If you think you know all you need to know about this efficiency scam now coming to a classroom near you, have a look at this. There's lots of valuable info packed into this 9 minute video from Wrench in the Gearsl:
Monday, January 30, 2017
Saturday, January 28, 2017
Lamar Alexander, Another Lame Duck
I don't know why we, over time, don't make every public school a charter school....You could not do it overnight, but you could do it over 20, 25 years." --Lamar Alexander, 2013Even if the former "Education Governor" of Tennessee has not decided on whether or not to run again in 2020 when his current term in the U. S. Senate is up, the people of Tennessee have enough evidence to know if Alexander if fit for another term.
His tyrannical control of the Senate committee considering Billionaire Betsy for Sec. of Ed., and his decision to turn off his phones to his constituents trying to make their voices heard, and his unwavering support for someone whose only education qualification is in killing public schools, has made him a pariah among public school advocates everywhere, especially in Nashville.
Perhaps Alexander's coming out of the Trumpeteer closet will cause some of the teachers who have been fed the Ravitch/Alexander propaganda on how great ESSA is will begin to have a second look at what amounts to a charter stimulus bill, minus federal oversight. Lamar knows Betsy is the perfect Secretary to direct traffic in DC, as corporate trucks back up the Department of Education for their loads of tax money intended for education.
Thursday, January 26, 2017
Betsy and Eric: Privatizing Education and the Military in God's Name
From Democracy Now, which is viewer funded. Please donate.
In this web exclusive, investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill of The Intercept talks in depth about Trump’s team, from unofficial adviser Erik Prince to Defense Secretary James "Mad Dog" Mattis to education secretary nominee Betsy DeVos.
Tuesday, January 24, 2017
Trump Doubles Down On Another "Colossal Untruth"
. . . in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.
It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. — Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, vol. I, ch. XFrom the New York Times:
WASHINGTON — President Trump used his first official meeting with congressional leaders on Monday to falsely claim that millions of unauthorized immigrants had robbed him of a popular vote majority, a return to his obsession with the election’s results even as he seeks support for his legislative agenda.
The claim, which he has made before on Twitter, has been judged untrue by numerous fact-checkers. The new president’s willingness to bring it up at a White House reception in the State Dining Room is an indication that he continues to dwell on the implications of his popular vote loss even after assuming power. . . .
Mondays in the Morning with Sixth Graders
by Susan Ohanian
Our local elementary school regards community service as a high priority, and every Monday at my town Senior Center, which is a social gathering place for activities and information, four sixth graders give up their lunch & recess to volunteer as helpers for the popular lunch we provide once a week. A volunteer parent ferries the children between the school and the Center.
Each group of kids does an eight-week stint, and then a new group moves in. Ostensibly, I’m in charge of the kids. Each group is different, and I supervise this pretty much the way I operated for years in classrooms: I watch carefully, and occasionally I nudge. This particular group of kids invented the "Host" role, wherein one student stands in the reception area and greets people as they walk in the door. They all found this difficult, but persevered. Even most gregarious adults would find such a role a bit intimidating, and since this past Monday was the last day of this group’s operation, I decided to let "host" slide. But “Jim” asked me, "Should I host?" and he performed superbly, going up to Oldsters, asking, "Would you like me to hang up your coat?" Such an invitation rather astounds people--and they always respond with great delight to the courtesy.
All morning, Jim kept asking me, "Do you think I'll be able to do this again?" I heard him telling a cook, "I will try to do this next year."
Each Monday, in the last 15 minutes of their time with us, I ask students to take a dessert and go to tables to “engage” with people eating lunch. The rule is that every child must go to a different table. When the school gave them a prep, the kids were told to “collect stories” from Oldsters.
By now, the kids know which Oldsters are most talkative, tell funny stories. They know that some of the volunteer dishwashers are real cards. In short, they know where conversation will be easiest and most easy and enjoyable. I confess to astonishment when I saw the shyest child go to a table where one very old woman sat all alone. Their conversation soon became very animated and continued until I had to break it up when it was time for them to return to school.
Since this was their last time with us at the Senior Center, I gave each child a thank-you note written on Senior Center stationery. One girl seemed astounded--and she kept thanking me for writing her a real note. She kept saying it: a real note.
It bears shouting: We teach who we are. Every day and in every way, that's what we do.
There’s a coda to this story. I’ve noticed that someone paying for lunch at our Monday gatherings uses money bearing the message "Stamp Money Out of Politics." Jim noticed some of these bills in the basket & asked about them. As it happens, I stamp my money similarly so I opened my wallet and explained the whole deal (It is led by Ben of Ben & Jerry's). Jim was very very disappointed that I don't carry my stamper with me. He really wanted to see it.
Again, we teach who we are, and I just find myself in a good place supervising children at the Senior Center every Monday.
Our local elementary school regards community service as a high priority, and every Monday at my town Senior Center, which is a social gathering place for activities and information, four sixth graders give up their lunch & recess to volunteer as helpers for the popular lunch we provide once a week. A volunteer parent ferries the children between the school and the Center.
Each group of kids does an eight-week stint, and then a new group moves in. Ostensibly, I’m in charge of the kids. Each group is different, and I supervise this pretty much the way I operated for years in classrooms: I watch carefully, and occasionally I nudge. This particular group of kids invented the "Host" role, wherein one student stands in the reception area and greets people as they walk in the door. They all found this difficult, but persevered. Even most gregarious adults would find such a role a bit intimidating, and since this past Monday was the last day of this group’s operation, I decided to let "host" slide. But “Jim” asked me, "Should I host?" and he performed superbly, going up to Oldsters, asking, "Would you like me to hang up your coat?" Such an invitation rather astounds people--and they always respond with great delight to the courtesy.
All morning, Jim kept asking me, "Do you think I'll be able to do this again?" I heard him telling a cook, "I will try to do this next year."
Each Monday, in the last 15 minutes of their time with us, I ask students to take a dessert and go to tables to “engage” with people eating lunch. The rule is that every child must go to a different table. When the school gave them a prep, the kids were told to “collect stories” from Oldsters.
By now, the kids know which Oldsters are most talkative, tell funny stories. They know that some of the volunteer dishwashers are real cards. In short, they know where conversation will be easiest and most easy and enjoyable. I confess to astonishment when I saw the shyest child go to a table where one very old woman sat all alone. Their conversation soon became very animated and continued until I had to break it up when it was time for them to return to school.
Since this was their last time with us at the Senior Center, I gave each child a thank-you note written on Senior Center stationery. One girl seemed astounded--and she kept thanking me for writing her a real note. She kept saying it: a real note.
It bears shouting: We teach who we are. Every day and in every way, that's what we do.
There’s a coda to this story. I’ve noticed that someone paying for lunch at our Monday gatherings uses money bearing the message "Stamp Money Out of Politics." Jim noticed some of these bills in the basket & asked about them. As it happens, I stamp my money similarly so I opened my wallet and explained the whole deal (It is led by Ben of Ben & Jerry's). Jim was very very disappointed that I don't carry my stamper with me. He really wanted to see it.
Again, we teach who we are, and I just find myself in a good place supervising children at the Senior Center every Monday.
How exactly did the Department of Defense end up in my child's classroom?
from Wrench in the Gears
You cannot fully understand what is happening with Future Ready school redesign, 1:1 device programs, embedded assessments, gamification, classroom management apps, and the push for students in neighborhood schools to supplement instruction with online courses until you grasp the role the federal government and the Department of Defense more specifically have played in bringing us to where we are today.
In 1999, just as cloud-based computing was coming onto the scene, President Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 13111 and created the Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative or ADL.
Section 5 of that order set up “The Advisory Committee on Expanding Training Opportunities” to advise the president on what should be done to make technology-based education a reality for the ENTIRE country. The intent was not only to prioritize technology for “lifelong learning,” but also shift the focus to developing human capital and in doing so bind education to the needs of industry and the economy.
Representatives of Cisco Systems and Jobs for the Future co-chaired the committee. Others around the table included the e-learning industry, student loan financiers, educational testing companies, human resource managers, labor market analysts, universities, community colleges, chambers of commerce, city government, and a futurist. George Bush incorporated Clinton’s work into Executive Order 13218, the 21st Century Work Force Initiative, the following year giving the effort a bipartisan stamp of approval. The Obama administration continued this push for online learning in the National Broadband Plan, which contained an entire chapter on digital education, as well as through a variety of 21st century school redesign efforts like ConnectEd, Future Ready Schools, and Digital Promise.
ADL began as an electronic classroom for the National Guard and later expanded to serve the entire Defense Department. In 1998 the government decided to use it for ALL federal employee training. And by leveraging its influence over federal contracting the government successfully pushed for standards that enabled wide adoption of cloud-based instructional technology.
Buffoonery, De Damned
Just back from DC, where the Women's March brought out more than a half million people to assert their determination to maintain a constitutional democracy and the civil and human rights that our predecessors over many generations have fought and died for. If it comes down to it, the millions that gathered around the country this past weekend have declared that they are no less willing to make sure that we continue to protect our Constitution and work toward "a more perfect union." I feel confident that this Republic will not be usurped by a band of neo-fascists led by a narcissistic buffoon who lied and cheated his way to the highest office of the land.
What impressed me most about this demonstration, besides its sheer size and its peaceful and determined exercise of free speech, was the united front that came together, comprised of so many different pressing concerns and peoples: immigrants, black and brown citizens, women both too young to walk and too old to walk and every age in between, the LGBT communities, students, retired people, Christian, Islamic, and Jewish, unions, white, Asian, American Indian, and yes, even old white, privileged white guys like myself who reject Trump's false characterizations and racist lies.
The sociologists call it intersectionality. Whatever you call it, it is the first step in the emergent renewal of our democratic aspirations here and abroad. Trump has, in effect, brought us all together, around the world, which is something Hillary and the neoliberals never could have done.I'm hoping to get Matt Taibbi's new book this week:
Friday, January 20, 2017
Thank Randi and Lily for Their Roles in Electing Donald
Not surprisingly, Weingarten and Garcia have learned nothing about the effects of their dictatorial decisions in 2015 that effectively killed the political enthusiasm among teachers. Weingarten and Garcia , who refused "to endorse Bernie Sanders while grossly exaggerating Hillary’s viability
and worthiness for top office, share responsibility for the Trump
victory."
Randi Weingarten continues to defend their undemocratic and autocratic choice of corrupt elitist, Hillary Clinton:
Randi Weingarten continues to defend their undemocratic and autocratic choice of corrupt elitist, Hillary Clinton:
The AFT and most of the American labor movement endorsed Hillary for President, both in the Democratic primaries and the general election, as the candidate that we believed had the best chance to win the 2016 election and enact a progressive policy agenda. Against a Republican candidate who sorely lacked the experience, judgment and temperament to be President, Hillary Clinton was the most experienced and qualified candidate of the last century, and her election as the first woman President would have been an historic advance for the cause of gender equality. She brought a lifetime of successful work on behalf of progressive causes to the campaign, and under her leadership and in partnership with Bernie Sanders and his campaign, the Democratic Party adopted the most progressive platform of its history in 2016. Clinton had a particular knack for translating ideas and aspirations for change into government policies that make a difference.
Tuesday, January 17, 2017
If you're in Los Angeles this month, three education items to consider
UTLA
3303 Wilshire Blvd Fl 10,
Los Angeles, California 90010
Professors Solórzano and Krashen: Student Empowerment through Culture and Language by Robert D. Skeels on Scribd
Los Angeles student groups to protest racism and other right-wing hate
A busy week will be upon us. As most of you know, CEJ's campaign-turned-movement for the Schools LA Students Deserve has really grown in the last few years. Many of our chapters (we have 14 now!!) are called Students Deserve and our students, parents and teachers often call us Students Deserve now, although we are still Coalition for Educational Justice as well (CEJ). We have chapters as far west as Venice HS, as far east as Garfield HS, in Hollywood, Koreatown, Silver Lake, North Hollywood and South LA. We're seeing our dream of organizing across our huge city come to life!!
A busy week will be upon us. As most of you know, CEJ's campaign-turned-movement for the Schools LA Students Deserve has really grown in the last few years. Many of our chapters (we have 14 now!!) are called Students Deserve and our students, parents and teachers often call us Students Deserve now, although we are still Coalition for Educational Justice as well (CEJ). We have chapters as far west as Venice HS, as far east as Garfield HS, in Hollywood, Koreatown, Silver Lake, North Hollywood and South LA. We're seeing our dream of organizing across our huge city come to life!!
We wanted to share an exciting event that our students have planned on their own with some support from our two new paid Students Deserve organizers, Maricela (full-time student and parent organizer) and Alfredo (part-time, supports the student organizing piece).
We're very excited to announce:
- Weds, January 18th: Students United Against Hate, United for the Communities LA Students Deserve
Event- MacArthur Park 4:30pm
(PDF Flyer attached below) We want a safe space for students by students as we challenge Trump, his politics, his followers, the systems of oppression that have allowed him to exist, and the damage that he wants to do to us.
There will be music, art, spoken word and a panel discussion. Our students are AWESOME. Please come to MacArthur Park on Wednesday after school if you are available!! We know that UTLA Chapter Chairs have Area Meetings that afternoon.
Stay involved. Stay strong. Stay united. We will not be bullied by the incoming president and his right-wing cabinet nominees. WE WILL NOT BACK DOWN!
See you on Wednesday standing strong at MacArthur Park and Thursday standing strong at our schools!!
NPE Action endorses Alva and Petersen for the LAUSD Board of Education
The Network for Public Education Action is proud to endorse two candidates for the Los Angeles Board of Education District 2 primary election—Lisa Alva and Carl Petersen.
Although it is very unusual for us to endorse two for the same position, both are well qualified and are committed to the ideals of NPE Action.
The third candidate in the race, the incumbent Monica Garcia, has clearly demonstrated by her record that she is not aligned with the pro-public education agenda of the Network for Public Education Action.
We therefore urge our supporters to vote for either Lisa or Carl.
Lisa Alva
Lisa has been a classroom teacher, school leader and a voice for teachers for 18 years. She told us that her first priority if elected “would be to redirect funding, resources and personnel to neighborhood public schools so that all children, especially at-risk youth, have enough variety in classes, and small enough classes, to benefit from a complete education that includes electives and vocational-technical training, from pre-K through Adult School. This means beginning and ending every conversation with the question, “How will this benefit students?”
She supports less standardized testing, and smaller class sizes. She also embraces charter school reform and transparency, and a return to democratically controlled schools.
According to Lisa, “Charter schools needlessly drain resources from neighborhood schools, weaken the teaching profession and leave more students behind than they serve.”
Carl Petersen
Carl is the father of five children, all of whom have attended public schools. Two of his daughters are on the autism spectrum so he is especially sensitive to the importance of funding for students with special needs.
Carl’s first priority is to stop Eli Broad’s Great Public Schools Now Initiative “to reach 50 percent charter market share.” According to Carl, “The LAUSD does not currently have the capacity, or the will, to oversee the 250 charters that already operate within the District. Doubling the number of these organizations will create opportunities for financial improprieties like those that have occurred at El Camino Real Charter High School, where public funds were used for expensive dinners, first class airfare and personal expenses. Charters are currently allowed to cherry pick students who are not English learners, do not have special education needs and do not have behavioral issues. The higher costs of serving these students are borne by the LAUSD schools that continue to serve these populations. Increasing the number of charters will shift these costs to an even lower base of students. The bankruptcy of the District is a likely result.”
Carl believes there should be less testing and he is opposed to the Common Core. He believes that there should be more accountability for the Los Angeles Board of Education.
The LAUSD school board election primary will take place on March 7. We ask you to choose between these two fine candidates when you cast your vote.
Thank you,
Carol Burris
Executive Director
You can share these endorsements using the following links:
Monday, January 16, 2017
Understanding KIPP Model Charter Schools: The Media and Research
Marketplace, which has a time slot on most public radio stations, had a piece last week on the replacement of a high-performing community public elementary school in Baltimore by a "no excuses" KIPP school. Most often these community wrecking ball school replacements are justified by low test scores within the targeted school, but the destruction of Langston Hughes Elementary School in Park Heights required other reasons. Langston Hughes was a high performing community anchor, where parents knew their children would be taught by professional and caring teachers in small classes within a safe and supportive environment.
So the "under-utilized" excuse was used by the elite efficiency zealots who control public schools in Baltimore. And even though the community had worked effectively to improve enrollment, the school choice had been made for the parents, children, and parents of Langston Hughes. Their school would be shut down, regardless of their choice to stay open, and buses would be provided to ferry children to a KIPP school a mile away, where 26 children would be taught in a single classroom by a teacher schooled in corporate paternalism and most assuredly lacking in experience, cultural understanding, and empathy. No Excuses.
This "school choice" story, where corporate interests push in with charter replacements and call it "choice," is never told in the media. The sympathetic story cited above is the rare exception to the corporate charter cheerleading that has been the position of the New York Times and Washington Post for years. See Part 17 below from Work Hard, Be Hard . . . .
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This "school choice" story, where corporate interests push in with charter replacements and call it "choice," is never told in the media. The sympathetic story cited above is the rare exception to the corporate charter cheerleading that has been the position of the New York Times and Washington Post for years. See Part 17 below from Work Hard, Be Hard . . . .
The Media and KIPP Research
In
2008, Columbia University professor, Jeffrey Henig (2008) examined seven
previous KIPP studies, and based on his analysis of previous finding, he
offered the following recommendations:
·
Policy makers at all levels of government should
pay attention to KIPP and consider it a possible source of information and
guidance for their decisions.
·
Although KIPP may yield useful information,
policymakers and others should temper their interest in the operation with
wariness and realistic expectations. There are significant unanswered questions
about how expansion might affect outcomes, especially in relation to the
difficulty of sustaining gains dependent upon KIPP’s heavy demands on teachers
and school leaders. Moreover, it is not realistic to think that the KIPP model
is a panacea for distressed systems. It is possible that only a small
proportion of students and families will be able to meet the demands KIPP
imposes on them; even those enthused when they begin the KIPP regimen tend to
leave in high numbers.
·
Policymakers, accordingly, should treat KIPP
schools as potential tools that may contribute to—but not substitute for—systemic
improvement.
·
Policymakers should be aware that KIPP has
prompted some district interest in longer school days, weeks, and years.
However, an extended schedule sometimes brings parental objections as well as
potential taxpayer objections to the additional expense. With no strong
evidence yet linking extended scheduling to KIPP success, policymakers might
best encourage it as a school- level (rather than district-wide) option while
concurrently promoting a combination of experimentation and careful analysis of
consequences.
·
Researchers should help provide better data on
patterns of movement in and between charter schools and traditional public
schools, including information on why students leave and how their mobility
affects student and school-level performance (p. 22).
The
Great Lakes Center for Educational Research and Practice published Henig’s
paper online on Monday, November 10, 2008.
Three days before the paper was published, however, Jay Mathews (2008) dedicated
his education column at The Washington
Post to preempting the Henig paper with his own interpretation, while
taking the opportunity to promote the imminent publication of Mathews’ Work hard, be nice… (Mathews, 2009a).
Mathews included this in his gloss of Henig’s recommendations:
He [Henig] says that ‘policymakers
at all levels of government should pay attention to KIPP and consider it a
possible source of information and guidance for their decisions’ but ‘should
temper their interest in the operation with wariness and realistic expectations.’
He says policymakers ‘should treat KIPP schools as potential tools that may
contribute to -- but not substitute for—systemic improvement.’
That makes sense to me and the KIPP
officials I have been interviewing the past seven years… (Mathews, 2008, para
7-8).
Mathews does not mention
in his column Henig’s other caveats and reservations, and no other news
outlets, including The Washington Post,
carried news stories on the publication of Henig’s research.
The
situation was quite different, however, when Mathematica Policy Research, Inc.
published the final piece of a study commissioned by KIPP and paid for by The
Atlantic Philanthropies in 2008 at a cost of almost $4 million. Not only did Jay Mathews (2013) devote a
lengthy post to a piece, “Biggest study ever says KIPP gains substantial,” but The Washington Post’s Editorial Board (The
Washington Post, 2013) went on the record a few days later to announce “KIPP
doubters proven wrong:”
Officials of KIPP
(Knowledge Is Power Program) have become accustomed to the doubters who think
the success of the fast-growing charter-school network is too good to be true .
. . . A study conducted by the independent firm Mathematica Policy Research, which analyzed data
from 43 KIPP middle schools, found that students in these charter schools
showed significantly greater learning gains in math, reading, science and
social studies than did their peers in traditional public schools. The
cumulative effects three to four years after entering KIPP translated,
researchers found, into middle-schoolers gaining 11 months of additional
learning growth in math and social studies, eight months in reading and
14 months in science. . . .Debunking claims that KIPP’s success is rooted in
“creaming” the best students, researchers found that students entering KIPP
schools are very similar to other students in their neighborhoods: low-achieving,
low-income and nonwhite (para 2, 3).
Indeed, both KIPP (study included 43 of KIPP’s
125 schools) and the neighborhood students in this study are similar in terms
of family income, achievement levels, and ethnicity. In their eagerness to make a case for
supporting KIPP, however, the Editorial Board remains mum about differences
acknowledged by the Mathematica study (Tuttle, et al, 2013) that influence test
outcomes. For instance, the Mathematica
researchers note a characteristic differences that is common in examining
charter school and public school demographics: the 43 KIPP schools enrolled
significantly fewer male students (52% compared to 49%), fewer limited English
proficiency (15% compared to 10%) and fewer special education students (13%
compared to 9% (p. xiv).
Conducted over five years, an earlier part of
the Mathematica study was presented at annual conference of the American
Education Research Association (AERA) in New Orleans in 2011. There, researchers presented findings related
to attrition rates that were not included in the final summary findings. Researchers (Nichols-Barrer, Gill, Gleason,
& Tuttle, 2012) found that when attrition rates were compared between
middle school KIPPsters and public middle school students from the same feeder
elementary schools (rather than comparing to the entire district), KIPP’s
attrition rates were significantly higher than comparison schools for 5th
grade (16% compared to 11%), not significantly different for 6th
grade, and significantly lower at KIPP than comparison schools for 7th
grade (9% compared to 13%).
Researchers found, too, that while KIPP
maintained stable populations in grades 7 and 8, the public comparison schools
were receiving large numbers of new students in grades 7 and 8. The chart below (see Figure 17.1) was part of
the 2011 AERA presentation and was not included in Mathematica’s final
report.
In effect, KIPP schools replace, or “backfill,”
fewer students in grades 6, 7, and 8 than the surrounding public schools, and
the late arrivals that KIPP schools generally have scores that are above the
mean for the district (Nichols-Barrer, Gill, Gleason, & Tuttle, 2012), whereas
the late arrivals at the public schools have scores below the mean:
KIPP schools differ from
district comparison group middle schools in how late arrivals compare with
on-time enrollees. Students who enroll late at KIPP tend to be higher achieving
than those who enroll on time, as measured by their grade 4 test scores,
whereas the reverse is true at district comparison group schools (see Table
III.2). At KIPP schools, on average, late arrivals scored 0.16 and 0.15
standard deviations above the mean for the local district in math and reading,
respectively, at baseline (or the 56th percentile). . . . Conversely, late
arrivals at district schools had significantly lower average baseline test
scores than on-time enrollees. In district comparison schools, late arrivals
scored 0.29 standard deviations below the mean in both subjects (or the 39th
percentile); on-time entrants scored 0.03 and 0.01 above the mean in math and
reading, respectively (the 51st and the 50th percentile). All of these
differences are statistically significant (p. 15).
In short, late arrivals at KIPP are
significantly stronger academically than the average district students who
arrive late, while the larger influx of late arrivals to public comparison
schools in grades 7 and 8 are significantly weaker than the district mean. The same paper reported that KIPP’s late
arrivals were significantly less likely to be black males or in special
education, and they were more likely to make the KIPP schools less
disadvantaged over time. The opposite
was found to be the case for the late arrivals at district comparison group
schools. All of these important facts
escaped the attention of the Washington Post’s Editorial Board and its
principal education writer, Jay Mathews.
While
the Mathematica study (Tuttle, Gill, Gleason, Knechtel, Nichols-Barrer, &
Resch, 2013) found significant test score increases among KIPP students (pp.
31-40), questions remain as to how much better KIPP school test scores would be
without the known advantages like 50-60 percent more time in school, test
preparation focus, fewer and higher-achieving replacement students, fewer black
male students, higher attrition among low performers and problem students,
fewer special education and ELL students, and large funding advantages from
both public and private sources.
To its
credit, The New York Times (Dillon, 2011, March 31) reported in 2011 that
Western Michigan University researchers found
. . . the KIPP network received $12,731 in taxpayer money per
student, compared with $11,960 at the average traditional public school and
$9,579, on average, at charter schools nationwide.
In addition, KIPP generated $5,760
per student from private donors, the study said, based on a review of KIPP’s
nonprofit filings with the Internal Revenue
Service (para 8-9).
Another study (Baker, Libby, & Wiley, 2012) also found large
budgeting advantages at KIPP, as well as at two other KIPP-inspired charter
chains, Achievement First and Uncommon Schools:
We find that in New York City, KIPP, Achievement First and
Uncommon Schools charter schools spend substantially more ($2,000 to $4,300 per
pupil) than similar district schools. Given that the average spending per pupil
was around $12,000 to $14,000 citywide, a nearly $4,000 difference in spending
amounts to an increase of some 30%. In Ohio, charters across the board spend
less than district schools in the same city. And in Texas, some charter chains such as KIPP spend
substantially more per pupil than district schools in the same city and serving
similar populations, around 30 to 50% more in some cities (and at the middle
school level) based on state reported current expenditures, and 50 to 100%
more based on IRS filings. Even in New York where we have the highest
degree of confidence in the match between our IRS data and Annual Financial
Report Data, we remain unconvinced that we are accounting fully for all charter
school expenditures (pp. i-ii).
Mathematica researchers acknowledged, too, the
potential positive influence on KIPP scores that results from built-in parental
self-selection bias, even though Mathematica (Nichols-Barrar, Gill, Gleason,
& Tuttle, 2014) was not asked to investigate this important aspect:
A potentially important
limitation of this study is that there could still be unmeasured differences
between the students attracted to KIPP and those enrolling in other schools. We
analyze the peer environment at KIPP as measured by demographic characteristics
and prior achievement, but we do not have direct measures of parent
characteristics, prior motivation, or student behavior (para 31).
Finally, the enthused Editorial Board
of The Washington Post did not
mention the following significant findings from the Mathematica study (Tuttle,
Gill, Gleason, Knechtel, Nichols-Barrer, & Resch, 2013) that raise serious
questions related to KIPP’s inability to increase student “good behaviors,” as
well as KIPP’s negative effects on the behavior of children in KIPP’s total
compliance environments where “grit” and zest are valued over honesty and
compassion:
KIPP has no statistically significant effect on
several measures of student behavior, including self-reported illegal
activities, an index of good behavior, and parent reports of behavior problems.
However, KIPP has a negative estimated effect on a student-reported measure of
undesirable behavior, with KIPP students more likely to report behaviors such
as losing their temper, arguing or lying to their parents, or having conflicts
with their teachers (p. 68).
References
Alter, J. (2008, July 11). Jonathan Alter on Obama and education. Newsweek. Retrieved from
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