When Gary Rubinstein Visited KIPP

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1. Frances Fitzgerald says:

   November 21, 2012 at 11:26 pm

   This post is interesting, when I worked in Brooklyn we were designated a title one district, We all taught 4 classes a day not five and never 3 in a row. I am always astounded how there are no limits as to how many we teach in a row.

   Sent from my iPad

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2. philaken says:

   November 21, 2012 at 11:31 pm

   He has an interesting followup column about how KIPP’s claim of their students being “college ready” is just some more spin form corporate reformers.

   Ready or not …
   http://garyrubinstein.teachforus.org/2012/11/22/ready-or-not/

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3. falstaff35 says:

   November 22, 2012 at 1:50 am

   Although Gary Rubenstein’s concludes that “college ready” is a soft phrase for KIPP schools to be using, the numbers he reports seem to justify the school’s claim, if the actual Regents exam scores are to be believed. It is true that he finds the scaling guide inconsistent with the claimed results, but he does not prove irrefutably that the KIPP school he visited claims are false. That’s his impression, but impressions are soft evidence. The school he visited was a good regular school, with four classes in a standard seven hour day and classes sizes of fifteen. This is the standard private school way of getting adequate results. That school seems to work by having off loaded the students who are “trouble.” The minimum demands of equal opportunity have been met by such simple devices. The school recognizes that equal results for all is unrealistic. Where the troublesome, unmanageable, uneducable and deeply troubled kids are to go is unanswered, but that shouldn’t be a criticism of the KIPP model. All parents want is a chance to have a choice of an OK enough school for their kids. It is why the charter model is growing and expanding. The public schools are trying to hold children hostage to get their funding demands met by compelling regular kids to go to school with the “gangsta” element. The public schools lose their credibility thereby, and one can understand why schools that compel regular kids to suffer from disruptive kids are closed to make way for charters that won’t. It just obvious common sense. You don’t put pit bulls in with border collies if you want any work to get done. Gary in his two articles on the KIPP school he visited actually more or less inadvertently supports the case for them rather than the opposite.

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   • Steve K says:

     November 22, 2012 at 4:46 am

     So, in essence,it would be completely unfair to compare KIPP to traditional public schools. By keeping the easiest to educate students, KIPP maintains an unfair advantage.

     I’m not arguing anything that you say. But charter advocates who insist that the KIPP education is better based on test scores always ignore the privileges that KIPP has that traditional public schools don’t.

     If I could eliminate my most disruptive students, I’d get much better results, too.

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   • Steve K says:

     November 22, 2012 at 4:51 am

     Oh and the public schools aren’t holding anyone hostage. They merely take on the challenge of attempting to educate everyone. (You know a basic American opportunity for all.) Instead of educating only the best kids, public schools are required to take on everyone. KIPP is essentially a private school masquerading as a public school.

     Also, their model isn’t exactly innovative. What you described is an industrial style model that my state’s governor hates.But I bet he’d love KIPP because it segregates students pretty easily.

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   • Jack says:

     November 22, 2012 at 5:17 am

     falstaff,

     Consider the case of Los Angeles’ AUDUBON MIDDLE SCHOOL

     Dr. DeWayne Davis, the principal at LAUSD’s Audubon
     Middle school, wrote Dr. Diane Ravitch a letter which Diane
     posted on her site. In this letter, Dr. Davis condemned the
     “midyear dump” of students from the nearby charter
     schools. Every year, just after winter break, there are
     about 168 or so kids that have left those charter schools—
     either kicked out or “counseled out”. I can’t recall
     the exact figures, but he said about 162 of those are FBB
     (Far Below Basic)—kids who score low because of being
     innately “slower”, non-cooperative, “Special Ed”,
     newcomers to the country who are brand new to
     English, those students just plain not willing to
     work hard, from distressed home lives, foster care,
     homeless, etc.

     Davis tells about the great difficulties that teachers have
     in their efforts to absorb these charter cast-off’s into their
     classes. For the next month or two—or for even the remainder
     of the school year—teachers and the pre-existing students
     report varying states of chaos as a result of the nearby
     charter schools engaging in this despicable “midyear
     dump”.

     Of course, think of the effect this has on Audubon’s
     scores—they go DOWN—and on the nearby charter
     schools—they go UP.

     I heard from a teacher that the pro-charter School Board
     members came down on Dr. Davis like a ton of bricks
     for “airing dirty laundry” to Dr. Ravitch.

     Here’s the quote that got likely him into trouble:

     DR. DEWAYNE DAVIS:

     “It is ridiculous that they (charter operators) can
     pick and choose kids and pretend that they are
     raising scores when, in fact, they are just purging
     nonperforming students at an alarming rate.
     That is how they are raising their scores, not by
     improving the performance of students.

     “Such a large number of FBB students will handicap
     the growth that the Audubon staff initiated this year,
     and further, will negatively impact the school’s
     overall scores as we continue to receive a recurring
     tide of low-performing students.”

     One teacher activist explained this phenomenon with
     the following analogy:

     “It’s like you have two oncology (cancer treatment) practices:

     Oncology Practice A

     &

     Oncology Practice B.

     “Oncology Practice A only accepts patients with
     Stage 1 cancers, carefully screening out those with
     Stages 2, 3, or 4 cancers. They send the latter down
     the street to Oncology Practice B. If one of the latter
     happens to sneak by this screening process, they
     likewise are immediately referred down the street to Oncology Practice B.

     “Meanwhile, Oncology Practice B, by law, MUST
     ACCEPT ALL PATIENTS who show up in their
     waiting room, and are banned from doing what
     Oncology Practice A is doing—again, being selective
     at the outset to only accept the Stage 1 cancer patients,
     and doing a later screening out to maintain that
     their patients are exclusively Stage 1.

     “Well, low and behold, as things play out, the ‘data’
     shows that Oncology Practice A has higher
     cure rates and higher remissions, while Oncology
     Practice B has a greater percentage of patients
     who are relapsing, having to undergo multiple
     surgeries, enduring extra rounds of chemotherapy,
     etc., and of course, dying.

     “Proponents of Oncology Practice A then claim, ‘Look
     at all that’s wrong with all Oncology Practice B. Their
     patients are suffering, not being cured, and even dying.
     And then look at how wonderfully we’re doing here
     over at Oncology Practice A’.”

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4. bbetzen says:

   November 22, 2012 at 2:09 am

   The high KIPP truth attrition rate mentioned in this blog affirms what is happening here in Dallas with KIPP. I did a study this past April using their data from the Texas Education Agency web site. See http://schoolarchiveproject.blogspot.com/2012/04/kipp-truth-academy-student-movement.html

   The Dallas KIPP student attrition rate is higher than Dallas ISD attrition rate for the same grades.

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5. Linda says:

   November 22, 2012 at 8:46 am

   There are KIPP schools in NYC, so I always wonder why Wendy Kopp and Richard
   Barth do not send their kids to a KIPP school staffed by TFA. Wouldn’t that be a ringing endorsement?

   Reply
6. Jim Horn says:

   November 22, 2012 at 9:54 am

   My comment at Gary’s blog: If I were wanting to find out if KIPP lives up to its reputation as the segregated final solution to character deficiencies among poor people, I would go to where the indoctrination and de-culturing is being done in the 5-8 schools, rather than to a high school on a holiday. The middle schools are where you will find teachers putting in 70-90 hours a week and where you will find Levin and Seligman-inspired school “leaders” playing amateur clinicians by urging teachers to apply alternating jolts of learned helplessness and learned optimism in order to behaviorally neuter children, while culturally sterilizing them. This is where you will regularly find well-meaning TFAers and former TFAers engaged in a minstrel version of social justice education, whereby poor brown and black children are transformed to reflect the short list of “performance character” values of corporate America, which conspicuously lacks the term “integrity” and where the moral compass has been tossed out the window for a GPS map to Wall Street.

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   • Eric says:

     November 22, 2012 at 6:37 pm

     apply alternating jolts of learned helplessness and learned optimism in order to behaviorally neuter children, while culturally sterilizing them

     So where do we find schools that engage children and fulfill the expectations parents have for their kids and taxpayers have for publicly funded institutions? What would a Federal Judge find preferable to Kipp as a remedy for plaintiffs?

     Reply
     • Jim Horn says:

       November 22, 2012 at 6:59 pm

       You may start with a 9-0 SCOTUS decision in 1954 that ruled segregated schools are inherently unequal. There is a vast body of research on the benefits of shared social capital that accrues with economic and ethnic mixing.

       KIPP, by the way, has never been ruled by any judge as a solution to malignantly neglected public schools. There are ways to create humane schools in urban areas where learning is the goal, rather than the the imposition of an antiquated behavioral catechism and constant test prep. When KIPP is embraced by parents of kids in the leafy suburbs, then we can have another look at KIPP.