KIPP Baltimore Teachers Get 2.5 Percent Raise

What remains of that corporate rag the Baltimore Sun reported this week that the KIPP teachers in Baltimore will now get 20.5% added to their salaries instead of the 18% previously paid them, even though the Baltimore KIPP teachers' 9.5 hour days (not counting the 2 hours of homework duty by phone each night) requires them to put in 33% more time at school than other Baltimore teachers. In addition to the 2.5% increase, KIPP, Inc. will now actually contribute to teacher retirement funds, and teachers will get $300 per year for classroom school supplies. Here's the way the Sun reported it:

KIPP Ujima Village Academy, the middle school, complied, but at a cost to the program that had been working successfully with low-income students in its Northwest Baltimore neighborhood, according to Jason Botel, executive director of KIPP Baltimore.

All of this interference in KIPP's "autonomy" is anathema to the Billionaire Boys Club, which is behind the national effort to showcase these entirely unscalable test prep chain gangs as the model to emulate in urban schools. After all, it is KIPP's disposable teachers and disposable students (those who question the Total Compliance Model) that makes these hothouses of inhumane, anti-union innovation so attractive to the Waltons, the Fishers, the Gatess, and the Broads. And you can bet that they will be using some of their billions not to pay KIPP teachers a livable wage but to change the charter law in Maryland to make sure that the cheap charter solutions for the poor are not subject to the same requirements in terms of pay and benefits as the public schools. According to CEO Jason Botel,

KIPP Ujima Village Academy, the middle school, complied, but at a cost to the program that had been working successfully with low-income students in its Northwest Baltimore neighborhood, according to Jason Botel, executive director of KIPP Baltimore.

In the meantime, here is a partial list of KIPP's national partners. What could be more impressive, and what an expensive marketing machine they have built. So expensive that there appears be none left to pay their teachers the going rate:

60,000,000 and above:

Doris & Donald Fisher Fund

25,000,000-39,999,999:

The Walton Family Foundation, Inc.

10,000,000-24,999,999:

The Atlantic Philanthropies

The Broad Foundations

5,000,000-9,999,999:

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation