David Pettiette is a CPA who volunteered at a KIPP elementary school in Memphis. He was shocked when two KIPP schools suddenly closed their doors and left their families scrambling for a new school.
He wrote:
In April, it was announced that KIPP Memphis Preparatory Elementary and KIPP Memphis Preparatory Middle on Corry Road would be permanently closing without notice. Between the two schools, over 650 students have been displaced without so much as a plan or opportunity to rebut the decision.
The decision to close a school in an underserved community is not uncommon. It is however a decision that is typically given six months to a year’s notice, not April of the current school year. The Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) is the largest network of public charter schools in the nation, with several schools in Memphis. With that size apparently comes unprecedented autonomy considering the schools’ primary funding is local and state money.
In an effort to limit bad press, KIPP offered a Q&A conference call to address the school closures so that the community’s voices could be heard. However, this session, which did not provide any A’s or responses from KIPP, was yet another unthoughtful decision made by the organization and proved to be an unsuitable forum.
Many families had trouble accessing the call due to technical difficulties generated from the third-party conferencing system used. The call itself went just about as you’d expect. It opened with two pre-recorded statements from KIPP’s board of directors and regional team, which were both vague and painfully insincere.
The comments from parents and staff were anxious, frustrated and morose –a wide variety of emotions. While listening to the call, I couldn’t help but think that the occasion warranted a more personal approach.
In reality, KIPP gave up. They gave up on their students, families, faculty and staff after only a few years of operation. Make no mistake, this was a financial decision that is inequitable to the historic Alcy Ball community in South Memphis.
KIPP cited a “failure to fulfill academic promise” which resulted in the closures, and the only excuse provided for the late notice was that they did not want to mislead the schools’ key stakeholders regarding their future.
This was a cheap and inaccurate shot at the integrity of the teachers and faculty, who spent money out of their own pockets to make sure that their students were adequately clothed, fed and supplied.
At the end of the day this decision is not what is best for the kids, who should have been KIPP’s only focus throughout this whole process. The situation is awful, but the approach was worse. If there is anyone looking for a textbook example of institutional racism, look no further.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
In German, “kipp” is a verb that means “to topple” or “overturn.” Kind of like they do with children’s lives and public education. Perfect word for disruption of lives.
Thank you, Greg. This is good information.
You are right, of course.
I know this isn’t the point of the article, but I can hardly get past the opening line: “David Pettiette is a CPA who volunteered at a KIPP elementary school….”
I don’t mean to cast aspersions as I’m sure that Mr. Pettiette’s intentions were noble, but wouldn’t a CPA see that KIPP, despite being technically a “non-profit”, is not a charity that one should volunteer for? For all practical purposes, it is for-profit, at least the profit of the executives who run it. Maybe as a volunteer he didn’t have access to all of the budgetary information, but that alone should have been troubling for an organization that claims to run “public” schools. It’s very disturbing how so many “non-profits” have captured the very people who should be able to see through them.
scray but exact summation
Right on.
I used to volunteer to coach kids for a Memphis charter school (I can’t remember if it was part of ASD). You do not volunteer for the school. You volunteer for the kids.
Not expecting to hear anything about this from President Trump or Secretary DeVos. (Nor expecting one of Secretary Duncan’s incessant “good government tweets,” either.)
But choice. The civil rights issue of our time.
Kids In Prison Programs. Shut them ALL down and good riddance! It’s child incarceration hidden behind the word education. It disgusts me every time I see a KIPP school at an event for families and kids….they have to walk in a line or group, no talking, eyes ahead, no skipping or having any fun. I feel like telling the kids to run and be free. If they are like this in public, I can’t imagine it being any better in their “school”.
That’s a big problem with well known charter chains. They are more interested in protecting their wallet and brand than students. This type of treatment is expected when schools become privately owned. When the finances and scores do not improve, the company will pull up stakes to look for better markets. The students, their families and staffs are not the main consideration. I wonder if they got CARES Act money?
KIPP is a franchise. It closed schools that were not brand compliant and profitable. That is corporate-style education.
When KIPP took over a middle school in Denver, I think it was Cole, the KIPP model failed. KIPP left. Charters like KIPP can’t take over existing schools. They can “succeed” only by starting fresh and picking their students.
if I remember right, there was active parental resistance to the takeover and they did it anyway
KIPP SUCKS. KIPP ruins kids’ lives.
What is the deal with this chain? In one of Alfie Kohn’s books, I think was “Beyond Discipline: From Compliance to Community” he excoriated KIPP several times, but not in much detail. I actually interviewed for a job at a KIPP school in Harlem, where I found the usual assortment of neophytes well endowed with missionary zeal and moral smugness; not a scintilla of self-doubt (something an educator ought to have in some measure, I submit) among that crowd. When the school called me back for a second round of interviews, I passed. I see above the word “franchise” used to characterize KIPP.
Does that mean that one can open a KIPP school in the same way the Marge bought a pretzel cart on that one episode of “The Simpsons”? Just go to a franchise fair and, boom, you’re an educational entrepreneur?
Of course, like these two schools, Marge’s pretzel cart didn’t make it. For the record, the Investorettes’ “Fleet-a-Pita” cart drove Marge out of business.
“Does that mean that one can open a KIPP school in the same way the Marge bought a pretzel cart on that one episode of “The Simpsons”? Just go to a franchise fair and, boom, you’re an educational entrepreneur?”
Yup, sad to say. This isn’t just about KIPP. And not just about K-12. I’ve been a free-lance enrichment to PreK/K’s in NJ for 20 yrs. In early 2000’s, my clients were 100% private: Montessori, employee-daycare, or ‘non-denominational’ run under the aegis of local churches & temples – & that had been the norm since ’60’s.
Commercial franchises of natl chains w/ stdzd curriculum had been around for a bit, & must have been making their pitch w/the state, as certain stdzd PreK curricula were approved for state-subsidized PreK tuition by the early 2000’s. I became aware of it in about 2007 [coinciding w/ start of recession]: major pharma cos that until then had their own corp-run employee-daycares switched to commercial franchises. The model caught on very quickly, no doubt due to recession’s downward pressures on childcare salaries combined w/ increased demand as more families needed to have both parents working. By 2010, 1/3 of my potential PreK clients were commercial franchises. (Still about the same).
Briefly as a young adult I worked as an innkeeper’s secretary for a Holiday Inn. It’s no different. You’re a franchise, so you think you can do your own thing, But they show up every year w/the white-glove inspection. Periodically someone at hdqtrs gets a hair up their a** & everybody has to start doing something different. Maybe you’re off their immediate radar, & you show good profits, so they wink. Then one day a new mgr takes over w/a different idea, & you’re toast. All the great stuff you were doing independently to pull in local clients is snuffed. [That happened to a TutorTime I workedat fopr 9 yrs.]
Wow. I am much obliged, bethree5.
Speaks to the fact that these kinds of charters were never “public” schools but simply schools run for students whose presence would enable their leaders to draw an overly generous salary while their obligation to their students ended when those students no longer helped them achieve their primary objective of allowing their leaders to draw an overly generous salary.
Yeah, my first reaction was when was the last time one of your community’s PUBLIC schools closed in the middle of the year without notice? Does anyone wonder whether they returned the public funding from the last few months of school?
lining a few personal pockets: the entire endeavor exposed
Privatization benefits the wealthy and topples everyone else. I found a paper from the Universitat de Barcelona (est 1450) that discusses how, in the 1930s, Hitler used privatization of public services along with union suppression to enrich wealthy industrialists in return for their support of the Nazi Party. He gave public functions to industrialists as long as the industrialists stayed loyal. Union leaders were imprisoned and enslaved. Work hours went up and wages went down. As a matter of fact, not only does ‘kipp’ mean to topple, the English word ‘reprivatization’ was coined from the German word ‘reprivatisierung’ in the 1930s when Western European countries took note of the sweeping acts of privatization unfolding in Nazi Germany.
Click to access nazi.pdf
I meant this as a reply to Greg up at the top of the comments. I also thought I pasted a link. Here’s the substance of the url address: /www.ub.edu/graap/nazi .pdf
Wow, fascinating, & on-point.
I dug a bit– these were two of the last six ASD schools. Failure on top of failure.
https://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2020/06/tn-when-charters-abandon-community.html
How much money has been wasted on ASD? (I do not want to ask about the tragedies of the fired teachers so that ASD could move in, or the of the parents and kids who were screwed by the ASD takeover.)
So charter schools can close any time they want? Don’t they have some responsibility to a school district?
The charters have no responsility to the district but they should have a responsibility to the students and families.