...there are also two misguided "lessons" that many readers may take from "Work Hard. Be Nice": that the KIPP example suggests that union-free charter schools are the key to closing the achievement gap and that poverty and school segregation are just excuses for teacher failure.
This is pretty close to the consolidated left-liberal attitude toward KIPP, so it's worth spending a little time unpacking the two "misguided lessons" Kahlenberg describes.
On unions, Rich notes that while it's true that most KIPP schools don't have unions, some do, and that some schools with unions have achieved KIPP-like success, and that many schools without unions are bad. All valid points. But this just serves to underscore the need to get beyond a top-level "Unions are good vs. Unions are bad" way of thinking and focus on the actual issues at play.
At KIPP, Kahlenberg notes, teachers "put in a longer school day (beginning at 7:15 and ending at 5 p.m.); teach Saturday classes and three weeks of summer school; and [are] subject to firing without due-process rights." Given that KIPP-like results have proven damnably hard to achieve, it's fair to assume that longer days and fewer work rules are an important part of the KIPP success equation. That doesn't mean those things are needed in every school, but they seem to be needed in these. So the union / KIPP question strikes me as pretty simple: if unions screw up the winning KIPP formula, they're a problem. If they don't, they're not. Union-free charter schools are surely not the only key to closing the achievement gap, but they're pretty clearly a key for thousands of students in KIPP schools today.
Per the second lesson, Rich notes that "KIPP does not educate the typical low-income student but rather a subset fortunate enough to have striving parents who take the initiative to apply to a KIPP school and sign a contract agreeing to read to their children at night." Again, there's doubtless some truth in this. But as the KIPP DC Web site notes, the first class of students arrived in Fall 2001 scoring at the 21st percentile in reading and the 34th percentile in math. In 2005, they were at the 71st percentile in reading and the 92nd percentile in math. Somehow, despite the magic power of having exactly the same "striving parents," those students were crashing and burning in the regular public schools four years before.
One could theorize that KIPP might not have been able to achieve the same results with a demographically similar group of students with parents who didn't give a damn. Maybe. And maybe, as Rich suggest, KIPP's results are further enhanced by students who can't handle the rigor and move back to other schools. But even if those things were true, so what? Nobody else was stepping up back in 2001 to help those students. Not enough people are stepping up now. This is a problem, all of sudden, organizations that have figured out to help disadvantaged students with parents who care about their children's future? KIPP stays under the microscope of suspicion until it proves that it can help every poor child, while thousands of public schools across the country stay open even though they've definitively proved unable to help any poor children?
Click here for the audio of a recent Education Sector event featuring Jay and others discussing the book.
10 comments:
Gosh Kahlenberg, wouldn't it be terrible if every "striving parent" took their students out of failing public schools and put them on track to a post-secondary degree?
I'm not quite sure why you're so upset. Kahlenberg's not criticizing KIPP, he's criticizing those who decide we should learn lessons from KIPP that we maybe shouldn't.
It's possible for KIPP to do fantastic things and, at the same time, not be replicable on a national scale. It's possible that KIPP's success has very little to do with the lack of a union in a number of its buildings (which by the way, we have an easier question to answer than you discuss -- we simply need to know if non-unionized KIPP schools outperform unionized schools). And it's possible that KIPP helps many students succeed while still not proving that neighborhoods don't matter.
I don't think Kahlenberg is suspicious of KIPP, he's suspicious of those who think KIPP is the silver bullet. And that's an important distinction to draw.
Well said, Corey. And where did I hear that small schools and longer days got scrapped somewhere because, well, it didn't work as promised? Seriously, where was that? Very recently...
One very simple way to test the "Nobody else was stepping up back in 2001 to help those students" claim Carey makes is to read Jay Mathew's book, a review of which is the impetus for Carey's post. In the book, do our protagonists run into many teachers and administrators who are, in 2001, stepping up to provide a rigorous education for disadvantaged students? Yes! Do they not only find funding for their work, but find it from funders with a long track record of funding the same kind of methods? Yes! Does administration in multiple cities support their efforts? Yes! Most of their battles with administration is over space, which is genuinely constrained in an urban school district that's already loading students into portables.
Kevin,
Thanks for this post, I couldn't agree with you more. First, it's not unions per se that are "bad for KIPP" but the rules that unions often lobby for, like overly restrictive staffing policies.
Second, though empirical evidence would suggest otherwise, even if KIPP were creaming students, were those kids some how magically doing well in traditional schools? No way.
Even if KIPP only worked for 10 or 5% of all urban youth, you know what? That's 5% that deserved to be helped. They're sure as heck not getting the support they need in their traditional public schools.
Oops. You forgot to disclose in this post any links between your funders and KIPP's. I think there's some overlap there.
How many times have we had the exact same exchange?
There seems to be an easy way out. Debate KIPP (I, for one, sure have no negative information about them, but acknowledge that they are much too small to be replicable. Debate whether it is possible to SUSTAIN the KIPP model or any model that requires such long hours. Debate union work rules.
If 5 to 10% of kids are helped, then celebrate that. But don't think that KIPP has much to say regarding NEIGHBORHOOD schools that function under a different set or realities, and would not be allowed their attrition rate.
But those of us who are doing our absolute best in neighborhood schools shouldn't criticize KIPP. KIPP didn't wipe out jobs in the inner city or destroy the family.
If KIPP supporters also support nCLB, then let's debate with them over that law. We've already got plenty of evidence against NCLB. Limit the debate to evidence, and opponents of NCLB type accountability have a slam dunk.
Supporters of KIPP consistently fail to deal with the fact that they cherry-pick their students by:
1. Enrolling the children of a self-selected, and more engaged parent population, then
2. Interviewing the lucky
"lottery" winners, adding another filter, then
3. Moving kids who can't or won't conform out the door.
Give traditional public schools the ability to do this and you'll see test scores go up, too.
KIPP is appaling on many levels: it's manipulation of young teachers idealism, it's function as a stalking horse for privatization of the public schools, its focus on training and conformity, rather than education.
When it comes to KIPP, you're either a naif, willing or otherwise, or a privatizer, using the rhetoric of civil rights to destroy the public sector and hand it over to the same folks who brought us sub-prime mortgages, credit default swaps and catastrophe.
I'm with you, Mr. Fiorello -- I'd add small class size and good discipline as other ways any group of kids could get higher scores.
The more that public schools become a dumping ground for kids thrown out of KIPP, the worse they will get and the more they will be seen as the problem to people who thrive on dissing public schools (and people who want to make money off of charter schools)
A public school teacher here: The really good teachers I know put in many hours beyond the regular school day and I think that is one major difference in what kind of learning happens in a classroom, but it is not just the time. It is about quality and understanding that we are sharing time with children as they are experiencing childhood. I believe children are all natural learners when provided a safe, interesting venue of real experiences and time to make mistakes and time to talk with each other. Kids are curious, naturally. This doesn't take KIPP, this takes an understanding of how learning happens. This has nothing to do with drilling for tests - which do not equate to achievement, they never have, they are only a portion of the information a teacher uses in the ongoing planning. A small classroom is the first stage for individual attention, valuable experiences with projects, and meaningful conversations. Again, this can be done in public schools - it takes quality experiences planned and managed by quality teachers. It does not mean that kids need to longer school days - hello - has anyone noticed what a kid's attention span is like? Has anyone taken into consideration that people fatigue by the end of the day? Kids are ready to relax and play or do whatever they choose, not what we choose.
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