? Same could be said of the Mississippi Freedom Schools of the early 60s. It seems the experts are looking up, not down, for innovation.

No, I'm not a Luddite. I just think that technology and democratic education have to develop in harmony for real innovation to take place.

Thanks for critical thinkers

Thanks to those critics of bought-and-paid-for school research, EPIC/EPRU, for shining their  light on the latest KIPP study. Gary Miron's preliminary look finds a big problem. The study badly underestimates the impact of KIPPs relatively high student attrition rates and therefore belies KIPP PR guy Steve Mancini's claim that it provides "irrefutable evidence" that KIPP doesn't cream it's kids.

Mancini doth protest a bit too much however, since the concern with the KIPP chain of replicant schools has always been more about attrition, than skimming. It's always been difficult for charter schools to aggressively skim because most are required to admit students through a lottery. Some do it anyway, by claiming that they don't have the resources to teach English language learners or kids with disabilities or behavioral problems, a claim that neighborhood public schools aren't allowed to make.

Miron is actually much kinder and gentler and even somewhat apologetic towards KIPP and the Mathematica researchers than I am. He could have pointed out for example, that KIPP only allowed the researchers to look at 22 carefully selected hand-picked schools after which they concluded that KIPP didn't skim their students. They claim that data wasn't available on the others. Why not I wonder? Mabe Gary will take some of these questions up at a later date.

According to Edweek,

 "...the researchers attempted to get data for all 35 KIPP schools that were opened by 2005, but data from school districts and states were only available for 22 of those schools."

But skimming at the admissions end was never really as much an issue as was student attrition, with low-scoring kids being pushed out and not replaced by other low-scoring kids.

The KIPP study did find that the charter school chain did and does have much smaller populations of ELL and special ed students which make it difficult to compare KIPP with the public schools that are receives in large numbers of these students.

News from the Ownership Society

John Arnold, 35, is a former Enron trader turned hedge fund manager. His employees include several big name energy traders including ex-Enron CEO Greg Whalley (No, he's obviously not in prison).

Arnold's net worth is estimated at $3.4 billion. He currently runs Centaurus Advisors, a $5 billion energy hedge fund. Near the top of his list of good investments--privately managed charter schools. He has already put $22 million into YES and KIPP charter operations. (Forbes, "Yes to Billionaires")

Vallas' New Orleans becomes privatization Mecca

From Nola.com

Though charter operators guard their autonomy, the trend toward clustering represents a kind of middle ground between traditional centralized school systems and stand-alone charters. The strategy allows "CMOs" -- nonprofit charter management organizations, which typically take on from two to ten schools -- to achieve economies unavailable to stand-alone charters, whose principals are often heavily burdened with business-side affairs.

Rockford redux

Readers may remember back to March, when I wrote about Paul Vallas' virtual takeover of Rockford's public schools. After landing a huge consulting contract, while still holding down his job as New Orleans school boss, Vallas used his clout to push a Chicago-based chain of charter schools on the city. He also brought in his lieutenant in New Orleans, Lavonne Sheffield, to become the new Rockford superintendent, over the objections of several local board members.

Only one problem--Sheffield isn't certified. As if anyone needed proof that Vallas was calling the shots. Why else would an economic basket case like Rockford pay top-dollar for an uncertified supe?

The Washington Post's Jay Mathews is a union-basher

He's also a self-admitted apologist for KIPP, the nation's largest chain of business-model charter schools and one noted for its high teacher turnover rates and for its efforts to drive up test scores by pushing out low-scoring kids.

In the past Mathews has admitted overlooking such critical data to "make KIPP sound like more than it is." Now he's doing it again. Only this time, it's at the expense of the very teachers who are responsible for whatever successes KIPP has had. He's even threatening them if they dare "mess with" KIPP

An example of his union bashing: In Monday's WaPO, "Don't Mess With Success at This High Achieving Charter Middle School," Mathews quotes KIPP founder Jason Botel who charges that an unnamed union member responded unsympathetically to Botel's scare tactics. Botel claimed that KIPP, the wealthiest charter operator in the nation, wouldn't be able to afford to pay teachers overtime for working their typical 16-hour day, if those teachers dared to unionize.

"That's not my problem," the unnamed official supposedly tells Botel. The president of the union denies that anyone said that. But Mathews puts it out there anyway.

"Such stories," writes Mathews, "heat the blood of union critics. It is, they contend, a sign of how unions dumb down public education by focusing on salaries, not learning."

This type of journalism is nothing new for Mathews. He's become an important part of a national campaign aimed at discouraging and defeating activist KIPP teachers, who are finally standing up to abuse from Botel and company and organizing for collective barganing rights.

KIPP-AMP teachers in New York, for example, are currently part of a new movement among charter school teachers, asking for the union recognition long denied them. They got a majority of KIPP teachers to sign union cards only to have their pro-union colleagues fired, threatened and intimidated by KIPP management. The teachers want an end to 16-hour teacher work days (which Mathews thinks are good for kids), lousy pay and benefits (while KIPP founders rake in millions), and firings of pro-union teachers.

Botel claims that KIPP can't afford to pay teachers properly. He claims that African-American kids learn better with overworked teachers who burn out in three years. A good journalist would question those claims. A good journalist would fact-check the "not my problem" quote, find out who supposedly said it, name them and ask them if they really said it. He would also do some investigation and ask for some evidence before drinking the KIPP kool-aid. But a good journalist wasn't writing the "don't mess" story.

The boundaries of school reform

James Forman, Jr. reviews two book and reflects on KIPP and the Harlem Children's Zone

Before KIPP, there was Harlem’s Central Park East, which flourished under Deborah Meier’s leadership in the 1980s and 1990s. For many years, Central Park East was the icon of “what works” in inner-city education, and Meier’s account of the school in The Power of Their Ideas remains one of the wisest books ever written about teaching. But Central Park East did not revolutionize education, because efforts to transplant what worked there into schools with different cultures and less-skilled educators often failed. (Boston Review).

A victory for N.Y. charter teachers

Charter school teachers in N.Y. have won and important battle in their efforts to unionize. Leo Casey at Edwize reports that the New York State Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) has voted to certify the teachers at KIPP’s AMP Academy as a recognized collective bargaining unit of the United Federation of Teachers. The decision was made during PERB’s monthly meeting in Albany, and clears the way for the teachers and their union to collectively bargain with KIPP.

“On behalf of our union, we are excited about this step forward for our KIPP AMP team and family. It will allow us to find even better ways to educate our KIPPsters,” said Luisa Bonifacio and Leila Chakravarty, two members of the union organizing committee.

'Freedom'--KIPP style

There's not much there there in Jennifer Medina's NYT piece today, "Charter Schools Weigh Freedom Against the Protection of a Union," about the struggle of teachers to gain union representation at the KIPP AMP school in New York. Medina repeats the tired old line of the charter school managers, represented in the headline above, that the struggle is all about unions vs. freedom. Readers will remember D.C. Mayor Fenty's recent quote about "freeing" teachers from the "burden of contracts."

Medina gives us a brief glimpse into what "freedom" means in privately-managed charters like KIPP.

...teachers: suddenly, for example...were required to attend staff development days but they were not allowed to ask questions; they had to submit daily lesson plans but did not get any feedback. Such practices have long raised eyebrows among union supporters worried that charter schools take advantage of young rookies, whose boundless energy fuels them for a couple of years of long hours at low pay but quickly turns into bitter burnout.

I suppose that's one version of "freedom." Maybe Medina means the freedom of KIPP management to fire teachers at will, without due process or to impose 16-hour work days, or to push low-scoring students out in record numbers. Medina never tells us exactly what objectionable rules collective bargaining would impose on KIPP teachers or charter schools in general. She also ignores the relentless, well-financed anti-union campaign being waged by KIPP management and makes it seem like it's just a matter of a few teachers changing their minds about unions, one way or another.