Julian Vasquez Heilig writes one of the most interesting blogs around, called “Cloaking Inequity.” He is a scrupulous researcher and specializes in exposing frauds. He recently was appointed dean of the school of education at the University of Kentucky. Before he came to Kentucky, he was a faculty member at Sacramento State and chair of the California branch of the NAACP. He is also a member of the board of the Network for Public Education.
In this post, Heilig examines the relationship between KIPP and one of its parents.
How does KIPP charter really treat parents?
A KIPP parent sent me a disturbing story today! I am more and more convinced that we need a national website like Yelp for charter schools, I was thinking we could call it Chelp.com. It would be a website where parents can do to get help when they run into the charter school buzz saws that I have blogged about often here on Cloaking Inequity. This is not my first tangle with or blog about KIPP Houston (See more posts here). I actually started Cloaking Inequity because of KIPP’s deceptive response to a peer reviewed research study about charter attrition that we published in the Berkeley Review of Education.
Here is her story:
Mary Courtney has been trying to get basic Special Education services for her son at KIPP for three years. When her son did not receive the Special Education services he should have received by law, she advocated for her son. When KIPP would not provide the support her son needed, she found therapeutic support for her son on her own outside of school. And she continued to advocate for her son and other students with disabilities, filing complaints whenever KIPP regularly broke state and federal laws.
Originally a strong charter school advocate, even speaking at the State Capital seeking more charter funding, she became increasingly discouraged by the KIPP charter school chain. In 2017, When she found out that parents like her were charged hundreds of dollars per parent in school fees, she complained to the state of Texas which later required KIPP to stop charging these unallowable fees.
OKIPP retaliated against her son, filing over thirty discipline referrals against him, hoping that the family would remove him from KIPP and their problem family would disappear. But her son liked the school and given his disabilities- cognitive delays, autism, ADHD and epilepsy- his mother was committed to providing as much stability as possible. So she kept her son at KIPP.
Two weeks ago on February 27, 2020, KIPP expelled her son from school for trumped up charges, in the process violating a long list of federal Special Education laws. This expulsion came after KIPP had filed two lawsuits against the family. Only one month before the expulsion, KIPP’s attorneys offered Mrs. Courtney $10,000 to leave the school.
Using unprincipled techniques ranging from lawsuits to bribery to expulsion, KIPP was more committed to getting rid of a Special Needs kid than serving his needs.
Mary Courtney and her family moved to Houston from Louisiana in 2013. While her family is low income, she has always been determined that her son will receive the education they need to be successful in life.
When Mary brought her son to KIPP in 2015, she had high hopes. At the time, she did not know that KIPP disproportionately suspended African American students. Even though its schools were only 33% African American, the out-of-school suspension rate was 60%, nearly twice that. In 2015, she also did not know that KIPP and charters like KIPP tended to “counsel” parents of children with special needs to return to their home school.
Her son was identified as a Special Education student in February 2017. The school started with the usual speech. The Special Education Director of KIPP Texas, Andrea Sampy, stated, “I’ve seen this before. Based on my experience, I’m looking at a child that is emotionally disturbed.” KIPP gave her son an “emotionally disturbed” label with no formal evaluation whatsoever.
Mrs. Courtney disagreed emphatically and asked for a formal outside evaluation of her son. Her son was identified with autism and expressive and receptive language delay. The child’s doctor also diagnosed him as having ADHD and epilepsy.
KIPP did not like this diagnosis that contradicted their informal assessment and they refused to pay. Mrs. Courtney won a due process lawsuit against the school because they delayed her son’s evaluation. Thus, KIPP was required to pay for the original evaluation.
However, the agreement reached in early 2018 allowed the school to re-evaluate her son. The school determined that her son qualified for services under the emotionally disturbed (ED) label, other health impairment (ADHD and epilepsy) and learning disability in written expression and math calculation. The autism, ADHD and epilepsy labels were determined by a medical doctor and Mrs. Courtney supported the diagnosis. She continued to disagree with the school’s emotionally disturbed label because it was not based on any formal diagnosis of outside evaluators, just the opinions of three staff members.
The only disability services her son consistently received the three years at KIPP was bus transportation to school. Her son has not consistently received many of the other services stipulated in his individual educational plan (IEP). During a 2019 investigation, “TEA found that social skills development have not been provided in accordance with the IEP (for her son).” This academic year, her son has not received counseling services 30 minutes per week nor has he received psychological services once per month as stipulated by his IEP. And he has not had consistent paraprofessional support for specialized instruction in mathematics and reading since the previous school year. A charter school like KIPP receives public funds and, as such, is required by law to provide Special Education services.
But it gets worse. Mrs. Courtney stated, “The more I advocated about his lack of services and how the ED label was incorrect; the more they began to give office referrals for discipline. Then they started suing me and trying to get me to leave the school.”
In April and Fall 2019, KIPP filed due process lawsuits against Mrs. Courtney to defend the appropriateness of their evaluation, specifically the emotionally disturbed label that Mrs. Courtney disputed. KIPP eventually withdrew both lawsuits, likely because they did not have a reasonable claim. Instead of providing services for her son, KIPP used discipline referrals and unnecessary protracted litigation over issues that should have been, as a matter of public policy, solved through mediation. Pure and simple, they filed lawsuits against the Courtney family to bully them into leaving KIPP.
Her son, is a helpful son, very soft-spoken and caring. While he got in some fights in elementary and middle school, it was a result of his autism and communication deficits rather than his disposition. Since KIPP did not provide any services at all for her son, Mrs. Courtney found an organization that provided free applied behavior analysis (ABA) therapy two years ago. Since then, her son has learned strategies to manage his autism and has not gotten in any more fights. He is truly a gentle giant but, unfortunately, because he is tall and large for his age and Black, some of his teachers judge him as intimidating.
On Valentine’s Day this past month, her son, an autistic student, and his new girlfriend got off the bus and went into the cafeteria. His previous ‘girlfriend’ with whom he had never kissed or even held hands was unhappyp and insulted him. He moved to another part of the cafeteria using a strategy his ABA (applied behavior analysis) therapist had told him to manage his autism and responses. Later, after breakfast, his former ‘girlfriend’ yelled at him and he yelled back. Both cursed at each other. Then he started walking to class. The two students were sent to the main office, she tried to hit him and a teacher stopped her. She then punched a wall and the students waited in the office for the administrator.
The former “girlfriend’s” mother arrived and the school leader asked her son to come to the office and sit down. Her son said he was not comfortable going in the office without his mom. Mrs. Courtney arrived at the school and took her son home having been told by phone that her son was suspended for three days. When he returned to school, he was placed in in-school suspension and then he was expelled on February 27, 2020.
Federal law requires that the school must take into account a student’s disabilities when making a discipline referral. Students with autism have social and communication deficits, so his outburst is highly likely to be a manifestation of his disability. The school is required to hold a hearing called an manifestation determination and review (MDR) before a student can be expelled or have more than 10 days of suspension in a school year.
Her son is a child with autism, cognitive disabilities, ADHD and epilepsy. He never received services as required by law. His expulsion is a violation of the law and is retaliatory.
Charter schools like KIPP think they can violate parent’s due process rights like they did to Mary Courtney with impunity. It is time to hold charter schools accountable. They get public funds and should be publicly accountable for how they are used. They must be held accountable for what they are doing to her son.
Sincerely, Mary Courtney March 1, 2020
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
Charters generally do not serve diverse students well. Charter schools often accept those that are cheap and easy to educate. They do not want to pay to provide specialized services for special education or ELL students. There are legitimate reasons for employing certified professional teachers to serve the needs of these students. They have the training and expertise to meet the needs of these vulnerable students. These teachers have chosen and trained to work with students of differing needs. Even when a a charter accepts special education students or ELLs, they skim off those that are the most ready to learn with the general education students. They do not want to pay for and serve challenging students.
For those that do not fit the “one size fits all” charter mold, charters have ways to discourage attendance at their schools by counseling out non-conforming students or writing them up for disciplinary infractions. Mary Courtney’s son is a victim of a school and system that has failed her son.
I sat for interview about 12 years ago in Harlem, more or less around the corner from where I lived at the time. I definitely got a whiff of what this blog post describes–though I admit that I’d read Alfie Kohn’s criticisms of KIPP shortly before this incident. In any case, I passed on the second interview.
It sounds like it was the right move. As an educator, I’ve earned a reputation for working tirelessly for kids, but not always getting along with adults in schools. A situation like this definitely would have brought out the worst (such as it is) in me….
sadly, your instinct to step in and protect kids is the same instinct which has pushed so many teachers out of their work in the past two decades
Errata: Sat for an interview and KIPP High School.
At a KIPP High school, rather. My head is in the clouds this morning.
It is not that charters do this to children. It is that the education reform movement has set up a system that specifically INCENTIVIZES charters to do this. In New York state, the truly awful SUNY Charter Institute actually has received multiple complaints from parents whose kids were treated in similar manners at rich charter networks. But the SUNY Charter Institute board members do not care. In fact, the charters that do this most tend to be the most lavishly rewarded and praised by the SUNY Charter Institute.
What the people who promote charter schools like the truly awful SUNY Charter Institute board members care about is the passing rates on state tests. It doesn’t matter how high charter network’s attrition is — in fact, they don’t want to know how high a charter network’s attrition is and is it never made public by them. It does not matter to them how many African-American kindergarten children are given multiple out of school suspensions. It doesn’t matter how few seniors graduate from high school as long as the charter can say “100% of them are going to college”.
The education reform industry has set up a system in which the rewards go to those who are more than willing to do this to children and the teachers and administrators who thrive in those charters lack the moral and ethical understanding that those who walk away from those charters have (like the one who surreptitiously videotaped the “model” teacher demonstrating the behavior toward “unworthy” children that is most highly rewarded in charters). The teachers and administrators who thrive in charters entirely embrace the notion that doing harm to some children — the “unworthy ones” like Mary Courtney’s son — is necessary for the good of the others. It is almost fascist in the belief that the superior children benefit only when the inferior children suffer mightily, and without making the inferior children suffer mightily, the other “good” children would be severely harmed.
Nearly all the white people in the reform movement — people like Robert Pondiscio — now embrace the notion that there is absolutely nothing wrong with a charter psychologically harming and punishing young children who they deem are not worthy of being taught so that the children that those white people in the reform movement deem worthy of being taught can thrive. Those white people in the ed reform movement believe they aren’t racist because the kids who they deem to be worthy include African-American children and they insist that the conversation stop there. But what is racist is that the children who are are deemed to be “unworthy” by white charter CEOs and their well-compensated lackeys almost never include middle class or affluent white students.
And that is because charters understand that if they treated middle class and affluent white students with special needs the way those charters treat low-income African-American students with special needs, the public wouldn’t buy their innuendoes about how “violent” and “dangerous” those 5 year old white children were.
Charters are like high-profit, low-cost health insurance companies that heavily market to consumers. The people who buy those policies think it is great because they are saving so much money and their healthy kid can get their once a year check-up. Maybe their kid gets a special gift like a new stuffed animal at every annual appointment, the waiting room is really nice, and the parents are thrilled. It’s all wonderful, unless they happen to have a child who gets an illness that requires expensive medical treatment and hospitalizations. Then they learn that their kid is no longer profitable to provide health care for, just like Mary Courtney learned her son was no longer profitable for the charter to teach. The sad thing is that the mom testified to PROMOTE charter schools before she realized her son was going to be one of the kids who wasn’t wanted. And very likely had her son’s special needs been so mild that he easily adapted at the charter and became a good student, Courtney would still think charters were great.
There are easy solutions to this, but charters won’t accept them because their real goal – even non-profits – is to make enough to generously compensate their leaders. One solution is that KIPP can expel any child it wants to expel, but KIPP then pays the tuition of up to $150,000/year for that child to attend an expensive private school for students with special needs for the remainder of his education life (i.e until he graduates high school). If KIPP and other charters want to claim to be REAL public schools, then they should be taken at their word and they must act as real public schools and provide a very expensive special needs private school education through high school graduate for every single student they don’t want to teach and it must come from the budget they have. That is what public schools do. And if charters had to do this, it would remove the incentive that is in place now where charters are financially rewarded the more they psychologically harm the children they don’t want to teach to get them out of the school.
Charters are like health insurance companies – consumers love their low cost until they actually NEED the health insurance, but the majority of children won’t get those expensive illnesses and need good coverage, so their parents remain happy. Until the parents of healthy kids who are benefitting from a system that hurts the most vulnerable children start to realize that they or their cousin or their friend might be the one with the vulnerable kid who is being hurt, they will continue to support what benefits their child.
There are lots of ways to address the needs of the low-income children who are easy to teach and deserve good schools without pushing their parents to embrace the idea that their children can only thrive if the most vulnerable children pay the price. It simply isn’t true. But those discussions will never happen until charters stop lying and start telling the truth. Luckily for charters, the truly terrible education reporters will dutifully write down all their comments without bothering to check whether there is any truth to it, and the charter authorizing agencies will continue to hide attrition and suspension rates and only care about whether the kids who are chosen to remain pass state tests.
It’s sad to see this country come to a place where the most unethical and greedy people are rewarded the most. That has happened in ed reform. Profiting handsomely by educating some at the expense of the many is the norm, and the parents of the children who are profitable to teach are happy until they realize, as this mother did, that the charter decided their child wasn’t one of the few after all.
You don’t have to hurt some kids to benefit others. But at KIPP and other charters, that is what the teachers and administrators who do not walk away truly believe. If they did not, they would be honest and not sound like Donald Trump promoting his charity.
KIPP and Crooked, Serial Lying Donald Trumpty Dumpty have a few behavior traits in common. They both despise the law and act like they are free to break any laws they want.