A comment by Jonathan Schorr (son of the famous Dan Schorr, who was a fearless man of the left, opposed to plutocrats and billionaires and privatizers and their schemes in foreign nations) suggests that KIPP will NOT take the challenge. Jon says that KIPP would abandon their original purpose if they accepted responsibility for an entire impoverished district. Jon says it is wrong to expect KIPP to take on a district. That would betray their “original purpose.” Which, I guess, means to help the lucky few escape from poverty.
I say, if KIPP has the secret sauce for raising the achievement of poor minority youth, then demonstrate that it works in an entire district, not just for the lucky few.
Come on. The eyes of the nation are on you.
You can do it.
Take on a low-performing district and teach us the lessons of KIPP.
Don’t be afraid.
I have faith in you.
Show your stuff.
Carol Burris, principal of a high school in Long Island, agrees. She writes:
I think that what Diane Ravitch asks is more than reasonable. If KIPPs philosophy, pedagogy, leadership, teacher training and discipline practices are what makes KIPP great, then turnaround a failing school. I am sincere. Perhaps we public school folk will learn. Perhaps our state governments will change laws so that we can implement your discipline practices at KIPP and not get called on the carpet for high suspension rates. I do not think you cherry pick students, but the students who choose to go are different in motivation and peer effects do come in to play. The comments on Schorrs blog were helpful in revealing the KIPP mindset. I do hope that KIPP will take the challenge and turnaround a school and its teachers with their training. Kids might benefit and the world would have an open window into KIPP practices.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
More than just challenging KIPP, part of the original premise of charters was for them to share what works with the rest of us. However, when I taught at a charter they actually had me sign a non disclosure. So much for sharing best practices.
you can tell us.
Yes, keep the pressure up–dare the charterizers to take on an entire failing school district and show the nation what they can do, not just a school here and there which can cherry-pick its students and gain access to both public funds and deep corporate pockets to pay their bills. Even Geoffrey Canada would not take on a whole school district; in fact, when the 8th-grade cohort he picked looked unpromising as the founding 9th grade class for his new Wall St funded HS, he simply fired the entire 8th grade, sent them back to the public schools which have no authority to fire any students, and then Canada selected a more promising group to start the 9th grade.
Based of what KIPP did in Camden NJ – where they ran Freedom Academy until they decided it was too much of a bother and not performing well – I think they will do what other parts of corporate America does – look for another location-consumer when the business is not going so well in the current market. We all know they are drinking a special Kool Aid, but they do not have the special sauce….
This is an argument we are using here in Washington state fighting a charter system (we are only 1 of 9 states that have consistently said no to charters).
If KIPP is so great (and other charters), name a district in the country that can say because of the presence of charters, they have closed the achievement gap? There isn’t one in 20 years and 41 states.
Also, the initiative here in WA State (1240), claims to want to serve at-risk students and yet, if they had more approved proposals than spaces, what would they do? Give all the approved charter proposals a second look and then pick the BEST? Nope, it goes to a lottery. Even the mighty KIPP can’t automatically win a lottery.
So how will this help WA State children to have charters? It won’t and it will hurt our system that is already chronically underfunded.
KIPP leaders are not stupid – they know very well that they are catering to a motivated segment of the urban poor population and offering them some relief from disruptive and unmotivated peers. This idea is not new, as it is shared by every private and parochial school in the country, from preschool to Harvard. Basically, if you have a select student population, you will get better results than a school that accepts everyone. The one time (that I know of) that KIPP took over an entire school (in Colorado) they were not successful and had to admit defeat.
Another thing I suspect KIPP is doing is this: I suspect their leaders and teachers are looking at the standardized test ahead of time, and then drilling their students on it for the entire year. This is probably the reason why many KIPP graduates are not ready for college, despite the supposedly high test scores. But I heard that KIPP is solving this problem too, by opening their own colleges (could this be true?)!!!!
Personally I don’t see anything wrong with schools that are selective; I sent my own sons to such schools. However, saying that KIPP or Holy Angels is doing something “better” than the local public school is disingenuous. Shame on them.
It was the Cole Middle School in Denver. It was a “failing” school and KIPP took it over. After two years, KIPP walked away.
Same thing has happened in other cities.
KIPP will no longer attempt turnarounds.
After sitting in a staff meeting where my colleagues & I were told that it is our moral imperative to close the achievement gap, I asked which, if any, school had really done this and more importantly, how did they do it? Kipp was the only example my curriculum director could point to and even then he said they had “some, limited” success. So, I say yes, let’s see you do it with an entire district. Open your doors to every kid that walks through like we do and show us how it’s done. I won’t hold my breath though.
As the blogger who did the first known research exposing KIPP’s eye-popping attrition, I think Linda has it right. It’s not an inherently bad way to operate, providing a setting for motivated and compliant young people from supportive families without the pull of what sociologist Elijah Anderson calls “the street.” 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.
What is it with the offspring of principled people like Daniel Schorr and Marian Wright Edelman? I’ll never be famous or revered, but dammit, my kids are never going to sell their souls.
Thanks, Caroline. And thanks for your support of our great public schools. The truth is emerging, as it always does.
Linda Johnson, AKA Linda/RetiredTeacher
Ask Benjamin Franklin about his Loyalist son.
“I do not think you cherry pick students, but the students who choose to go are different in motivation and peer effects do come in to play.”
??? Does KIPP not do lottery? I thought they did?
KIPP requires that applicants jump through many hoops. At least some KIPP schools — perhaps all — require students to take a test before putting them into the alleged lottery. I say “alleged,” because the KIPP schools here in San Francisco are underenrolled, yet they still speak as if there’s a lottery. KIPP schools also require a counseling session with the family — you can see where that may be going — and signed commitments to this-n-that.
The test especially selects, self-evidently, for compliant students. The vast majority of KIPP schools are grades 5-8, and kids that age are definitely old enough to be non-cooperative when asked to take an extraneous test. In addition, KIPP schools’ sky-high attrition clearly gets rid of students who haven’t gotten with the program.
I just took this from a website on KIPP in New Orleans.
At the start of each academic year, KIPP New Orleans Schools students and their parents must sign on to commitment to excellence – where they agree to work hard, have faithful attendance, and acceptable behavior. Teachers sign this document too, promising to do whatever it takes to help each of our students learn. KIPP New Orleans Schools commits to giving our teachers the tools and support they need to keep their promises, to grow as educators and individuals and to experience the rewards of team and family.
Here is the link—-> http://kippneworleans.sharpschool.net/join-our-team/about_k_i_p_p_new_orleans/
We have a well-regarded non-chain charter high school here in San Francisco that requires a 13-page enrollment application with multiple essay answers from the parents, plus transcripts, teacher recommendations and an essay by the applicant, plus signed commitments — all this before the lottery. There are three additional pages if the applicant has an IEP (special ed).
Then there’s a lottery. Well, you can see the selection process at work here. I’m just using that as an example of why “enrollment is by lottery” (which is what that school officially says) doesn’t tell enough of the story.
Disclaimer: we also have two selective-admissions public magnet high schools, one with academic criteria and one with an audition or portfolio judging in an artistic discipline. The difference is that those processes are in the open and there’s no pretense that “enrollment is by lottery.”
Linda
there would be nothing wrong with KIPP if they didn’t take public monies
In my opinion, there’s nothing wrong with a selective private school, and there’s nothing wrong with a selective public school — as long as it is honest and open about its selection process. (And as long as there are options for students who don’t make it through the selection process, or don’t want to, of course.) The dishonesty is part of what’s wrong.
I’ve followed the charter sector for a long time. In my view, the deceit — falsely claiming that they serve a representative cross-section of the community, for example, and falsely claiming that there’s no selectivity in the enrollment process — is based on a “fake it till you make it” mindset. Then the fakery becomes necessary to woo the private funders, and continued deception is necessary to keep the funding flowing in.
The collateral damage is to the public schools that accept the students who aren’t KIPP material, and the students in those schools, and the entire public education system as KIPP wins fawning adoration from the press.
Anne, there are many public schools that are selective. I live near the very selective Whitney School in Cerritos, CA and the Oxford Academy in Cypress. My own son went to Long Beach Polytechnic where he got a much better education than my other son who went to a private high school. I think it’s OK to use public money for these schools if it’s OK with the taxpayers. What’s not OK is to lie and pretend that the school is working with a non-selective population. All of the schools I have just mentioned are honest about the selection process but the KIPP schools want people to believe that they are taking the typical child in an urban school when that is clearly not the case.