By now, we have all read the encomia heaped on KIPP, and we know that KIPP presumably has what Mayor Rahm Emanuel once referred to as the “secret sauce.” That is the extra ingredient that
magically turns ordinary kids into scholars bound for Harvard.
Gary Rubinstein, ex-TFA, went to visit a KIPP school. He didn’t see the magic. He saw young teachers struggling to control their classes.
Read it to see what goes on, and be sure to read the comments.
I hope ultra KIPP enthusiast Jay Mathews at The Post reads Rubinstein’s piece and offers a response….
After I left the cyber school fiasco, I spent a few weeks at a KIPP school in Camden, NJ (it is now defunct), just to get back into the classroom. I really wasn’t aware of the KIPP model at the time. When I accepted the position it was January, and I later learned I was the students 4th teacher as the previous 3 had resigned. There was very little control in the building, though the teaching staff tried their best. The KIPP strategies we were instructed to use (clapping, and snapping and singing to settle the students) had little effect. The staff would have been better helped had the administrator spent some time in the hallway monitoring the students as they transitioned between classes. Sounds like a small thing, but the students were much better behaved the few times she did that. Instead, she often came late and left early. Much of the building leadership was left to her secretary and her 23 year old assistant principal, who commanded no respect.
There were no books, no curriculum and the building was undersized. When you did get a planning period, there was no place for staff to make plans as your classroom was being used for another subject. Since I had to get lessons and materials off of the internet, not having a planning space to access the internet was a challenge. Did I mention the teaching schedule was 7am – 5 pm? God bless the teachers that stayed to lead afterschool activities! There was also a Saturday academy that met from 9am-12, and while there was supposed to be a rotating schedule for who worked those days, in my brief time there, it never materialized. You would just be notified Friday afternoon that you were on duty the next day and had to plan a lesson that had to be “different than what you normally do, but academically relevant to your subject”. The first time, I went along with it. The second time, I flat out told the AP “no way”, that is insufficient time to plan anything worthwhile.
There wasn’t really a final straw that led to the only on the spot resignation I ever did. It was just a completely terrible experience. The school had a lot of potential—and there was supposedly a waiting list for admission, yet there were many disruptive students who saw little disciplinary consequences and were allowed to remain in the school. I felt bad for the students in whom I saw promise and could learn and grow in a distraction free environment. I was sad I was not able to facilitate that for them. I had many sleepless nights and ultimately resigned when I felt there was no hope, and no way out, and there would be no “victory”. That summer, KIPP pulled their name from that school because the school was not following the KIPP model and barely resembled the KIPP schools you saw on 60 minutes. However, the school remained open under a different name. That was when I knew this charter movement was all about money and not about students or learning.
Chris: thank you for this posting.
🙂
I never understand why a parent leaves a child in a school like that. Ive witnessed the same type of turnover in a charter I worked in. I think it is criminal to allow these schools to remain open. But money and politics wins
I’ll have to read it at home; the site is blocked in my school! LOL
crunchyprogressivemama: the website is blocked? I join in your LOL!
Remember: laughter is poison to tyranny.
🙂
I find your postings all over the education blogosphere. Thank you.
🙂
Sadly, JUST like the teachers in KIPP, I got a job in a charter school WELL before realizing what this whole “school reform” movement was all about… didn’t know the difference between charter/public/private… and it’s only been over the course of several years, total exhaustion, and in the last few months of being enlightened about the “school reform” movement that I now understand what type of system I’m working in. Although I work with some wonderful people, I’ve seen the toxic result of the reform movement creeping in … always expecting more, doing more, giving more… . If you find ANY work/life balance, you “appear” lazy and you earn a reputation for “not doing your job” (because some of the expectations are through the roof. I’m sticking it out this year, but looking for either a public school position in a high SES neighborhood (where parents work with their kids and it doesn’t fall all on the teacher)… or a parochial school (where if I have to push kids so hard, at least I can pray with them too!)
The observations must be real though disturbing as there certainly does not seem to be any teaching going on in spite of the extremely low class sizes and small number of periods/day. When in most school districts I have looked at 85% of the budget goes to employee wages and benefits. The question is how do they afford this? This KIPP school has 1/3 to 1/4 of the normal students/teacher and 2/3 the normal amount of classes. Now run those numbers and there is far from enough money so how are they doing this? Who is putting a fortune into that school above the funding from the state and feds? It has to be a huge percentage of the budget and therefore is unstable. What if the funder of that school decided to just stop. The school instantly crashes financially. Just facts of economic life.
In 1970 my friend, Richard Arthur, took over the most criminal and violent high school in the U.S. They had constant gun fights on campus and the principal was shot to death in their office. Any of you know anywhere like that now? He had a button in each classroom. The school was divided into different sections. Each section had a response team. If the teacher pushed the button in their classroom within 2-3 minutes 2-3 staff would be in that classroom and the problem stopped immediately with the show of staff in force. Within one week no more problems. The word went out “We can’t do that anymore.” Richard had a button and if he pressed his button the local police would have 2-3 squad cars there with 4-6 police officers in 3-5 minutes. Richard did not have any more problems. Why is this not done today. They did not have cell phones then. Richard thinks outside of the box. 4 years later the SLA killed the superintendent, Marcus Foster, with cyanide tipped bullets, 7 of them, and tried to kill Richard two times. They did this as a result of the success at Castlemont High school as Marcus and Richard took this insane school to one of the highest performers. Castlemont went from over 50% dropout to almost zero and college went from 5-65% in 4 years. Do not say it cannot be done. What is everyones problem now. No one has that bad a situation that I have ever heard of so what are the excuses? Richard is still alive and finishing his book on how all this happened from when he was a child. All the decision making processes will be in the book. Why not put the winners in a room to come up with how they had success not failure in bad situations. All the stories seem to be the same.
Is your question, ‘why is this not done today,’ rhetorical? I worked at a school in Chicago that went through a similar period before I was there, where the teachers and staff literally had to fight the gangs out of the school. They won, and the school thrived (relative to other similar schools). There is no political will for that anymore.
Everything is on teachers now. In the two years since returning from a 4 year stint teaching in Asia, I have not heard anything about students’ responsibility. Only how it is completely in our hands and literally everything is our responsibility (and fault). Anyone who has ever been in a school of any kind knows that this is an absurd notion. To hold an ideal of civility and being willing to enforce it has somehow been turned into damaging to children. Anyone who has been in a school knows that children crave boundaries. They love to push them, but they are lost without them. Yet consultants have decided that this is wrong, so we put up with pretty much everything.
I’ve heard the methods and results of Jaime Escalante mocked as being hopelessly wrong-headed. That man and others like him are what convinced me to give up a lucrative career to pursue the dream of teaching. 10 years later it is pretty much a nightmare that i’m sacrificing any time with my children for.
District admin talk endlessly about percent gains, but never talk about why, even with the highest yearly % gains year after year, their students are still at the very bottom of all districts. Something isn’t right. As a parent, if I am faced with the choice of a school that performed near last in the state, but showed the highest gains in the state, I’m still not sending my children anywhere near it. Yet the leaders constantly trot out these schools as examples of excellence. Excellence has taken on a new meaning in the last decade.
If I knew of a school like the one that you described, I’d beg for a job there. As it is, the urban options are looking worse every year.