Experienced journalist Natalie Hopkinson is alarmed by the popularity of the idea that black children need a different kind of education than white children.
She is especially concerned about the KIPP model:
“As it built into a national network, KIPP students’ test scores soared, attracting media attention, and then millions in corporate and public support. It seemed, they had perfected the “formula” for student success– at least for poor, black and brown kids anyways: Long hours, militaristic discipline, constant and scientific assessment, and teachers working around the clock. For many deep-pocketed reformers, these elements have become the gold standard for how “urban” students can and should learn. Public schools that do not show similar “results” are being privatized or closed.”
The KIPP model, she says, “is creating two permanent tracks of schooling: one for the wealthy and one for the black and brown, and poor. It also raises questions about what public schools should be for poor and black children. Are they organic, self-sustaining parts of the urban fabric? Are they charities? Are they for-profit companies?”
She worries about the creation of a class divide: “Wealthy and middle class schools are all about developing an independent voice and passions, exploring ideas and creativity. It treats children as individuals of innate value with powerful destinies to be realized. Many charters franchises (throw in the for-profit B.A.S.I.S.) often emphasize compliance, repetition, “drill and kill.” I am uncomfortable sending my child on that track. So how could I advocate it to other people’s children who happen to look like mine? Why should we allow such policies to be applied to the whole traditional neighborhood system?”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I don’t agree that people of color need a different type of education — at all — but I don’t think we should be blind that poverty does create deficiencies in kids. That KIPP model is clearly not the right one for public schools, but we should address that problem better.
I’m not saying I have the answer to that — I teach in a pretty wealthy district — but we should develop good strategies to help kids that need it, especially poorer kids. I’m sure there are other readers of this blog that have great ideas.
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Child development in the primary grades.
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Kill and drill works for children who have gaps in their education. It works in teaching children how to read. The nationally recognized Hill Center, based on research from Duke and UNC, uses that approach with great success. The point is to eliminate gaps in disadvantaged children’s education. We all want students who can think critically, find their voice, read and write fluently. But you can’t put the cart before the horse when applicable.
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Grave error to think poor and working-class kids need to be drilled first in the basics before they can take part in critical inquiry projects, field work, community research, cross-disciplinary art/science/literacy programs. Human beings do not learn in little pieces, though our wonderful intelligence can indeed do rote memory if we are compelled to ingest, digest, and expel rules and factoids. All kids need the same orientation–a vital, compelling, meaningful project which challenges them to make meaning from experience and communicate that meaning to others.
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Having been at an inquiry based school that stressed all the things you stress, I agree wholeheartedly that we learn through meaningful, holistic projects. However, when you’re in 6th grade and you can’t read because your local system is one of the worst in the nation, you need to learn to read before you can engage in the type of inquiry that matters to a 12 year old mind.
My own kids went to an inquiry based school and they learned both basic skills as they increased their capacity for complex inquiries. But when those basic skills lag, you can’t access the topics / projects that interest you– and there needs to be a period of catch up.
KIPP does, I will say, seem to not know what to do with kids once they’re caught up.
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Well said, ira shor.
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Good on you Karen. I hate this term drill & kill. What does it kill exactly? In fact it improves learning by tapping into something powerful called the memory which we have for a reason…TO LEARN. So why the resistance to using it in any school? It works. Less discovery/inquiry student centred learning and more use of explicit instruction please for all students regardless of colour! I for one have had enough of the constant waffle I hear from educators.
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This post summarizes my discomfort with many of the “how they do it” books that so many of us are reading and ruminating about right now in public schools.
Surely treating poor kids (not necessarily black/Hispanic, although those kids are disproportionately represented in the “poor” category) differently than middle/upper socioeconomic class kids is a recipe for failure! Isn’t that just an updated “separate but equal” paradigm?
The danger (in fact, it seems like the reality) is that poor students with these staggering gaps in knowledge never get past the drill and kill exercises and militaristic education models. They begin school with such a deficit in background knowledge, as compared to their middle class counterparts, that catching up is overwhelmingly difficult. Research tells us, and educators KNOW that early childhood education is crucial. That is the key! If not the entire answer, it is at least a part of the answer! At the very least, EC programs level the playing field somewhat! Why is this message so hard for the public / legislators to hear?
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Having worked at a KIPP school, I would agree with both Karen’s comment above and the original post. My experience with KIPP, after coming from 9 years at an inquiry based school, was mixed.
On the one hand, it was clear that students were learning– and learning a lot. My own biological children were enrolled at KIPP in grades 8 and 5. To be honest, they learned more content and skill– and, actually, particularly in the case of my 8th grader who had a gifted political science teacher, critical thinking– than they had in the much more “loosey goosey” school they’d come from. Their previous school, where they’d been enrolled since kindergarten, fits the commentator’s description of “wealthy and middle class schools are all about developing an independent voice and passions, exploring ideas and creativity” to a tee. Their, because the standards were so loose, almost anything went and my children, in pursuit of their personal interests, missed out on basic knowledge that they should have had.
That form of schooling left my kids with gaps in their understanding because they’d never “inquired” about some particular topic or process. Their math was weak as was their science and history understanding. KIPP changed that for my own kids– one of whom was one of two Caucasian females in a class of 80+– in a way that never would’ve happened had they stayed in the school type that’s presented here as “better” than KIPP.
They’re back in traditional public schools now, neighborhood schools if you will, and they’ve made straight A’s.
So, in terms of learning, I saw huge advantages at KIPP over the type of school that’s “wealthy and middle class” even for my own kids who are white and middle class (well, not really middle class since I’m a single parent with kids on a teacher’s salary, but that’s another post).
On the other hand, I was bothered by the militaristic, controlling regimen that KIPP imposed on its students. The chanting before end of grade tests, the marching in lines, the lack of social curriculum, the expectations of complete control on the part of the teacher and complete compliance on the part of students… that bothered me deeply. I questioned whether I were oppressing my students as much as I was attempting to give them a solid foundation to get to the college of their choice. However, I could also see that for many students whose home lives were fractured and chaotic, there was a sense of comfort in knowing exactly what to expect at school– and that sense of safety (for many there was no other time in the day when they felt safe) allowed them to relax enough to learn and move forward.
I never resolved this quandary, to be truthful. We left KIPP after a year because the hours (8-5) plus tutoring plus hours upon hours of planning and grading and living 3+ hours away from our extended family were too much and prevented us as a family from doing anything other than school. I believe that the KIPP school I was involved with is doing amazing things for students who otherwise would be trapped in one of the poorest, saddest, most dead end areas of our state. One hundred percent of their five graduating high school classes have gone on to college, which is remarkable and an achievement that can’t be swept away.
I will add that the KIPP school I worked in believed that ” children [are] individuals of innate value with powerful destinies to be realized” as much as any other school my kids have attended. There were definitely parts of the KIPP model– behavior management being the biggest– that I questioned. But I can’t question the positive impact it had on my kids and my students.
There are definitely dangers with the KIPP model and significant improvements to be made. However, that’s true of all schools and school philosophies– there isn’t one magical method that works for all kids in all areas… anyone who tells you differently is selling you something.
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Well said Theresa. So good to hear from someone who has had children in a KIPP school and has also taught in one. Even though the slighty military style made you feel uncomfortable at times in the end these kids made it to college. Maybe all students could benefit from this type of a
highly structured environment? As you so correctly point out it is often reassuring to kids to know exactly what to expect. Children tend to thrive when there are strong boundaries in place. My question as to the criticism of the military type style is whether the teacher bark out orders or just expect a degree of discipline and respect and tell the kids this firmly? There is a difference.
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“…constant and scientific assessment, . . .” Ha ha, ah, eh, haa, ha ha, je je, he he, ha ha! That’s a good one boss!
If you believe that the teaching and learning process involves “constant scientific” assessment then I’ve got some great ocean front property over at the Lake of the Ozarks in central MO to sell cheaply to you. Hurry, act now before these gorgeous properties are inundated by the rising ocean levels caused by global warming. Call 555-121-2121, operators are standing by!
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Loosey-goosey schools are a grave error too. My criticism of the military drill model is not advocacy for loosey-goosey. Many folks who disdain regimented rote learning of rules and facts think the only alternative is permissive, do-your-thing, anything-goes schooling. What may really be going on is that the great bulk of schools for poor and working-class kids are under-funded, poorly-run, badly organized, over-crowded, under-maintained, with too little invested in teacher development and school culture, so they become disordered, paving the way for a strict regime which seems like an unavoidable choice in a society that abandons non-rich kids. KIPP and other over-funded, under-regulated private charters have the resources to build schools of critical inquiry, creative imagination, student-based studies, but their elite funders prefer military-prison culture to whip the poor into compliance.
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Thank you ira shor for eludicating the problem inherent in dichotomous thinking of either/or, yes/no when it comes to differing pedagogical methods. The teaching and learning process is far more complex than breaking it down into two competing “camps”.
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Confucius preached that kids should be totally compliant to parents and teachers. You can view this as oppression, or you can view it as smart piece of cultural “software” that enables one generation to transmit important knowledge to the next with maximum efficiency. I teach in a middle class public school and I succeed at teaching my kids a lot of history, but I know I could teach twice as much if I had “complete control” and “complete compliance” from the students, instead of having to siphon off my teaching energies to asking so-and-so to stop tilting in his chair or face forward and listen ten thousand times per year. I don’t think it’s cruel or unreasonable to expect total compliance from kids. It allows adults to give them the powerful knowledge they need to become free-thinking and powerful adults. A kid doesn’t become empowered by acting empowered vis-a-vis his teacher. He becomes empowered by acquiring knowledge of the world and skills. Thus out-of-control, “empowered” kids are more likely to become merely disempowered adults with attitude. Loosey-goosey with upper class kids is no tragedy –they’ll still acquire tons’ of vocab and world knowledge from their parents –but with lower class kids it is tantamount to child neglect.
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Ponderosa, (cue Bonanza theme song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJGWyZwfbx0)
Quite an interesting post, to me filled with both good concepts and some bad concepts that, perhaps haven’t been completely thought through as to the consequences of said concepts. Please allow me to comment/expand on your thoughts a little more.
“Confucius preached that kids should be totally compliant to parents and teachers.” Many cultures through time and throughout the world have preached this maxim. To me it means that the child is viewed, not as a complete person in and of him/herself but as a partial human being (not unreasonable but doesn’t sit well with me). In treating children as such we do not give “autonomy” to them, actually actively preventing them from said autonomy. How does that jive with your later statement about them “becoming free-thinking and powerful adults”? How can they become free thinking and powerful adults if they are not given the opportunity to do so “growing up”? Do you magically assign it to them?
Also this cultural practice of “kids being seen and not heard” leads to what Foucault describes as “subjectivization” of the individual whereby the individual takes what the authorities say and internalize it and “become” it. Is that not a form of oppression? I say, yes, as one who was subjected to this type of thinking growing up in the Catholic parochial system in St. Louis in the 60’s & 70s only to have broken out of it way before my teachers would have wanted.
“. . . I know I could teach twice as much if I had “complete control” and “complete compliance” from the students, instead of having to siphon off my teaching energies to asking so-and-so to stop tilting in his chair or face forward and listen ten thousand times per year.” Maybe there is a reason for all the “off task” behaviours. Does the school itself value/regard as sacred the teaching time of each classroom? I ask this because I have read of an international study whereby middle school math teachers in Germany, Japan and the US taped the classroom interactions for various mathematical concepts. The idea being to glean the “best practices” for each topic. The teachers were brought together and shown each others’ classes and then they critiqued them. When the intercom interrupted the American class multiple times the Japanese teachers were appalled that the instructional time was interrupted. They considered the class as sacred. So maybe, just maybe your students are getting mixed messages sent by you and the school as to the importance of staying on task.
But more egregious is: ” I don’t think it’s cruel or unreasonable to expect total compliance from kids.” Wow, I do think it is very unreasonable and cruel expect that and to not address the students concerns as they relate to the subject matter (and even when they don’t, like when one of our students gets killed, commits suicide, etc. . . ). To not do so makes the classroom inhumane.
And most egregious of all that you have written is: “Loosey-goosey with upper class kids is no tragedy –they’ll still acquire tons’ of vocab and world knowledge from their parents –but with lower class kids it is tantamount to child neglect.” What elitist claptrap, pure 100% USDA Grade AA Bovine Excrement. Who are you to determine what is considered an appropriate “education” for the “lower class kids”? Isn’t it the job of the parents to do so? And maybe the parents, rightly so, don’t want their children to have that oh so great “world knowledge”. Come down out of the “elitist” cloud/crowd (whether politically left, right or the center) and join with your fellow women and men who may not see the world the way you do.
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Read E.D. Hirsch’s Knowledge Deficit and you’ll understand why all kids need a large reservoir of general knowledge stored in long-term memory to become competent at reading comprehension, and, more broadly, ability to “read” or interpret life itself. Studies show that rich kids hear 30 MILLION more words by age 4 (!) than poor kids. Word knowledge equals world knowledge. Rich parents are compulsively TELLING their kids about the world (yes, telling is an effective mode of teaching, ed school platitudes notwithstanding). Rich kids know more; therefore they’re better readers and more savvy vis-a-vis the world. Public schools need to try to shrink the knowledge gap by flooding kids’ minds with the kind of knowledge that rich kids get at home. The most efficient means of saturating kids’ minds with knowledge is well-crafted, visually-rich, interactive direct instruction (projects are fun but inefficient). This kind of direct instruction can be derailed by kids’ off-task behavior. Please don’t use the canard, “But if you just make the lessons more engaging…” Even ultra-engaging lessons struggle to compete with the all-important social imperatives of early adolescence. Thus, a fairly stern discipline environment that curbs kids’ off-task impulses is in the long run much more loving and humane than the system that allows kids to squander precious learning time. There is just too much to learn, and childhood is the time to learn it (God knows we adults don’t have the time). Kids should be loosey-goosey and social outside the classroom, not in it.
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I agree that in order to better understand the world and society around us it is better to have a larger vocabulary rather than a smaller. But at the same time I’ve met many highly intelligent person whose lack of vocabulary you would find shocking. I’m willing to listen to those folks because of their innate common sense approach to problems.
Yes, I have read of the amount of vocabulary acquisitions studies and the differences between the upper and lower socio ecomic classes. And as a teacher of Spanish as a second language, I thoroughly understand the need for vocabulary acquisition and believe that repetition is the key to said acquisition. I also believe in using “grammar” (that ol so negative concept for those who believe that one learns a second language the same as a first language) as a bridging structure to show similarities and differences in each language.
“Please don’t use the canard, “But if you just make the lessons more engaging…”
I didn’t and wouldn’t, that is a straw man argument. My beef is that our schools in general do not respect instructional time anywhere near as much as most other countries what with assemblies, announcements, intercom interruption,s testing interruptions occurring so often each day as to make a single class lose perhaps 5-10% of instructional time to non-instructional activities.
“Thus, a fairly stern discipline environment that curbs kids’ off-task impulses is in the long run much more loving and humane than the system that allows kids to squander precious learning time.”
Again I argue that it is the school itself that “squanders more precious learning time’ than the students. That “fairly stern discipline environment” only can come about through the respect given to the students by the teachers and not the other way around. Unrequited respect is no respect at all which is what militaristic, stern discipline regimes demand. No Thanks! Been there as a student in the Catholic system and the only thing it taught me was how to disrespect the authorities on the sly so I wouldn’t get caught. Don’t need that nonsense in my class room.
“(God knows we adults don’t have the time)” [to learn]
If you don’t have the time to learn as an educator I believe you should be looking to switch fields/jobs because the main job of any teacher is first and foremost to be an avid learner.
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Actually, the 30 million word gap is by age 3. The parents from low, middle and higher income groups that were studied “provided their children with much the same toys and talked to them about much the same things.” The differences were not in what was talked about so much as the frequency, quality, tone and type of talks. (Details about this are in Hart & Risley’s book, Meaningful Differences.)
Professional parents often used play-by-plays to describe life experiences as they occurred, and they frequently engaged their children in conversations using rich language. They also provided 32 affirmatives and 5 prohibitions per hour, a ratio of 6 encouragements to 1 discouragement.
Children from working-class families experienced 12 affirmatives and 7 prohibitions per hour, a ratio of 2 encouragements to 1 discouragement.
The opposite was true for low income children. They experienced 5 affirmatives and 11 prohibitions per hour, a ratio of 1 encouragement to 2 discouragements.
The Early Catastrophe: The 30 Million Word Gap by Age 3 http://www.unitedwayracine.org/sites/default/files/imce/files/SOH%20The%20Early%20Catastrophe%20-%20The%2030%20Million%20Word%20Gap%20by%20Age%203%20-%20Risley%20and%20Hart%20-%20summary.pdf
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Teacher Ed — your point about the “word gap” and the affirmatives/prohibitions ratios seems hugely important. I’ve never scrutinized the research, but it does make sense to me and is consistent with my unscientific observations. Presumably school can’t close a gap this large, given how little time children spend in school and how late they start (even if they started preschool at age 3). It’s hard not to be fatalistic about education and class gaps in light of this.
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Teacher Ed,
Thanks for the link!
Duane
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(For some reason I’m not able to reply to Duane directly….)
“My beef is that our schools in general do not respect instructional time anywhere near as much as most other countries what with assemblies, announcements, intercom interruption,s testing interruptions occurring so often each day as to make a single class lose perhaps 5-10% of instructional time to non-instructional activities.”
I will say this: the KIPP school I was in did this better than any school I’ve seen in 16 years as a teacher. There were NO interruptions. Ever. To the point that, despite all the observers we had from both within the school and outside, the kids didn’t turn around if someone wandered in the room.
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Flerp, I have worked in programs at schools which aimed to address this matter with low income 3 and 4 year olds and their parents and we did see some immediate gains. However, when I look at the scores of those schools today, I’m not seeing huge differences between classes with and without the intervention, so I’m not so sure they held over time. Thus, I’m much more inclined to suggest interventions beginning at birth (and with follow-through as needed down the line). For decades, the Finns have been investing in each child from birth and I think they see a big pay off for doing that.
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“Interventions beginning at birth” — how would this work?
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My pleasure, Duane!
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You could actually start before birth with an incentive like this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22751415 and provide the prenatal care that so many low income moms are lacking and which puts their children at-risk. Parents could be provided with training then and after birth, on a variety of important matters impacting their child’s development, including interacting with and reading to their baby.
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Totally agree.
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I believe in ALL of our public schools being given the proper funding, staff, PD training and programs necessary to meet the needs of each individual child. To argue over whether “drill and kill” or holistic styles/schools are best is moot, since every child learns differently, and has specific learning strengths, gaps and styles. In our public schools in New Jersey, for example, children are given the opportunity to participate in a holistic approach, but are also supposed to be receiving support/basic skills support if they are identified as having skills gaps, by being pulled out to receive targeted instruction and Response to Intervention. Problem is, the basic skills instructors are now being forced to manage myriad test data/testing for the whole school, and the SAME children who should be benefitting from support services are losing them all too frequently, because their teachers are now being forced to cancel classes, in order to schedule and test the rest of the students. Ironic much? How is “accountability” even possible, when you have teachers pulled into two directions this way?? Funneling tax dollars away from public schools, in order to fund separate schools is ridiculous, redundant, and a sham aimed at weakening public schools and unions, in order to enable privatization. Period. If the money was first, allocated (and not cut!!), not to mention allocated properly, those types of classes and wrap-around services could be provided in the neighborhood public schools consistently. None of this is truly about the children. If it was, our public schools would consistently be getting the proper funding to meet the needs of each child, and each child in impoverished neighborhoods would be getting HIGH QUALITY PRE-SCHOOL as early as 2-3 years old. If you level the “literacy and mathematics playing field” early on, the “drill and kill” would not be necessary later on…and THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is the elephant in the room. Just my opinion, of course, but there are many studies to back up this notion. Why are certain groups not focusing on the obvious solutions? Why aren’t they looking at the success of Finland, for example, and then doing what they do? It makes one wonder if they are really interested in the solution at all.
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Is anyone else alarmed by the possibility that teacher training programs, like Relay and Match, that teach this ONE military style, drill sergeant approach, which is implemented at KIPP and other “no excuses” charter schools, will be expanding and soon become the dominant teacher training facilities across America? (Along with that would come the expansion of KIPP type charters.)
It’s a real possibility and here is why:
The attacks on Teacher Education are not just external. The newly reconstituted Teacher Ed accrediting organization, the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) –which used to be NCATE and TEAC– is filled with corporate “reformers” on its Commission, including Teach for America. Thus, the CAEP Commission Statement reads like the typical corporate “reform” “failing schools” narrative:
“America’s students are graduating unprepared for college and career, lagging behind other industrialized countries in knowledge and skills demanded in a today’s global economy. Decades of research shows that great teaching is the single most important factor on student achievement in the classroom, yet many students do not have access to effective teachers….”
A major component of this Teacher Ed “reform” is “accountability… directly linked to student achievement.” i.e., The test scores of teachers’ students will be linked back to the colleges that prepared each teacher. There are likely to be severe consequences for low student tests scores, too, from the publication of Ed School ratings to the denial of Title IV federal Financial Aid for students wanting to enroll in such colleges.
If patient recovery and death rates were linked back to the medical schools that train doctors, what professionals would risk their livelihoods to treat the dying? Maybe doctors would choose to work in locations that do triage, reject the most at-risk and implement an approach that is effective for just that select population. Would medical schools feel pressured to teach that ONE and only approach?
And what about everyone else???
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This is a very interesting argument. In theory, if we have a separate education for the poor that works and is sending kids to college, then class differences should lessen in the long run. Usually when we talk about separate education, we are talking about it in the Deweyean sense of sending different kids off to separate social and economic classes. But if we have the same end in mind, ie college or a middle-class career, then “two permanent tracks of schooling: one for the wealthy and one for the black and brown, and poor” is talking about applying different approaches to how we educate different classes. To me this isn’t unfair. If public schools with struggling students had longer school years, tighter discipline, and compensated its teachers for their extra time, then we would see growth. Public schools should also, like KIPP, be empowered to expel students who are out of control.
I hate this phrase “militaristic discipline.” Teachers in city schools (and in many suburban schools) are sick of the disrespect, aggression, and disruptions we receive from students. Schools need to be better organized and they need better discipline. Walking in a straight line isn’t going to hurt them. Most students are grateful for it, especially if they know that the alternative is chaos. We still have this Herbert Kohl romanticism about letting kids be free and checking our authoritarianism. It does not work.
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There is a difference between showing self-discipline and respect and being forced to walk single file, in silence as an older student. Chaos is not the only option besides overly controlling. It would seem to me like most of the ground would lie in between those extremes.
The problem isn’t that there are some schools that parents can opt into like this, there always have been military schools and schools with very high discipline. The problem is that some inner city districts is making this the only option for certain zip codes. My children, and many others, don’t need to be placed in a discipline camp for longer hours and more days just because they happen to live in a shitty (by some standards) zip code.
At the public ‘innovation’ school that I just left, students attend 7 50 minute classes, and one 30 minute advisory per day. They get a grand total of 30 minutes for lunch/break. No recess (it is a 6-12, so the middle schoolers still need some place to get their energy out), no talking in the halls, no real work time in class because we need bell to bell rigor, which seems to preclude all of the types of thinking that I actually really did in my previous very well paid career. How is it not torture to go to school for nearly 8 hours with a 30 minute break. Is there any kind of science that says that the more hours that you ‘learn’ the better the results? I don’t learn this way and most human beings that I know don’t learn this way.
Last, I’m not impressed that every student gets into college (if it is true). Our state has several open admissions colleges–what exactly was so special about getting into a place that anybody with a h.s. degree could get into? I haven’t found these students to be particularly good at any kind of thinking that they weren’t drilled on. They are better at writing essays that will score on the tests than they are at writing good and interesting work. Their math skills are lacking when you move outside of the narrow way in which they are taught.
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if working for 8 hours with a 30 minute break is torture, then my boss and many the bosses of my friends are guilty of crimes against humanity. A school with a broad curriculum that includes art, music, and PE provides middle schoolers with enough “release.”
Look, if you have a school where kids are being bullied, there are fights in the hallway, and many classes are disruptive, then you need to respond to that problem in some way. A military school is different from having students walk in a straight line. Big difference. We have this either/or mentality in talking about discipline. I am saying that you can respond to these types of discipline problems with common sense strategies. Public schools have some difficulty doing this because too many educators have a romantic notion about freedom in education.
You and I are in agreement on many of these points. It’s how we talk about it that is a problem. Many students leave high school thinking they are prepared to do college level work and end up wasting a lot of money. Test prep doesn’t get them there. And city schools don’t have to become military academies to instill order.
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Yes, learning at the edges of your ability for 8 hours with a 30 minute break is not productive. Just because I can work for 8 or 10 or 12 hours per day doesn’t mean that it is the best method for learning for an adolescent. There isn’t much in the way of electives in the schools being discussed, in my example, there isn’t PE either.
I’ve worked in a lot of different environments, and have never had training delivered under those conditions. In my experience there is down time in every work day. And it certainly was never sitting at full attention each and every day, year after year. I’m sure that there are jobs like this. Being prepared for one of them is not something that I want for my own children, so I wouldn’t suggest it for anyone else’s either.
(lack of) Discipline in urban public schools isn’t about teachers thinking that it is the best way. It is about school and district admin juking stats so that they look better. There is a clear mandate to force the exact opposite of the discipline allowed in the charters that push kids out if they don’t tow the line. I know that these kids exist, because the schools that I work in have them come back to us regularly. So, we are forced into an either or situation where, of course, the heavy discipline side comes out testing better. This is a false dichotomy. It didn’t have to be one or the other, but the corporate reform movement is forcing it in that direction, and they are achieving their goals.
I think that the best model would have several ‘types’ of schools district wide. At one extreme end, you would have an almost literal boot camp that provided the controlled environment that a student who is regularly violent and disruptive needs. No one should be allowed to steal education time. But, that is often really only about 5% of even the worst schools. How much influence that the 5% has is the real problem. Take away that 5% and you would see a dramatic change in the environment.
Just because some students need more structure and control doesn’t mean that it should be pushed on everyone. In my (ex) school for next year, they want to impose a rule that you can’t talk during passing periods. I would not impose this on my own children, and I can’t see how mandating silence, teaches anything that any healthy society would want.
The schools that we’re talking about here have a place, but it certainly isn’t the right place for many students of any race, ethnicity, or economic class.
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My first year returning to the US from teaching overseas, I found myself in hot water for questioning these tactics. Our school admin sent around an email, which addressed ‘boys of color’ needing a different education than other (i guess white, and throw in asian, since they perform well).
I wrote that there were some very dangerous historical precedents that started with the idea that some people learned very differently than others because of their race/ethnicity.
I’m willing to admit that there are some traits that are common because of poverty, but it certainly has nothing to do with your color. As the (white) father of two ‘children of color’ this really makes me mad. If some administrator or teacher decides to teach my children differently based on their color, I’ll sue the school district, and so should every other parent. Many of the parents who are the most upset with inner city school quality are upset with this exact thing. They want their children to get the best education possible, not one that is ‘good for children of color’. Try to tell an admin who considers themselves to be the Great White Hope this, and you’ll probably end up in trouble.
Let’s be honest, the different for some kids isn’t something that 99% of the people in ‘good’ schools would want for their children. There are probably some children (of any color) who would do well in a highly structured militaristic education environment. My children and I are not that kind of people. Maybe because we come from a long line of independent thinkers who despise being told what to do in every aspect of our lives, we tend to thrive when we have a say in how we spend our time.
Imagine when we start setting up law and medical schools with different tracks for people of color, since they learn so much differently after all. The fact that people get away with this bullshit shows how far we still have to go, even with the huge strides that we’ve made as a society.
Related is the fact that 6 out of 8 schools that I interviewed with for a position next year asked me what I would do to decrease the achievement gap. This is a bullshit question also. The fastest way to reduce the gap would be to simply hold white and Asian kids back for a decade and let everyone else catch up. Probably not a good idea. But, seriously, if what I’m doing in class is helping a ‘student of color’ make great strides, won’t the white and Asian kids in class also be making strides? We are deeply conflicted as a society and it shows up in education more than in many other areas.
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A lot of teachers have figured out that creating their own songs and rhymes is very helpful for engaging students and promoting learning. How such strategies implemented by Harriet Ball became militaristic at KIPP et al. is unclear. And, yes, they are militaristic, which is why some of their students refer to KIPP as the Kids in Prison Program.
Military school is not for everyone, which is why KIPP creams and has a high rate of attrition (and those kids go back to public schools). For people who think this is ideal and that it’s just about making kids walk on a line, it is not. I went to a military style public middle school and know personally that it’s about “100%” compliance, as stated by Doug Lemov in his “Teach Like a Champion.” That means marching single file on a painted line, squaring your corners, and being sent back to do it again right if that was not done properly. I used to get sent back a lot to do it again for “walking like a truck driver.” (I never really knew what that meant.)
This is also about imposing SLANT, as well as a lot of dogma, including a fixation on college to the exclusion of other career options. Is it really necessary to name classrooms according to the year students are to go to college and their teacher’s alma mater, and adorn the school with college pendants, etc? One really has to wonder what it must feel like for kids who’ve been inculcated in the college maxum daily for years when they don’t make it through college.
People here are talking about extremes, as if authoritarian and permissive are the only discipline choices. Research has demonstrated that an authoritative approach is the most effective with the majority of kids. (When did this blog become dominated by right wingers?)
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I am a left-winger. I want to empower kids’ with the knowledge that makes the elite powerful. Depriving them of this knowledge consigns them to second-class status. Read Gramsci.
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Elite kids don’t get information crammed down their throats by sages implementing direct instruction non-stop. You’re kidding yourself if you think that’s empowering to students, when kids tune out if they’re not engaged. Even using SLANT in military style charters, kids can tune out yet look like they’re engaged. I know because I used to do that all the time. It sounds like you would settle for that, as long as students aren’t disruptive, but that is just behavioral compliance, not learning.
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You say “crammed down their throats”. Why not say, “well-nourished”? I know I appreciate a great lecture; don’t you? Do you then say, resentfully, that knowledge has been crammed down your throat? I hated the college classes that employed group work –pooled ignorance.
I was taught in ed school that kids can’t sit and listen for extended periods of time. Experience has taught me otherwise: most seventh graders can listen and attend to a forty minute lecture –IF IT”S WELL-CRAFTED. I do “fun” stuff too, but the lectures are the backbone of my course.
Please drop your caricatures of power-tripping adults who want to subjugate kids. Try to conceive there might be other, very legitimate reasons to support traditional discipline for kids (by the way, most of the great radical and subversive thinkers of the past got their intellectual armaments from traditional liberal arts education delivered by traditional means).
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College comparisons are not applicable because children are not just little adults.
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Man, now I know why HU and Cindy have such disdain for the left liberal perspective. My folks used to call it “do goodism”. You know what’s best for everyone else’s kids. Well, maybe they don’t want to be the “power elite”. Break free from your dogooder chains, come down off the liberal left clouds and become a free thinker who respects others for who they are all the while engaging those with whom you disagree in friendly “mental confrontations”.
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I hope you’re not lumping in progressives, Duane, though I’m guessing that HU and others would be so inclined. I don’t think most progressives consider themselves to be aligned with E.D. HIrsch (or CCSS) or feel married to direct instruction and sage on the stage teaching at virtually all times. I think we tend to be more pragmatic and open-minded and recognize that there is no one right way of teaching all students nor a single approach that is going to reach every child. (Personally, I prefer to use a lot of different tools from my tool belt, as needed.)
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No, didn’t intend to lump progressives in with the liberal left. I just responded to an email from a fellow here in MO that has been working hard to counteract the ALEC and Students Last legislation proposals. I had sent him the summary of Wilson’s work that I have posted hear a couple of times over the last couple of days. He stated that if teachers, parents, educators (and even the politicians, but I doubt that as they are too heavily “paid off”, oops, I mean invested in the current system) understood the insanities that educational standards, standardized testing and the “grading”/sorting and separating out of students are, the whole system would come crashing to a halt. I responded that yes, indeed, we might return to a “progressive” ideal of public education.
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I have read both your posts and am on the left too and agree with Hirsch and everything you have said. Knowledge is power yet we deny our children this knowledge with a curriculum low in content and a pedagogy that means they can not access basic skills such as multiplication. It has become absurd and it’s time for the facilities that educate teachers to take responsibility for all the problems they are creating. Let teachers teach again, passing on knowledge, and let the curriculum be rich and not just snatches of information that have no relationship to each other. Stop skimming the surface and give the students some content that they can really “get their teeth
into. I think the way things stand know is paramount to negligence.
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As I read this article, I have an uncomfortable retrovision of the Red River School for Indians. Yanked from their homes, forbidden to speak their native tongue, housed in boarding school style, this was the white culture’s version of a “no excuses” school for unfortunate Indian children who needed to be molded into the version of a person the white community expected them to be.
Is that an exaggeration of what we’re seeing today; probably. Is there some commonality between the two versions of education; probably. Is there enough commonality to be concerned; probably.
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I think in a prior incarnation Ponderosa (how appropriate the moniker) taught in the Red River School for Indians, eh!!
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Confucious and Plato should have been together as they are the model for Nazi Fascism. You are born into your place and that is it. Kids need drills until they get it such as the times tables. Then when you understand the basics the thought process can be employed. Until you have a basis for thinking how can you think? Worked for us. People have not changed genetically in a long time so how can we now be different? Joke time.
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Joke time? Man you lost me on that one!
I agree with your first two sentences.
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Reading about these charters and others is reminiscent of how African-American children were taught to read in the Missouri’s Jim Crow years. John Berry Meachum and others taught children to read on Mississippi river boats because the river was not “in” the state.
For years, Plessy v Ferguson was the law of the land until Brown eliminated separate but equal.
And, today? In the interest of discipline, attendance, and curriculum limited to the basics, segregated charter schools prevail separating students from the richness and rigor of comprehensive public schools and discriminating against English language learners and students with disabilities.
Shame on us if we have not brought ALL of our schools up to standard (urban schools and the suburban schools more successful with some students than others), but address the root issues and obstacles in those schools instead of window-dressing, testing the soul out of schools, and quick fixes that fix nothing.
And, what is tragic is that while deepening class and race differences, a lot of people of corporations are making a lot of profit.
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I’ve worked for 5 years in a low ses community dominated by mostly black families. My observation has been that many families employ militaristic (extremely strict, 100% compliance) discipline at home, so when the children come to school, they respond to nothing less. Many of the children don’t take adults seriously unless you appear “big and powerful.” That being said, over time, if the teaching is good and consistent, the children will start to respond to a calmer approach… but IT HAS TO BE TAUGHT! Over and over, I had to point out to the kids that I could be the “mean teacher” if they don’t respond to the “nice teacher.” By the end of the school year, most of the children GLADLY responded to the “nice teacher” because they found life much more pleasant that way; however, there are always a few that will continue to challenge all the way to the end of the year… these are the kids who seem to need that “militaristic” discipline. And being seen as the “mean teacher” isn’t always an insult… for some of the kids, it’s a compliment (they loved me regardless). Once children see that there’s another way to interact, they often respond to it… UNLESS they are children who only respond to very strict approaches (and one of the kids who challenged all the way through was a white child… so it’s NOT about race… it SEEMS to be cultural, but the more kids are exposed to different ways of living in the world, it becomes less about culture and upbringing, and more about individual needs/differences).
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If low-income families are giving their babies more prohibitions / discouragements than affirmatives / encouragements, at a ratio of 2 to 1, as indicated in the Hart & Risley 30 Million Word Gap study, where children were studied beginning at 7 – 9 months of age, then those kids are likely to be expecting other adults to use a punitive approach, too, and they might test the limits with them more than other children.
I have worked with a lot of low income young children over the years and some, from all cultures, asked me why I didn’t ever hit them…
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Just to be clear, I DO NOT hit children!
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But many of the kids in my classes were often threatened with a “whuppin” at home.
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Sorry, Hannah, I never meant to imply that you did.
Children who are “threatened with a whuppin” at home have usually received “whuppins” at home, and my point was that then they wonder why teachers don’t do that at school, too. (Although, I have worked at schools where teachers did hit kids and when you’re the only teacher who doesn’t do that, kids ask why then as well.)
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Gotcha… OK. It’s true though… when the kids are raised in a very militaristic way, they don’t respond to anything else unless other options are taught… but it’s time consuming and exhausting because if requires TREMENDOUS consistency and patience.
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I had the same experience working in a low socioeconomic, minority community. I like the nice/mean teacher dichotomy. It took time for the kids to respond to a less authoritarian approach; as a matter of fact it took an African American TA who could lay down the law so the little old white teacher (me) could teach. We used the good cop/bad cop routine until the kids accepted me. This was a high school and a special education program, so I was not dealing with kids who had high expectations for themselves in general. Once I earned my “cojones,” my classes became a safe haven. They protected me ( I was really naive) and I protected them.
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I agree that it is important to provide structure for students, with clear rules, and clear and consistent consequences for negative behavior. That consistent structure is how children learn, all children. And it is important to be sensitive to cultural factors including authoritarian discipline structures at home, to work with parents, not against them.
I work at an inpatient psych hospital which serves many low-income African-American and Latino children and adolescents. We have a highly-structured environment, but then again, we are a short-term crisis management facility designed for safety and therapeutic environments, not a school. I use my “tough teacher voice”, give lots of time-outs, redirect children firmly and without getting into power struggles. But I do that with every child on the unit who needs that, White, Hispanic, Asian, Black, all the kids. But those “time-outs” are clearly tied to learning new behaviors, not as punishment. Kids are welcome back to try again, as many times as needed. I also make it a point to learn from my African-American and Latino colleagues on how they interact with the kids, and to be sure I am staying consistent with the other staff members. How can KIPP and other “no excuses” teachers do this when they have so few minority teachers, especially teachers from the same communities as the students?
What I find appalling about “no excuses” charters like KIPP (or Noble St, UNO, Urban Prep, etc) however, is that they treat kids even harsher than my students at the hospital are treated. I have had a number of students tell me that the hospital reminds them of their charter schools. Think about it, their schools mimic the MOST restrictive environment in our society: a locked, short-term, psychiatric hospital unit. Children who are NOT sick are being treated like they are. And the implication of treating children who have done NOTHING wrong like prisoners based solely on their class and their race, is pretty disgusting.
In addition, the very notion of “no excuses”, that some behaviors are “unforgiveable” is the driving factor to pushing out high numbers of students, usually the ones who struggle the most academically and behaviorally. “No excuses” is much more about sorting students that teaching students appropriate classroom behavior. I have met far too many kids being seriously damaged by the strict “no excuses”.
We have even had young people admitted to the hospital as a DIRECT RESULT of these cruel policies. I remember a number of young African-American adolescent boys who reported “they tell you where to look, they said ‘tuck in your shirt’, I just got sick of it and went off” or other kids who have internalized the discipline believing “I’m a bad kid.” The sad truth is, they are really good kids-not even the troublemakers!-but had had enough of the total compliance. A completely normal human response to oppression! Kids tell me of having to run stairs for three hours at a time as punishment, or sit staring at a wall for three hours without moving. They talk about fines their parents must pay and many are reporting they have had 50-70 detentions/numerous suspensions for “infractions” like not being in full uniform. (If they are giving that many detentions, clearly that strategy is not working with that child. Wow.) Every single child I have ever worked with from these schools cites the “strictness” as a problem. Literally every single one.
“No excuses” goes far far over the edge of good practice. It is abusive. They take kids who have so much righteous anger over the unfairness of their lives, and punish them until they submit or leave They beat out that spark that I so love in my kids with “behavior disorders”. “No excuses” is a way to silence low-income communities, to make sure to beat back the dissent or anger brewing from centuries of oppression, racism, and inequality to be sure they become compliant, obedient citizens who will never question the status quo of inequality. I don’t want that for my students.
Structure? Yes. Abuse? No. Let’s teach kids the tools to fight the systems that oppress instead of forcing them to obediently comply with them. When kids are allowed to look at these complex issues, they blossom. And guess what, they even want to improve their reading so they can fight the good fight. No coercion necessary, just inspiration. That’s how you teach.
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Katie,
When I saw the pictures of the new UNO elementary Soccer Academy, I wondered about the lines painted on the hallway floors. Are you saying that your students from UNO have talked about them using military style discipline either there or at other UNO schools?
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Katie, what do you think is motivating those stern practices you cite? Innate sadism? Racism? Stupidity? Or could it be that they are rational responses to a very, very tough problem: how to thwart chaos and ensure learning with a class of thirty rambunctious kids? It’s one thing to use your stern teacher voice with a handful of kids and find success; it’s another when you’re contending with group/mob psychology (which is critical to understanding the political dynamics of a classroom –you, as a psychiatric professional, should understand this). You cannot extrapolate from your situation to a KIPP school. Why won’t you give the adults there the benefit of the doubt? If it were as easy as you suggest, why are so many school teachers utterly run over by the kids? Of course the kids don’t like it –what kid likes eating their peas and onions? That doesn’t mean it’s wrong or abusive (I am not defending forcing kids to run stairs for three hours –that IS abusive).
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Ponderosa,
As Katie described, overly restrictive schools and punitive measures can trigger adolescent rebellion. If your classroom resembles a mob action, then something is very wrong with your teaching and disciplinary styles (And, yes, I have taught low income minority adolescents.)
Maybe if you believed in and practiced life-long learning, instead of asserting that “childhood is the time to learn it (God knows we adults don’t have the time),” then you would have learned by now that punishment and other forms of authoritarian discipline are only quick fixes for providing immediate compliance, They just teach kids what not to do. They do not teach children how to behave in socially appropriate ways. They do not tap into students’ intrinsic motivation and they do not instill in them the value of learning –which you seem to be lacking yourself, if you don’t have time to learn.
I would suggest you engage in some serious reflection and MAKE the time for learning.
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Chi-Town Res, You articulate the education school orthodoxy very well.
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I have been teaching for over 40 years and what I learned in my undergrad and grad Ed Schools has served me well in my classrooms. I have a passion for learning and have continued to grow. Too bad you are so resistant to learning.
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“God knows we adults don’t have the time” was hyperbole. I read a lot more than most adults I know. The point is that time is harder to find when you’re an adult, and there’s no way an adult can make up for 18 years of lost instructional time during his free time if he’s working full-time. “Art is long, life is short”: there’s too much humans need to know to put off the actual learning until age 18.
I’m glad your techniques worked for you in the neighborhoods and grade levels you found yourself in, and with the purposes you set yourself as a teacher. But can you extrapolate that your techniques are valid in all other educational settings and purposes? Do you think that the ed schools’ teaching on discipline is playing out well in the majority of inner-city middle and high schools? Is the chronic disorder in many of these schools just a result of inept implementation of your preferred techniques (which surely all the teachers in these schools have been indoctrinated with), or is a sign of the techniques’ inefficacy in these situations?
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I have spent my career working in inner-city low-income schools with minority populations and I’ve observed many other educators teaching in their classrooms as well. Although teaching is by no means easy in such circumstances, most teachers I’ve observed have learned effective behavior management strategies, without having to resort to draconian authoritarian measures, too, and I highly doubt they would characterize their teaching as “contending with group/mob psychology.” Astute teachers recognize fire starters rather quickly. Anyone who refers to their students as “lower class kids” reaps what they sow.
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“Katie, what do you think is motivating those stern practices you cite?” Racism, classism, and savage inequalities. That’s what motivates those practices. “Those kids” need it approach to education is racist, classist, and unequal. Period.
Here’s the deal with kids exhibiting difficult behaviors. You don’t put them in giant classes of 30 with just one teacher! True equity would be not letting those overwhelming situations keep happening. We know that kids coming from deep poverty, kids with disabilities, kids with trauma in their backgrounds, kids in the foster care system, immigrant children still learning English, children with a parent in the prison system, etc require more interventions. But we continue to give the schools that serve them the least amount of resources. What if the billions spent on testing and accountability, charter expansion, astroturf groups, etc had gone instead directly into the neediest classrooms? We could find ways to build new revenue sources, but we choose not to.
Of course, what we really need is to deal with the root causes, but Ed Reform refuses to acknowledge that need and instead turns to “no excuses”. It dumps the entire weight of inequality and oppression in the laps of children. ‘No excuses” schools expect the kids to just “work hard, be nice” as if the despairs and injustices of poverty weren’t occurring around them everyday. These charters tell them “sit down and shut up and never ever talk about your lives.”
What if we acknowledged the negative impact poverty has on learning and then built actual successful school environments? What if we had tiny classes of 10-15 kids, mental health workers/social workers in every struggling school, flooded those schools with high-interest books, engaging relevant curriculum, made a point to offer a wide variety of classes/sports/arts/music/computers/foreign language in order to snag the interests of these kids we know struggle. There are so many more “innovative” ways we could be dealing with the very real problems in communities dealing with decades of disinvestment, destabilization, violence. How about asking the communities and parents for their solutions? Instead, charters fix none of the problems and instead offer lock-down, furthering the school-to-prison-pipeline. This is how you deal with these problems on the cheap. And the solutions doesn’t work, they just push out the tougher kids. This is Ed Reform’s version of success.
There is a beautiful space that opens up when you stop telling a kid what they can’t do, and instead just say “yeah, you have a real reason to be mad”. What I see in Chicago is our youth actively taking to the streets protesting, demonstrating, using civil disobedience to take a stand. Youth action is so very powerful! Unfortunately, this is not the norm for charters. As far as I know, those kids aren’t being encouraged to fight for their communities, to use their anger for good, to follow in the footsteps of the great civil rights leaders. Not that they wouldn’t want to, but from what the charter kids tell me, it’s all about obedience and test-taking. How will that make the kind of leaders needed in these communities willing to stand up to oppression?
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Again, I don’t think you can paint with this broad a brush:
“What I see in Chicago is our youth actively taking to the streets protesting, demonstrating, using civil disobedience to take a stand. Youth action is so very powerful! Unfortunately, this is not the norm for charters. As far as I know, those kids aren’t being encouraged to fight for their communities, to use their anger for good, to follow in the footsteps of the great civil rights leaders. Not that they wouldn’t want to, but from what the charter kids tell me, it’s all about obedience and test-taking. How will that make the kind of leaders needed in these communities willing to stand up to oppression?”
The KIPP school where I was focused on social justice. Freshman took a course on social justice, the readings in all classes– including the sciences (wherever possible), history, English, foreign language, electives– were geared towards social justice.
The local school system is absolutely a mess in that area and students because involved with various issues at the encouragement of the teachers / leaders at KIPP.
It was VERY clear in everything that the school did that the goal was to empower this generation to get the highest / best possible education then come back to the community to empower the next generation. One of the very clear goals at this particular KIPP was that eventually the school should be staffed by graduates– so local kids who’d gone off to college and returned to help others follow in their footsteps. Eventually, there wouldn’t be a need for TFA or other folks to be there. That was already happening when I was there– a few teachers who’d been students of the founder years earlier (before the KIPP school was founded) had returned to teach there… and there example was incredibly powerful for the kids.
I see a serious danger here in underestimating exactly what these students in KIPP communities are dealing with. The county itself is one of the poorest in the state… 11% of the adults have college degrees… 22% are below the poverty line… There are three separate schools systems segregating both race and class (there’s the rich white kid school system, the poor white kid school system, and the people of color school system). That environment was most definitely addressed honestly and then KIPP emphasized that the way to break out of this multigenerational cycle was to get an education. I couldn’t really argue with that.
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I’m with you Ponderosa.
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By the way, while I support KIPP’s strict discipline, I deplore its practice of skimming the best, most docile students from the public school pool.
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At least in the school where I taught, this was absolutely not the case. Students were admitted by a lottery and stayed by choice. There were kids with IEPs, behavior issues… the same kids that I saw in my previous 14 years of teaching in a couple different settings in my state. There were kids who were resistant to KIPP’s approach, but we worked with them.
To be honest, there was one student who I really wondered would make it– in a traditional school, he would have been long term suspended or sent to an alternative school. But KIPP stuck it out with him, with countless parent meetings, calls, emails, reminders via text to him, etc. I personally had never seen a group of educators work that hard to keep a kid engaged and moving forward.
I know that the grade retention rate in KIPP schools is also often cited as a factor in how KIPP schools “force” kids out, but I didn’t see that in practice. Kids who were repeating courses or grade levels were called superheroes (in the middle grades) and were celebrated for their resilience and their determination in the upper grades. There was absolutely no shaming and no attempt to get these kids to leave. In fact, and it’s online on the school’s college signing day broadcast, one senior recently who took a 5th year at KIPP rather than attending college after the 4th (he had been accepted to a school but didn’t feel secure in what he needed to get THROUGH college) was lauded for that perseverance.
The KIPP key word is “yet.” You don’t understand that? Yet. You can’t do this? Yet. The emphasis I saw was on a growth mindset– not on a get rid of the bad ones mindset.
That said, I did get the feeling based on KIPP Summit and contacts at other KIPP schools that each school, while following some basic practices, is really the expression on the founder’s vision. So, this may not be true of them all. It was, however, evident in the KIPP where I taught that EVERY kid, regardless of behavior or academic needs, mattered and that EVERY possible attempt was made to keep them at KIPP.
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“Kids who were repeating courses or grade levels were called superheroes… ”
Retention is a concern because requiring kids to repeat courses and grade levels is to the school’s advantage, so that their test scores don’t tank, and some reports have indicated KIPP fails and councils out low performing students and kids with behavior problems just prior to testing.
I can understand trying to help students deal with failure, but calling them “superheroes” sounds rather self-serving and disingenuous, if these are kids without behavior problems that the school would rather not lose. (“Reformers” are masters at using euphemisms.) What happened to the “grit” they say is supposed to be so all important to learning from failure?
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Truthfully, what bothers me most about the education debate is the finger pointing. I think the “let’s hate charters,” “let’s degrade public school teachers” attitudes are BOTH ways of drawing away attention from the real problem: we don’t treat workers fairly in this country so that people can live reasonably and we don’t put our resources in education.
I’ve had a varied teaching career– 1.5 years at a rural public high school in the “real” Mayberry of Andy Griffith fame, 3 years in a public middle school in a mill town, 2 years at a public middle school in the gifted magnet program, 9 years at a public inquiry-based charter school, a year at KIPP, and a year at an elite independent school. Next year I’ll have a child in my private school, one in a public middle school, and one in college. My kids are products of lots of different schools as well: traditional public, the inquiry based charter, KIPP, and a Gates-funded early college program that enabled my oldest daughter to earn a full ride to Duke University.
So, when these debates spark, I bring personal experiences with pretty much ALL the various facets of education to the discussion. And yes, I realize the plural of anecdote is not data. I do wonder, though, how many of the critics of charters and KIPP and whatever have actually ever set foot in a school like the one they disparaged, much less worked there or sent their children to the school. It’s one thing to read blogs and reports and such and another to live the experience.
I read comments that just say “all charters” and I cringe. I wouldn’t accept that kind of generalization from my students and I have a hard time accepting it from adults who are obviously passionate about education. Not all public schools stink and not all charters stink… I’d love to see more discussion of how to take what’s working best in whatever form it arose and spread the ideas in a sustainable way.
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“I read comments that just say “all charters” and I cringe.”
And yet you characterize an entire county as having an “abysmal… school system.”
You make yourself out to be objective when clearly you are not.
And, BTW, many have been led to believe that education is the one and only ticket out of poverty and into the middle class, when in fact, there are just not enough jobs out there for all of the college graduates that we have today, so “Millions of Graduates Hold Jobs That Don’t Require a College Degree” http://chronicle.com/article/Millions-of-Graduates-Hold/136879/
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Sorry, rather than abysmal perhaps I should have just quoted from the UNC study on the state of the school system… http://www.law.unc.edu/documents/civilrights/ccrhalifaxreportrelease.pdf
KIPP goes into areas where the state of education is unacceptable– they’re not opening KIPP schools in areas with solid schools; they’re opening (by definition) where they’re needed.
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The point is that it is a county with high poverty and under-resourced schools, just like the many urban areas where KIPP schools are located, but KIPP receives a lot of outside funding, such as from Gates and the Waltons, that needy neighborhood schools in high poverty areas aren’t getting.
All countries have an achievement gap between lower and higher income children: http://www.epi.org/blog/international-tests-achievement-gaps-gains-american-students/
However, in the wealthiest country in the world, we don’t earmark the resources that are necessary to ensure that our poorest students at our neediest schools find success. Rather, all too often, the pattern today is to starve neighborhood schools in poor areas of needed resources, declare them “abysmal” or “unacceptable” or “failing,” blame teachers and unions, close the schools and then re-open them as charters. The “failing schools” narrative serves the privatization agenda very well.
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In the meantime, until that’s fixed, what do the kids in Halifax and Northhampton counties do if there’s no KIPP there? I get that the issues are much larger and much more systemic than just what’s happening in the schools, but until that’s fixed, I’d rather the kids go to a school that gives them a chance. J
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I don’t think the gravy train from Gates and Walton to KIPP is going to be lasting forever. It’s a means to an end for them. It’s a way of promoting the their school “choice” agenda, in order to privatize public education across the nation. This has been an aim of neo-liberal capitalists for a long time. See Milton Friedman’s: Public Schools: Make Them Private http://www.cato.org/pubs/briefs/bp-023.html
Milton Friedman’s privatization plan was implemented in Chile decades ago and it did not have a positive outcome and resulted in a highly stratified society. So for the past two years, Chilean students have been protesting and demanding free state schools.
There are many parents who are fighting to preserve public education in America while they put their own kids in charters, because the privatization movement has robbed them of well-resourced (or any) neighborhood schools. I would suggest joining Diane’s Network for Public Education and working with people in your area, including elected school boards, before there are no more public schools left in this country to defend.
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Here is a description of a “no excuses” charters looks: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/08/30/1125810/–No-Excuses-and-the-Culture-of-Shame-Why-Metrics-Don-t-Matter I’m sorry, but what is described here is terrible education.
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Dolly,
A couple of clarifications…
Retention is a concern because requiring kids to repeat courses and grade levels is to the school’s advantage, so that their test scores don’t tank…”
I’m not sure what you mean by this… in my state, whether you’re being retained or not, your test scores count. So, a student who’s failed 7th grade has scores that count Year 1 and Year 2.
“…and some reports have indicated KIPP fails and councils out low performing students and kids with behavior problems just prior to testing.”
I did not witness this. If anything, there were extreme measures taken to keep kids enrolled including home visits, calls, meetings, etc. The discussion of our test scores was pretty minimal– certainly much more minimal than the other traditional public and public charters where I’ve taught.
“I can understand trying to help students deal with failure, but calling them “superheroes” sounds rather self-serving and disingenuous, if these are kids without behavior problems that the school would rather not lose.”
Here’s the thing: whether we want to admit it or not, not everyone learns at the same rate. Some kids are going to need 4 or 5 or even 6 years to get what others get in 3. And every kid knows EXACTLY who the “repeaters” are. By calling them superheroes, the school set up a mindset where resilience and grit ARE important– you may “fail,” but you get another chance. Those kids were set up as leaders in the room to help others learn routines and procedures and were celebrated for their choice to stay at KIPP rather than go into the abysmal county school system in the area.
There’s a definite possibility– and I’ve seen it in nonKIPP schools– that the repeaters are labelled as “dumb.” I think KIPP called them superheroes to head off what would otherwise be inevitable. I don’t think that’s any more disingenuous than promoting a kid who’s behind for fear that retaining them would hurt their “self esteem.” Somehow I’ve always thought that not being able to read would be FAR more damaging to one’s self esteem than being retained…
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This is a little off the subject, but a friend of mine lives in Sumter, SC. She emailed about one of the High Schools there. Does anyone know what is going on there? From what she said, it sounds like a racism problem. She wanted my opinion, but I don’t think I understand what she is trying to tell me. I’m hoping I’m wrong about the racism.
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