Mike Feinberg, co-founder of the KIPP megacorporation national chain, was dismissed because of allegations of inappropriate sexual contacts with students, which he denied. Not to worry. Mike has a new gig, teaching people how to start charters.To be clear, I don’t approve of the behavior (unspecified) of which he was accused and led to his ouster or resignation.
I wish Mike would take a job helping public schools. Or he could be a fundraiser for the Network for Public Education.
You may not want to hear this, but I like Mike, even though I disagree with the whole charter school hustle. He invited me to Houston in 2010, and he was a very congenial host. I had a great Tex-Mex lunch with his staff, toured the flagship school, then lectured at Rice University. TFA co-sponsored the event. As he expected, I lambasted Charter schools and TFA. The room was packed with teachers who belonged to the Houston Federation of Teachers. I admired Mike for listening to a dissident like me.
C’mon, Mike, come on over to the good guys. The pay stinks, but you will definitely feel right with your conscience.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane, You appear willing to overlook allegations that caused him to be dismissed from KIPP.
LikeLike
Chalkbeat says that the allegations are being kept secret.
Click to access KIPP-Letter-to-Texas-AG.pdf
I don’t approve of any inappropriate behavior between students and adults or powerful bosses and employees.
LikeLike
But isn’t KIPP’s fighting tooth and nail to keep secret all documentation regarding the allegations against Feinberg — including KIPP’s internal response to them — a problem?
I mean, so much for charter schools’ claiming to provide full transparency to the public — the same level of transparency as the traditional public schools.
Chalkbeat’s Matt Barnum put in a public records request for all the documents relating to the recent Mike Feinberg stuff :
— alleged child molestation and secret payoffs to one of the victims in a civil settlement;
— alleged sexual harassment, sex with KIPP employees, and consequent payoffs in tuition paid by KIPP and/or Feinberg
… and on and on …
Near the end of this article, Barnum gets to this
part of the story:
From KIPP’s letter to the Texas Attorney General attempting to exempt itself from Freedom of Information requests:
“KIPP asserts that the entirety of the responsive information contained in Exhibit B is exempt from public disclosure.”
Click to access KIPP-Letter-to-Texas-AG.pdf
KIPP and its lawyers are claiming this based on couple of things:
— attorney client privilege — the KIPP org & its attorney, that is;
— records of school employees, including teachers or administrators, are private (tell that to Rafe Esquith) and thus, must be kept private; (NOTE: Feinberg’s now an ex-employee, just as Esquith was … btw, Feinberg cites Esquith as one of his key mentors.)
and finally
— an exemption based on the offense it would bring to the public, as “information that contains highly intimate or embarrassing facts about a person’s private affairs such that its release would be highly objectionable to a reasonable person and the information (is) of no legitimate concern to the public.”
WTF??? They say that there’s “no legitimate concern to the public”????
After secretly paying off the child (and her parents) for an alleged molestation, Feinberg, for the next 20 years, was still allowed unfettered, unsupervised access to children, and none of the parents were ever informed of this secret settlement. Nor was the public in general.
I think those KIPP parents might disagree about whether or not the Feinberg situation constituted “legitimate concern to the public”
Though Feinberg was employed as neither teacher nor administrator at the time of the alleged accusations, KIPP is claiming that he held a valid credential, so that makes his records exempt.
If this happened to someone on the other side — a major opponent of corporate ed. reform, or a national teachers union leader, or the leaders of a teachers union in a large city (Los Angeles, NYC, Chicago, etc.), and they tried to bury all the records, Education Post, The 74, etc. would be howling with outrage.
LikeLike
I appreciate learning that Feinberg was willing to be open to interacting with you and having you. I would prefer to see the allegations cleared before being so inviting to him at this point. There have been too many bad situations of allegations (seemingly turning out to be true) being suppressed for too long.
LikeLike
I don’t think he will Leave the charter orbit.
No chance.
If someone has done something criminal, they should be prosecuted.
If they did something inappropriate, they should have a chance to do something socially useful to rehabilitate themselves.
LikeLike
Now Mr. Feinberg gets to lead his own Ponzi scheme. I wonder if Betsy will give him any pointers. Maybe she has a bag full of money waiting for him. I wonder if he’ll get a pink Cadillac if he reaches his target goal.
LikeLike
He hasn’t gotten any billionaires to give him any money to play with yet. Given all those denied requests for interviews by his new board members I’d guess that’s going to be a struggle. Whether the charges are true or not, anyone who gives him money will have tacitly endorsed child molestation.
LikeLike
Yea Mike, come on over and work with us good guys. Instead of making money on charters, make your talents to good use and support public achools.
LikeLike
It can be seen as an off topic to someone.
When I was a teenager, my brother preaches me that in reality, there are two obvious choices: the outlook always reassures the immediate and solid gain more than the innate virtue that he cannot be sure of its truth.(= he marries the beauty, not the loving and caring girl)
However, IMHO, there is the foundation of goodness in humanity which we can acknowledge through words, deeds and actions along people’s daily living off their career and communication. (I stay away from gullible and greedy people. I only respect and be friend to people whose words, actions and deeds are shown their respect for humanity)
In this particular thread and many recent posts, I recognize that the majority of all contributors in this platform focus on criticism, BUT not on a solution!
I completely agree with Dr. Ravitch that:
[start quote]
dianeravitch
July 21, 2018 at 2:56 pm
…
If someone has done something criminal, they should be prosecuted.
If they did something inappropriate, they should have a chance to do something socially useful to rehabilitate themselves.
[end quote]
In short, Dienne77 is very radical in a way to oppose to Dr. Ravitch. To me, I like the representation of her fresh and gullible expression that it needs to be rectified by Dr. Ravitch.
Please remember that gullibility is equal to ignorance due to lack of experience and wisdom in dealing with malice, cruel, and greedy corporate. We need to break down the thinking of limitation in two choices. We should focus on the foundation of humanity = caring and supporting the lesser to have hope and freedom to live and to contribute their work decently to society within their ability and capacity. Back2basic
LikeLike
It’s perfectly fine to like someone with whom you do not share views. In fact, it’s important for someone like you with your influence, Diane, to publicly express this.
Someone I respect said recently:
“I believe in things, but that doesn’t mean the things that I don’t believe in, I have to hate.” I would add that it certainly doesn’t mean I have to hate the people who have other beliefs. Sadly, this is precisely what seems to be happening in our country.
LikeLike
” Someone I respect said recently:
“I believe in things, but that doesn’t mean the things that I don’t believe in, I have to hate.” I would add that it certainly doesn’t mean I have to hate the people who have other beliefs. Sadly, this is precisely what seems to be happening in our country.”
I’m with you.
LikeLike
I added the Sahlberg reference to the text and reference list. Can you make (or have you done it and I don’t see it), one reference list for all the papers?
David Hursh, Ph.D. Professor Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development 452 LeChase Hall RC Box 270425 University of Rochester Rochester, NY 14627-0425 Phone: 585.275.3947 Fax: 585.486.1159 Mobile: 585.406.1258 New book: The End of Public Schools: The Corporate Reform Agenda to Privatize Education. Routledge.
Interview on NY Public television: begins at 6 1/2 minutes into the program: http://video.wmht.org/video/2365630941/
Associate Region Editor- Americas- Journal of Education Policy. Associate Editor- Policy Futures in Education Keynote address: New York State as a cautionary tale. New Zealand union of primary teachers and administrators. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hW4vZGsLiL4 UR Meliora Address: High-stakes testing and the decline of teaching. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIQu2Hh_YkI e
From: Diane Ravitch’s blog <comment-reply@wordpress.com> Reply-To: Diane Ravitch’s blog <comment+p6kq961q1z_d9ha97rizjiuh@comment.wordpress.com> Date: Saturday, July 21, 2018 at 1:00 PM To: Hursh David <dhursh@warner.rochester.edu> Subject: [New post] Dismissed by KIPP, Mike Feinberg Lands on His Feet
dianeravitch posted: “Mike Feinberg, co-founder of the KIPP megacorporation national chain, was dismissed because of allegations of inappropriate sexual contacts with students, which he denied. Not to worry. Mike has a new gig, teaching people how to start charters. I wish “
LikeLike
I think history indicates that he has deep power over, into and under lifetime wounds. He has no business near students or teachers. Seductive he may be but seductive he is. Yuck.
LikeLike
Well, we’ll probably never know now for sure, since KIPP’s lawyers have taken such extreme measures to bury the truth … but then again, if the truth was favorable to Feinberg, wouldn’t they have released all the documentation clearing Feinberg?
LikeLike
Ed reformers are hypocrites for not releasing anything about the allegations, though.
One of their main attacks against teachers unions center around the accusation that unions protect teachers who abuse children:
“Brown was there to plug her new venture, the Parents’ Transparency Project, a nonprofit “watchdog group” that “favors no party, candidate, or incumbent.” Though its larger aim is to “bring transparency” to how contracts are negotiated with teachers’ unions, PTP’s most prominent campaign is to fix how New York City handles cases of sexual misconduct involving teachers and school employees—namely by giving the city’s schools chancellor, a political appointee, ultimate authority in the process.”
Where’s the information on charter teachers and principals and leaders?
Why should public schools be held to a standard of transparency that charter schools are not?
They pen these editorial blasting unions on treatment of sexual abuse allegations against teachers but the only reason they know about the allegations is because it’s collected and available. Where would one go to find allegations about charter teachers/principals/leaders?
LikeLike
The website for the group is misleading. They call themselves “education reform advocates” – that’s not true.
The group promotes charter schools. They are charter school advocates. Nothing they do benefits any public school and in many places their work harms children who attend public schools.
Presenting themselves as “public education advocates” when they do absolutely nothing for any public school anywhere is misleading and in my opinion it’s deliberately misleading- it is much easier to sell ed reform as “improving public schools” instead of selling what it really is, which is “replacing public schools”.
They need to tell the public the goal- the goal is to replace the existing public system with a privatized system of contractors and to replace existing funding with vouchers.
If they did that I wouldn’t have any problem with them forming and funding as many lobbying groups as they want (or can get one of their billionaires to pay for) because obviously someone is funding this thing.
LikeLike