Below is Part 14 from my book, Work Hard, Be Hard: Journeys through "Excuses" Teaching.
Earlier parts can be found at this blog by searching on the title of the blog entry, followed by the part number.
Chapter 14
A Model Whose Time Has Past
Since
its beginning in 1994, the KIPP Model has focused on getting economically
disadvantaged students to and through college.
As the first KIPP schools were grades 5-8, the long-term goal of college
makes some sense as a motivator, even though higher education means high school
for most fifth graders, KIPP or no KIPP.
Most often college remains a distant dream for children whose poverty
levels have excluded them and their families from that experience in the past.
With
KIPP now expanding its reach into early elementary grades and even Pre-K, the
focus on college may make for attractive classroom posters, but the value of
college can hardly be viewed as a realistic motivator for children in these
early grades. In fact, KIPP’s insistence
of the singular goal of attaining a college education in some “remote future”
(Dewey, 1897) serves to distract from the integration of young children’s
experiences or the healthy development of empathetic understanding. Working to make children’s schooling more in
tune requirements for working and playing together may have a greater moral
force than any of the “performance character” regimen designed by “positive”
psychologists in search of interventions to alter children’s neural landscapes
to fit the compliance requirements of the KIPP Model.
The
festooning of KIPP Model school hallways with university pennants and the
labeling of classrooms with college names may serve to motivate adults in the
school, but elementary age children are less likely to be affected by these
memorabilia, as Dewey (1897) astutely noted over a century ago:
. . .much of present education. . . conceives
the school as a place where certain information is to be given, where certain
lessons are to be learned, or where certain habits are to be formed. The value
of these is conceived as lying largely in the remote future; the child must do
these things for the sake of something else he is to do; they are mere
preparation. As a result they do not become a part of the life experience of
the child and so are not truly educative (Article II, para 10).
Like
many of Dewey’s insights, the ones related to limits of children’s abilities to
conceive a distant goal have been borne out by research (Scott & Steinberg,
2008; Eccles, 1999). Adolescents’
capacity in this regard is based on developmental schedules and environmental
realities, rather than adult insistence.
The total failure of drug education programs like DARE (Lyman et al,
1999) and the common failure of sexual abstinence programs are not due to the
lack of commitment of the programs’ instructors, but to the failure to
acknowledge the limited capacity among children and adolescents to reflect on
and base present conduct on potential future outcomes.
In
considering the effects of KIPP’s remonstrations on the 80 percent of children
who begin fifth grade at KIPP and never finish college, we must question the
rigidity of the non-negotiable goal of college graduation for every
KIPPster. When combined with KIPP’s
behavioral strategies aimed to have students internalize all responsibility for
shortcomings or failure to attain KIPP’s adult goals, whether now or in the
future, the unrealistic college goals place enormous stress on already-stressed
KIPP children. For the 8 out of 10 KIPP
children who begin 5th grade at KIPP and never graduate from
college, we can imagine the debilitating effects, when many KIPPsters come to
weigh their success or failure in life on the basis of a life outcome chosen
for them by KIPP.
A
dramatic example of the importance of KIPP’s college graduation indoctrination
was provided during the 2014 KIPP Summit in Houston (KIPP Foundation, 2015e)
when an aspiring teacher and former KIPPster, Juanita Davis, recounted a
violent episode in her life when she thought she was going to be killed by the
father of her child: “If you ever wonder
what will go through your head before you think you’re about to leave this
earth—it’s an experience I hope no one has to have, but I remember staring down
the barrel of that gun, experiencing the most traumatic event of my life—and
the only thing I could think of was that I never earned a college degree.”
Considering
the sad fact that a disproportionate number of non-privileged students who
attend college end up, if they graduate, with bottom-tier college degrees from
online or for-profit colleges, we may ask who is being advantaged by insisting
on college for those who must borrow heavily to obtain degrees that may or may
not be worth the years of indebtedness and sacrifice that former students
cannot escape. In a study by Education Trust (Lynch, Engle, & Cruz, 2011),
the authors examined 1,200 colleges with comparable data to determine,
1. how
many colleges enroll a proportion of low-income students that is at least as
high as the national average.
2. how
many colleges ask these students to pay a portion of their family income no
greater than what the average middle-income student pays for a bachelor’s
degree.
3. how
many colleges offer all students at least a 1-in-2 chance at graduation (p. 3).
Researchers found five
colleges and universities of the 1,200 that met the three criteria.
Of more concern, still, are student experiences with for-profit
colleges of questionable academic reputation and documented histories of
preying on the poor and vulnerable (Golden, 2010; U. S. Government Accounting
Office, 2010). These “diploma mills”
enroll a larger percentage of low-income students like KIPPsters than any other
type of college, whether private or public.
In 2012, 46 percent of students enrolled at for-profit colleges were from
families making less than $30,000 per year, whereas the percentage of
low-income students at private non-profit and public four-year colleges was
18.1 percent and 21.9 percent, respectively (Choi, 2014).
KIPP students who do manage to graduate from legitimate
institutions with large debt burdens must face stiff competition in tighter job
markets for most college majors. Since
2010, in fact, the demand for non-college jobs outpaced jobs requiring college
degrees. In 2012, over one million
Americans with four-year college degrees who were heads of household earned
less than $25,000 per year (Eichelberger, 2014).
We may
wonder if the facts will catch up with the non-negotiable No Excuses ideology,
or if the KIPP Foundation and its philanthropic supporters will remain
undeterred by facts as they attempt to compel teachers and students to
superhuman feats in order to further burnish the KIPP brand and the other No
Excuses brand names. Will support for
KIPP’s lucrative colonization of urban schools be re-directed by the knowledge
that “the number of [U. S.] households with children living on less than $2 a
day per person has grown 160
percent since 1996, to 1.65 million families in 2011” (Eichelberger,
2014).
Or
would such facts, if known, simply underscore for KIPP’s corporate missionaries
and their backers the vital need for their mission? Will the unwavering insistence on the
college-degree solution for segregated KIPP students be influenced by data that
show a college degree “does not significantly reduce racial disparity” (Cohen,
2014), or that the demand for college jobs is flat as the demand for
non-college jobs is on the increase (see Figure 14.1)? Will the decided disadvantage of black
college graduates in the job market influence the KIPP modelers’ implacable
insistence that working hard and being nice is enough to counter the racism and
classism that KIPPsters will surely face if they are fortunate enough to earn
degrees?
In
2015, Nobel Prize winning economist, Paul Krugman (2015a) provided the following
chart (Figure 14.2), which shows shrinking earnings beginning in 2000 for the shrinking
numbers of college jobs. Krugman (2015b)
casts doubt on the common claim by KIPP supporters that “achievement gaps” are
fueling a “skills gap,” which must be addressed by improving education so that
more raw knowledge more widely dispersed can be transformed into usable power
that will solve the problem of inequality.
Krugman
(2015b) suggests, instead, that believing, or pretending to believe, that
inequality as simply an education problem is an “evasion” that represents a
“deeply unserious fantasy” (para 13): “As for wages and salaries, never
mind college degrees — all the big gains are going to a tiny group of
individuals holding strategic positions in corporate suites or astride the
crossroads of finance. Rising inequality isn’t about who has the knowledge;
it’s about who has the power” (para 11).
In
light of shifting economic and workforce trends, we must question the choice
among policy makers who insist that disadvantaged children grow up attending
total compliance “choice” schools where their future has been chosen for them. It would seem to make more sense to develop
school programs and learning conditions that acknowledge that we cannot
“foretell definitely just what civilization will be twenty years from now,” as
John Dewey (1897) pointed out back before automobiles replaced horse-drawn
carriages.
No
doubt it would be more practical, humane, and rewarding for both children and
society, alike, to have schools that prepare children for uncertain futures by
putting them in “complete possession” of all their intellectual, moral, and
emotional powers and skills, rather than emphasizing the refinement of a new
batch of psychological gimmicks aimed to make poverty more palatable to the
poor while offering a fantasy version of social justice.
Clearly
related to KIPP’s assumptions about children’s capacity to be motivated by
distant goals beyond their immediate or intermediate horizons are the
ill-advised total compliance policies and practices that further inhibit
possibilities for healthy development among disadvantaged children and
adolescents. We know, for instance,
that children from high poverty environments often exhibit attachment anxiety
more so than children in socioeconomically sound environments, and we also know
that the less securely-attached children are least able to tolerate frustrating
situations or to be able to delay gratification.
Moore
(2006) found that “a secure attachment promotes a sense of trust in the future
as well as a sense of trust in others” (p. 200). The constant churn created by teacher attrition
and replacements in KIPP model schools only adds to the impermanence and
attachment anxiety that children already feel.
Child stress is exacerbated and self-blaming displaces chances for
self-efficacy when “zero tolerance” punishment schedules, “straightjacket”
behavioral expectations, and demands for more self-control and grit are imposed
by temporary teachers whose educational and cultural histories are entirely
detached from urban realities.
The
KIPP Model schools defy or remain unaware of these evidence-based realities,
and the No Excuses formulae exacerbate the problems that the KIPP Model
purports to solve. Emotional support
cannot occur where teachers are allowed and encouraged to yell and scream at
children or to be “militant” in their demeanor.
Student autonomy cannot survive where children are harshly punished for
even minor infractions of rules and forced to remain silent, on-guard, and
docile. Students cannot trust or form
relationships with important adults where the adults are being replaced every
year or two. Without the active help
from those who are financially able, yet unwilling, to help end poverty, demanding more from
children who have the least will never make them the most they might be.
It is
doubtful that entrenched reformers with paternalistic agendas will be re-routed
by either logic or compassion from their long-standing mission. As long as
generous public funding continues to support corporate reform school endeavors
and/or as long as the same reformulated reforms result in the initiation of new
ideologues convinced that public problems are best addressed by “market based”
solutions, we will see a continuing push for more No Excuses urban chain gangs
that pursue their inhumane and miseducative ends by “any means necessary.”
What we
can expect from the new (and old) paternalists is a renewed crusade, in fact, to
alter the children of the poor in ways that will encourage further shrinkage of
our social and ethical infrastructures and the growth of new, more lucrative revenue
streams for publicly-funded and privately-operated education.
References
Choi, L. (2014,
January 10). For-profit colleges and the student debt crisis. San Francisco: Federal Bank of San
Francisco. Retrieved from
http://www.frbsf.org/community-development/blog/for-profit-colleges-and-the-student-debt-crisis/
Cohen,
P. (2014, December 24). For recent black college graduates, a tougher
road to employment. The New York Times.
Retrieved from
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/25/business/for-recent-black-college-graduates-a-tougher-road-to-employment.html?_r=0
Dewey,
J. (1897). My pedagogic creed. New
York: E. L. Kellogg & Co. Retrieved
from https://archive.org/details/mypedagogiccree00dewegoogw
Eccles,
J. (1999, Fall). The development of children ages 6 to 14. Future
Child, 9 (2), 30-44.
Eichelberger, E.
(2014, March/April). 10 poverty
myths busted. Mother Jones. Retrieved from
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/03/10-poverty-myths-busted
Golden,
D. (2010, April 29). Homeless high school dropouts lured by
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-04-30/homeless-dropouts-from-high-school-lured-by-for-profit-colleges-with-cash.html
Krugman,
P. (2015a). Rip van skillsgap. The New
York Times. Retrieved from
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/rip-van-skillsgap/?_r=0
Krugman,
P. (2015b). Knowledge isn’t power. The New
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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/23/opinion/paul-krugman-knowledge-isnt-power.html
Lynch, M., Engle, J., & Cruz, J. (2011).
Priced out: How the wrong
financial-aid policies hurt low-income students. Washington, DC: Education Trust. Retrieved from
http://www.edtrust.org/sites/edtrust.org/files/PricedOutFINAL.pdf
Moore, C.
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Scott,
E., & Steinberg, L. (2008,
Fall). Adolescent development and the
regulation of youth crime. Future Child, 18 (2), 15-33.
U. S.
Government Accounting Office. (2010,
August 4). For-profit colleges: Undercover testing finds colleges encouraged fraud
and engaged in deceptive and questionable practices. Washington, DC: U. S. Government
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