There are so many things wrong with the concept of test prep over a holiday break, I don't know where to start. First, let's burn out the kids by the time they're in 8th grade. I see it now- the kids are so desensitized to testing, it means little or nothing to them (and I'm fortunate- I work in a good area, where most of the kids will go on to college- to see these kids peaking so soon in their educational process is disheartening to say the least). We're also classifying the school system as a babysitting service- let's face it, we've been an "essential service" since the Giuliani days, when schools needed to stay open on snow emergency days to serve the working parents. What's wrong with kids having some down time? Last time I checked, we had it as kids, and most of the people I know turned out ok.
Of course, if teachers didn't volunteer to participate in these programs, they couldn't take place. While I know that per session programs always took place (I frequently took part in them), in the current environment, I wouldn't give the DOE another second of my time at that miserable $40/hour rate. It is time that teachers stopped showing a willingness to give up their vacation time for a few bucks.
Rant over. A happy and healthy new year to you all!
I seem to remember from my reading of Dickens that Scrooge spent the Christmas vacation at school working while he was a child instead of returning home to his family to celebrate the holiday. And look how he turned out - he was a successful businessman! Owned the very successful Marley & Scrooge LP, I believe.
One of the elements never brought up is the fact that Catholic Schools, which the News and Post constantly report out perform PSs, have a shorter day and school year. Having taught 13 years in the Catholic system I can tell you that we worked a shorter year, had a plethora of half days, and taught a full period of religion per day, along with art music and gym, and enjoyed our vacation a week earlier thn PSs.
Whether you accept the idea that Catholic schools outperform public, they certainly do no worse. How is this explained by the advocates of the 255 day 10 hour a day school year?
One other note. My daughter spent four years becoming a clasically educated young woman at Kellenberg HS in Uniondale. One of the curious rules at this Marianist school was that no textbooks, notebooks, homework et.al. were allowed at lunch.Additionaly their timeste exams were always scheduled prior to vacations so no school work intruded on their down time. Interesting and effective.
note in above post, timeste should read trimester. Typing on a laptop key board takes geting used to
Thanks for the joyous Christmas reminder. I'm reading Linda Pearlstein's Tested, and I had just about put it out of my mind. I had stopped myself from condemning the testing she described as child abuse, because she had quoted Reid Lyon who said that we (opponents of his scripted approach) are committing child abuse, and I don't want to be swapping insults. Then I asked why the teachers did not resign or engage in some sort of resistance. But I'm sorta at peace with that also. After all, if you want to stay in this profession you learn to nods your head and keep your mouth closed when the central office
announces, "Tommorrow the sun will rise in the west. It will be a research-based improvement FOR THE KIDS. It will only happened though if you have HIGH EXPECTATIONS."
What comes next? Do we have basketabll coaches file paperwork in advance scheduling when they will call timeouts? Do we prohibit them from calling timeout if the rationale is fatigue or an emotional factor?
It's clear that you've either never visited a KIPP school, or if you did, you went in with such a closed mind that you refused to believe what you were seeing. The fact of the matter is that KIPP teachers spend all those extra hours that they work discussing how to help their kids become better critical thinkers, how to make classes fun, and, yes, how to give their students the perseverance to succeed in high school and college.
I know this because I am a KIPP teacher. Contrary to your assumptions, we do not spend much time talking or thinking about test scores. Our mission is getting our students through college, NOT performing well on the standardized tests. Yes, we sometimes feel pressure from the outside world to do well on state exams, but our principal has made it clear that test scores are not the holy grail. We believe that if we teach well and invest our kids in their own success (and please don't project on me your assumptions about how we define success: for us, success is the kid who grows up and becomes a teacher, the kid who has cognitive impairment but overcomes it to become a self-sustaining auto-mechanic who is a good father or a good wife, or even the kid who grows up to become a wealthy investment banker - but that is only success if s/he uses that wealth to better the world), our kids will do well enough on the standardized exams. We teachers have been instructed never to sacrifice our kids' genuine well-being and development as good people for the betterment of their test scores.
I know it's hard to believe that KIPP is what it says. We really do work really hard, and to hear you and your cronies denigrate what we do by describing the opposite of what we do and then calling it "KIPP", well, that's hard to take. There are schools out there that take shortcuts to "success" by defining it extremely narrowly, I'm certain, but that is not us. What's sad is that the vast majority of us in KIPP believe in the same principles that you do - take out the word "KIPP" and I agree with much of what you say - but you are just utterly misinformed as to what KIPP is and what we are not.
I'm a homeschooling mom but recently started reading teacher blogs and it was initially a bit of a shock to realize that those who are intimately involved in the school system very often see exactly the same faults as those of us who've chosen leave it.
As with xkaydet65 my experience with homeschooling my kids is that great results can be achieved without grinding kids down to nothing. A few hours a day is generally all the formal work we do. I hope those in charge start to really take a look at those of us who are forging alternate models that work well. Schools may not be able to adopt the methods of homeschoolers or Catholic schools wholesale but they may start questioning the blinders they seem to wear. I'm not optimistic though. My goal for my kids is to create curious, self-disciplined learners. Not the same goal as the billionaire businessmen/multi-national corporation CEO's/hedge fund managers obviously.
My son is a 7th grader at a local intermediate school. He has a young male social studies teacher who must be aspiring to be an administrator. This teacher is demonstrating his ability to be administration by dumping a project that appears to be not on a 7th grade level but perhaps 9th on my kid and others who have him. This project, we are estimating, has already taken 3 days during this vacation, and will probably end up taking between 16 and 20 hours to complete. What exactly was this teacher thinking? What if we went away? My kid would be screwed!! This "work ethic" is spinning out of control, and has nothing to do with education, intellect or creativity. It is deadly.
Thanks so much for this post, though it was sad to me. I value this vacation a great deal; I feel like, when I see the kids on Wednesday, I'll actually be happy to see them, and have some new ideas for them.
We need vacations--teachers, students, and every average Joe out there. No good work gets done in an environment that is joyless and grinding. Time off rejuvenates and, if one actually likes his or her job, generates some fresh ideas for how to do the job better.
I have a somewhat light schedule on Fridays, so in my 8th grade ELA/SS classroom, Fridays are given over to independent reading and journaling (for ELA) and, in 2008, will be "Presidential Fridays," where we track, analyze, and discuss the results of the caucuses and primary elections. I'm excited about it and I think the kids are too, and I'm glad that our school will (I think) actually let me do this. And if you really want to, you can actually gear that kind of thing to the SS test--reading charts and graphs, interpreting political cartoons and speeches, etc.
But would I have had the energy to start designing a new thread in the curriculum like that if I'd been teaching a Winter Test Prep Academy? I doubt it. The first 4 months of this school year were exhausting, and without this break, I could truly see myself losing it and quitting in January.
All that testing isn't learning.
I'm glad I'm no longer a student.
I'm glad my kids are finished with it, and I'm terrified of the "education" which awaits my grandchildren.
Yes, I'm in Israel, and we frequently get all of America's failed methods.
KIPP/anon
Perhaps I'm just being too picky, but one thing inyour post annoyed me no end. The saving the profession of auto mechanic for the cognitively impaired student. Are you trying to say that blue collar jobs should be left to the learning disabled while the rest of us march into the better paying profesions(of course only if we are socially concerned)?
BTW how many of your students have you followed into the world of work? It seems to me that KIPP has not been around long enough(in NYC at any rate) to have many if any students progress into real life. When you have a few who do,let me know and we can compare notes. You'll discover, unfortunately, that unpleasant realities will intrude on your idealistic hopes and dreams for your kids. Don't lose that though. It's one of the things that can keep you going when you're in a grievance procedure with your principal. Oh, sorry. You guys don't have grievance procedures do you? How do you handle those times when the administration asks just a bit more than you can give?
No, of course that is NOT what I'm saying (about the auto mechanic). Sorry for being unclear. What I am saying is that we don't assume that every single kid will be able to make it to college - the vast majority will, but not all of them. For those who don't (whether due to cognitive impairment or other cause), we hope that they become self-sustaining adults who are good to other people.
For those who CAN make it to college, our hope is that they do so, in order to afford them as many opportunities as possible. If one of our students wants to be an auto mechanic, our hope would be that he or she gets a college degree first, so that if s/he ever decides to change careers and be a teacher, s/he will be able to do so without having to go back to school - which as we all know, gets more and more difficult and unlikely the older we get. So yes, I imagine we'll have some kids who go to college and work in blue collar industries, and as long as they are good fathers/mothers/husbands/wives/community members/etc., we'll be happy.
As to the grievance stuff... I disagree with my principal all the time. Luckily, what happens in KIPP is that the principals involve the teachers in the decision-making - ours is a school OF the teachers, BY the teachers, and FOR the kids. Yes, the hours are long and that can be difficult, but it is my decision to stay or to teach in another school, and I would NEVER go back to the traditional public schools, where I didn't have any say in how the school ran and I didn't trust that my students would continue to be taught by effective and caring teachers. The KIPP experience, for me, has represented an utter paradigm shift, and it thus is not helpful to consider it in the same framework that you consider the district schools.
As for the unrealistic nature of my hopes, well, the KIPP schools that have been around for more than 10 years have the results to back up my idealism. Yes, they have alumni who are in the "real world", some who got college degrees and some who went directly into the working world. I'm sure those schools are not satisfied with the number who are doing well (by whichever definition of success to which you subscribe), but by any reasonable or comparative measure, the KIPP alums are succeeding at extremely high rates.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but to my knowledge the KIPP locations in NYC are in economically depressed areas. The parents who choose a KIPP school more likely than not believe that it is their ONLY choice to get their children a decent education in a safe environment (I'm no Pollyanna- I know there are NYC public schools who don't properly serve every child). Is it the KIPP way that's making these children successful, or the fact that they have involved, caring parents who made a choice about their children's education? Sorry, but long hours, no breaks, Saturday school and summer school don't seem to me the way to go. Everybody needs to recharge their batteries every now and then- including kids.
Well, KIPP kids are in school for maybe 210 days a year - more than the 180 in the district but certainly there are many days off - 155 by my count. Plus, as I said, we consider it our responsibility to try to make school fun, and in my experience, it's more tolerable to sit in engaging classes for 9 hours than boring classes for 6. Still, it IS challenging for our students, and they rise to the challenge but there certainly are sacrifices on everyone's part.
As for the self-selection you talk about, having taught in the district schools and at a KIPP school, I can tell you the populations are pretty similar. We go to lengths in student recruitment to ensure that we get a representative sample of the district's students, and the data shows that our kids score about the same coming into our school as the district average - sometimes lower. So if we are getting more engaged parents, that engagement hasn't given their kids any advantages before getting to us.
It's my experience that all parents care about their kids, and given the option of enrolling their kids in a good school, or spending the same amount of effort getting their kids into a district school, they'll pick KIPP every time. Given our outreach efforts, a parent need not be an avid newspaper-reader to hear about our enrollment dates; in fact, the best way to hear about our lottery is to be home when we come knocking on your door.
Anon1
I am glad that you are so excited to be working at KIPP. I think KIPP offers many things that the DOE could learn and use. But even a KIPP employee must admit that KIPP is not the ideal and the answer for every parent -- as you assert.
Do you care to speak about KIPP's offerings for children with learning disabilities -- both mild and severe? Do mind speaking about KIPP's offerings for children who need ESL services -- both for recent immigrants and those who have been in this country longer?
Please do not speak in generalities, speak in specifics. What does KIPP do for these kids? Does KIPP have many of these kids? If not, why not?
These questions are challenging, but we need some perspective when we discuss KIPP. Again be specific. What does instruction at KIPP look like for students who have disabilities and who don't understand English?
Maybe the best blog post I've read this year.
Thanks for your eloquently-written insights. I quoted you on my own entry about this ridiculous situation.
Great post. It's amazing that people work both kids and teachers like that and so few people can figure out why. You're absolutely right.
EZ,
Yes, we serve special education students, and our percentage is approximately the same as our district. We have both mild and severe cases, and we offer them everything from 1-on-1 aides to small-class pull-out services to inclusion teachers working with groups. Every student who needs help gets tutoring, not just the special ed kids, but the classified kids tend to get more, and we abide their IEPs just like the district schools do (although I should add that there's much more teacher collaboration at KIPP than there was at my former school - so special education teachers are in much better communication with the classroom teachers than tends to be the case in big urban middle schools).
As for ESL services, the same applies - our ESL teachers offer the same sort of services you'd expect ESL kids to get in district schools. Our school doesn't have many such kids, but there are some KIPP schools with enormous populations of ESL kids. I don't know much about ESL so I can't give better specifics than that, but suffice it to say that we do serve ESL kids and our general operating mindset is that we're going to do the best we can for each of our students, no matter how they are classified. And just like reading, math, science, special education, etc., KIPP ESL teachers around the nation get together at KIPP conferences to share best practices and generally improve their teaching. Additionally, KIPP ELA teachers share best practices in serving ESL students. So I guess I'm saying that my impression is that KIPP handles ESL like it handles anything else - rigorously trying to apply and improve upon best practices both within the KIPP network and without.
Can you ask a student to leave if they continually misbehave at Kipp?
What do you do when a student decides not to show up at a KIPP school for a month or two?
I have the same two questions for the Catholic School teacher.
Comparing these places where parents have to apply to enroll their child to the regular public schools is an apples to oranges comparison that doesn't hold up.
Actually, it's harder to apply for enrollment in the district schools in my city than it is to apply for enrollment at KIPP, so that argument isn't accurate.
I can't speak for other KIPP schools, but ours has never asked a kid to leave. I don't know if we are allowed to or not, but we don't. If a kid doesn't show up for an extended period of time, we go get them. This is exceedingly rare, though, because (unlike the district school I used to work in) our secretary calls the guardian of every single kid who is absent. Occasionally, there will be a kid who misses a lot of school, despite these efforts, and we'll go to their house, meet with their guardian, etc. - and I'm sure we've had to called child protective services as well.
Again, if the self-selection factor you allude to is so profound and we are getting parents who are so much more involved than the district schools do, then why do our kids enter our school at similar or lower levels than the kids in the neighborhood schools? The fact is, this self-selection nonsense is something that may be true in some charter schools, but isn't true in all of them, and you have no evidence that it is true. You SUPPOSE that we have apples to the district's oranges, but you don't know. I do know. I've taught kids in the district and at KIPP. I've interacted with their parents. I've seen where they are when they enter our school. They're the same kids. I never believed it before coming to KIPP, either, but they are. Insisting otherwise may make you feel better about the district's failure, but that doesn't make it true.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/article...26.html?
qs=KIPP
As the high-profile Knowledge Is Power Program network of schools continues to expand, KIPP leaders are taking a close look at student attrition amid arguments from critics that the loss of students at some of those public schools of choice is alarmingly high.
Attrition rates at a few KIPP schools in the San Francisco Bay Area, in particular, have recently drawn scrutiny. Fewer than half the 5th graders who entered three new middle schools in fall 2003 are still enrolled this academic year, when they would generally be finishing 8th grade, according to a KIPP analysis. At one of the schools, in Oakland, Calif., only about a quarter of the students from that 5th grade class have remained.
National attrition data on the San Francisco-based network of 52 mostly charter middle schools are unavailable. But information the network provided on a handful of other schools, as well as a review of national enrollment data by Education Week, suggests that levels of student mobility vary widely across KIPP campuses.
In certain KIPP schools, in fact, attrition appears very low.
Still, some observers are raising concerns, especially given the accolades KIPP has attracted. For one, if most of the exiting students are low-performing, they say, the average test scores could be higher than they would be otherwise, and not accurately reflect the schools’ actual success.
“To some advocates, KIPP is the savior of public education,” said Alex Molnar, who heads the Education Policy Studies Center at Arizona State University, in Tempe. “If a large number [of students] don’t stay, how can we say this is a model for public education?” . . . .
I've spent the last 22 years teaching for the NYC schools and my first 13 in Catholic schools, but if you want to call me "the CATHOLIC SCHOOL TEACHER" that's OK, I'll take it aa a compliment. As to your question, in three different schools, an elem school in Bushwick Brooklyn, an elem school on Tremont avenue in the Bronx, and a high school in Astoria Queens I personally saw two kids asked to leave.
How did we deal with the kids who acted up We worked hard, called parents, and used the nature of our schools to demonstrate our concern for more than scores. We took seriously the mission of our schools, to spread the Good News and build a Faith Community.
My best friends are some of the kids I taught 30 years ago. One pf them is my daughter's Godmother. And fifty of my kids answered the call on 9/11 with thre FDNY, NYPD and EMS. One of them is still there.
Anon 1 -
Thank you for responding to all of the earlier posts regarding KIPP. I know you did not come on here to be the unofficial spokesperson for KIPP. I'm just pressing a little because I think when we get into discussions with folks from the charter world it is rare for them to acknowledge that there are any faults in charter schools. It seems as if everything the charter schools do is fantastic. Like I mentioned earlier there is a lot to learn from what charter schools do. Many of them -- KIPP included -- do a great job. But for once I would like to hear someone who works in a charter school acknowledge things that are not always perfect at their school. I would like to see someone from the charter world acknowledge that while we -- traditional public schools and charter schools -- both face challenges, those challenges are not exactly the same. By admitting this you are not knocking your school, but merely being honest in your reflection.
Things certainly aren't always perfect, and I didn't mean to give that impression, but I will say that the difference between my old school and this one is so dramatic that it's really hard to complain. That said, we teachers and administrators spend meetings picking apart everything we aren't doing well, and those meetings do run long on many nights, so obviously things aren't perfect.
Also, in discussing KIPP among charter schools, there's a degree to which you're analyzing the best-in-breed (or one of the best in the breed, anyway). Before coming to KIPP I visited a lot of other charter schools and some of them were downright horrible. And then there are differences between KIPP schools as well, though those differences tend to be much, much smaller than the differences between charter schools.
Wonderful post and debate. KIPP and teacher involvement -
"what happens in KIPP is that the principals involve the teachers in the decision-making - OF the teachers, BY the teachers, and FOR the kids." - is a key element in an eloquent defense of KIPP. This is the major missing ingredient in the NYC public schools, though we do hear of some rare places where this is so.
However, KIPP seems even more formulaic than the NYCDOE to involve any real concepts of a school BY the teacher.
My questions are:
What has the turnover rate of teachers been in your school? The general experience level of teachers?
Do you know enough about other KIPP schools to generalize that teachers are involved in decision making at other schools or is it due to individual principals?
If your principal left how would the new one be chosen? With teacher input at all? New hires - do teachers play any role?
What about curriculum - what to teach and when to teach it? What choices in decisions do you have or is it imposed from the top like it is happening in NYC?
Where you do have decision-making power can you give some examples? For instance, do you hold kids back? If the teacher and school admin disagree is there a way to resolve that?
And when do the sessions - I hate to use the word "meetings" - needed to have make a school truly BY the teachers take place? Your lunch hours, after school?
Do you have to make additional time with more days or hours or are decision-making sessions integrated into the school day?
You have credibility as someone who has worked in both settings though it is always hard to generalize from a small sample.
Anon 1 -
Thanks for the detailed responses.
EZ
Norm - I'll take a crack at answering your questions. I don't know the answers to all of them, however.
1. Teacher Turnover: not sure what the official rate is, but we've lost about 2 teachers a year since I've been here - maybe 10%? I think that's low for KIPP, but I'm not sure. I also hear that as the schools get older they tend to lose less people. I think this pattern is typical in entrepreneurial enterprises - the founding years are very difficult and the ensuing years get easier.
2. Yes, one of the things KIPP does well nationally is introduce us to other KIPP teachers around the nation. As such, I keep in touch with a lot of them, and they all report a similar degree of input. Though KIPP principals vary in this, certainly, the dominant ideology is one of teacher input. I don't think they'd be able to recruit and retain as many teachers as they do otherwise.
3. I'm not sure who would choose the next principal if ours left. Officially, it would be our school's board with some input by KIPP, I assume. I don't know if teachers would have input. We do have input in which teachers get hired, but I'm just not sure how that works with principals.
4. Curriculum: we work together as a department to determine what curriculum to teach and when to teach it. We do have to teach the state standards, of course, but inasmuch as those are not always sufficient for what we believe our kids need to know, we also can add to that as we feel necessary. We DO meet as subject area teachers (e.g. the entire math department will meet) pretty frequently to make sure we are in alignment with each other, but curriculum design is a teacher-driven process. In fact, we are sometimes sent to top high schools to find out what will be expected of our students when they reach high school. We use this to make sure our curriculum has the degree of rigor necessary to truly prepare them. I don't know if this is universal in KIPP, though my experience with other KIPP schools is that teachers tend to have a lot of say in what they teach. Many of KIPP's national conferences have numerous workshops that discuss curriculum, which I don't think would happen if such things were going to be dictated from the top down.
5. Examples: very little principal input in curricular decisions - these are made by the departments and the teachers within them. Teachers determine holdovers, and though our principal does have major input in that, I can't think of a time when the teacher decision was overruled. Our principal tends to be the tie-breaker when teachers disagree on this. We also can make sweeping school-wide changes, though not unilaterally. If we want to change the discipline system, the dismissal procedure, or even how GPA is calculated, these are all things we can bring up and will generally be discussed until there is at least an approximation of consensus. We change things all the time, and I would say that the principal's voice is definitely heard the most in those discussions, but I feel that that's how it should be. We know that if we don't like the schedule (for example), we can discuss it and if we come up with a better one, it will be changed.
6. Our sessions/meetings take place at different times - some are after school, and that is definitely difficult at times. Mostly they happen during a shorter day (either a Friday when we get out an hour earlier or a half-day that occurs maybe monthly or the occasional full-days of professional development, which often include at least half the day for meetings. It's a lot of meetings, and that can get onerous, but that's sort of the price we pay for having input and wanting a consistent school - we need as much consensus as possible. I imagine that if we wanted to stop having the meetings and have the principal make every decision, we could do so and get out earlier each day, but our school wouldn't be as good and our teachers wouldn't have as much input.
Again, I can't generalize my experience to all KIPP teachers too much, because I haven't taught at another KIPP school. I do know a few people at other KIPP schools and I interact with lots of other KIPP teachers, and the experience seems to be pretty similar. Our school might skew a bit more towards teacher involvement, though I've heard of schools that have even more than we do. I've also heard of schools with less teacher input, but none of them approach the lack of input I had while teaching in the district.
My school was open this week and will also likely be open over the Feb break for math test prep. There was a time when I worked these "vacation academies" because despite my whopping salary, I needed the money.
I have actually vowed to not mention THE TEST when we return from break, even though it will be staring us in the face. I can't deal anymore with the over-emphasis on these tests. If my kids are not ready now, any cramming I try to do with them will just cause them more stress.
One more comment, on the EdWeek article's topic (student attrition):
Our attrition is very low at our school. Basically it's rare for a student to leave, and when the student does leave, it's because they moved out of state. We have had many families delay moving until their child had graduated from KIPP, but some families of course cannot do so.
Keep in mind that KIPP schools tend to be in districts with very high levels of student mobility, and I know at our school, our mobility is only a fraction of what the district's is. I would imagine that the best KIPP schools have very low mobility rates and that the worst ones have higher rates. Even the lower-performing KIPP schools, though, tend to be much better than the district schools, with only a couple of exceptions where they've had to shut down the school.
Attrition is a real issue and it's one that we pay attention to. We want to keep all of our students, and when we are in danger of losing one, we usually do a home visit and talk to the parents to see if there's any way we can work out a solution that will keep the child in our school. But sometimes it just doesn't happen.
I have a serious question about KIPP schools and student mobility:
How many students do you take on after the school year has started? There's a lot of talk about attrition, but I mean what about the students who get sent into your school once the year has started? As an ESL teacher I see more new students than average, but at least 6 of my students have come after the first week of school. You bet that influences what they learn and what the class as a whole can do. The monolingual classes at my school have fewer new students, but we do get them.
Also, how is ESL handled at your school and at KIPP schools in general? I repeat, these are serious questions, not veiled criticisms. I'm sure you're handling these issues better than the DoE as a whole does, but come on, that's a low bar.
So the article is accurate but it's not kipp's fault. Great.
I already answered the ESL question - see above. (basically, I don't know much about ESL because our school and our district don't have many ESL kids)
As for the EdWeek article, again, we have mobility, but it's lower than the district. That's like you saying we're no good because we have a few kids fail the test every year, despite the fact that we have way less kids fail the test. If what you want is zero mobility from a school in an area where the populace is very transient, then what you want is impossible. The only way to judge whether a school's mobility is reasonable is to compare it to that of the sending district.
When we report our scores they are "matched" scores, so from the beginning-of-year scores we take out the kids who have subsequently left, and from the end-of-year scores we take out the kids who came in mid-year. In this way we're reporting same-student gains, and the attrition and late newcomer effect is eliminated.
As far as adding students goes - this is one of the reasons we have an incentive to minimize attrition. We need to keep our enrollment numbers above a certain level in order to be able to afford our programs. So we do replace kids that we lose, though we usually don't do so until the next year, which is definitely an advantage we have over the traditional public schools. (though if the district schools were doing better they wouldn't have as high of a mobility rate and thus wouldn't have to deal with this as much)
We're not talking about "zero mobility". We're talking about over 50% mobility. You've lost more than half your students. That's a terrible record by any standard. And now you say you exclude their test scores. It's pretty easy to make your figures look good that way.
No, we exclude their test scores from the INCOMING scores, so that if - as many KIPP critics allege - the kids we lose are the lowest-scoring, it doesn't inflate our scores. Let me spell this out for you: If Johnnie comes to KIPP at the beginning of 5th grade, his scores will be included in the baseline test we give at the beginning of the year. If Johnnie has low scores, that means he will drag down his class's entering scores, thus making it easier to get big gains. So if Johnnie is low-scoring (people like you usually insist that we lose our lowest kids disproportionately), and if Johnnie leaves before the end-of-year test is given, Johnnie's low beginning scores but not his (would-be) low ending scores are included, which thus could artificially inflate our gains. EXCEPT that when Johnnie leaves, we take his baseline scores out of the class average, which eliminates the false inflation.
So we're doing the opposite of what you're alleging: for transparency's and honesty's sake, we report class averages that only include the kids actually stick with the program. We still see massive gains, proving that the kids who are with us from beginning to end are seeing dramatic academic improvement.
Now, as for 50% attrition, I can't speak for all KIPP schools, but ours is nowhere near that. Ours is under 5% per year. Some KIPP schools, to my understanding, are under 2% per year. We are in districts that often have 20-30% mobility rates. So yes, it is absolutely unfair for you to expect KIPP schools to have less than that. Even a class with 50% overall attrition *only* lost about 12% of its students a year, which is miraculous in the context of districts that have much higher annual attrition rates.
You obviously WANT KIPP to be a lying, cheating, fraud of an organization that doesn't do what we say we do. You WANT these scores and these attrition numbers to mean something they don't really mean, so you concoct false conclusions from honest data. You go out of your way to do so, ignoring reason and comparable data. Anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of education data should understand this stuff. Giving you the benefit of the doubt on your cognitive capacity, I have to conclude that you are willfully and intentionally misrepresenting this information in order to prove an unprovable point.
Great comment, Miss Malarkey. I, too, am tired of the "test prep" (which is actually a dirty word at my school; we're never supposed to admit that we do "test prep" even though we have the COACH books for ELA and math!), and I am not going to mention it during regular class periods. I'm going to do some practice for the listening section during AIS periods, but that's it.
The Edweek article says over 50% of the kids in those schools did not make it through. That's simply a fact. You evaded it, suggesting I wanted zero mobility, which is ridiculous. Now you say you don't know about these schools, even though you've attempted to respond to the figures several times. And then you say that 50% mobility is just fine, and losing half your kids is no big deal. You say the districts have 20-30% a year, making up to 120% of kids not making it, and it's very interesting you can cite statistics about districts you claim to know nothing about. Where do those statistics come from? I don't think losing half your kids is insignificant at all, and if it were, Edweek would not have publsihed the article. And kipp's own very anecdotal evidence, for what it's worth, indicates that only half the students who left moved. Kipp says it only kicked out two kids. Of course you remove only the incoming scores if you have no outgoing scores. But that doesn't seem like anything to brag about when you lost over half your students, even if you think that represents good work.
Let's please tone this down just a little. I appreciate your opinions, but I'd ask all commenters to give your opinions only, and refrain from mind-reading, or telling your audience what their opinions may be.
Personally, I hate when people do that to me, and I don't consider it appropriate.
I didn't evade the question, I said that 50% mobility means 12% per year, and that is much better than 20-30% per year in a district that I actually do know quite a bit about, since I taught in it.
Trying not to interpret the motive behind your comments (sorry about that, NYC Educator), I'll just say this: 30% mobility does not, of course, mean that 120% of kids are "not making it", just as 50% mobility in a KIPP school does not mean that the class dwindles from 80 to 40 kids over the life of the school. KIPP schools, like district schools, take in students to replace those who left, though in my school at least we don't take them in mid-year, but rather at the end of the year.
So maybe you don't want 0% mobility, but that doesn't tell me what you DO think would be respectable mobility for a KIPP school (or any other) to achieve in a district with, say, 25% mobility. Is 5%/year ok? That's 20% over the course of a middle school. Would 10% be OK? That's still less than half the rate of the district, but that would lead to 40% attrition over the years. Would that be OK? Presumably not, if 50% is, as you say, terrible by anybody's standards. Frankly, I disagree. 50% is GREAT by the standards of the district that totals 120% mobility over the same 4-year period. So what would be OK?
Mobility in cities where KIPP has a presence:
Houston: 38.2%
Chicago: 20%
Baltimore: 19.2%
Newark: 29%
Atlanta: 31%
Nationwide Average: 19%
So 25% seems a pretty good estimate of annual mobility in a typical KIPP city. These are just the cities I could quickly find, but there are a lot of KIPP schools in areas that have bigger immigrant populations than these, and as such likely could be expected to have higher mobility.
So even in the KIPP schools that see 50% mobility over 4 years, that's about twice as good as the district school averages in their cities. And in schools like mine that are under 5% and others that are around 2%, we're talking about even more remarkable differences. Given the established link between mobility and (lower) academic performance, KIPP schools should be studied for how they are getting such a low mobility rate, not vilified because it's not low enough!
You're right you didn't evade the question. You just took the figures of a district you know quite a bit about and applied them to a district you know nothing about. I'll have to also concede your point that the kipps losing over half their students did much better than a district somewhere that has nothing to do with the one we're talking about. And if you think losing over half your population is great, I won't argue with that iether. Sorry if I was mind reading. (:
Everyone time I scroll down to this post, I am surprised and pleased to see that there is another comment. What this suggests to me is that this issue of charters vs. public is exceedingly complex. (Remember--the original article was not even about charter schools). I am so glad that Anon1 has responded with details that he/she has on hand. I just wish the charter community,public school community and the media would engage in this same level of dialogue. If we did, we would likely see that we all are busting our behinds. We'd see that there are few magical cures for what ails some schools. And we'd likely see that we are all being played against each other for others political benefit.
Happy New Year
The level of debate is a sign of the need for some public forums on this issue (weapons must be checked at the door.) If the UFT was not what it is, that would be the place for honest debate, especially when the UFT established its own charter schools. But the UFT is what it is (I leave it to you to fill in the rest.)
It is left to us to create these forums. Teachers Unite is running a series of forums on privatization, charters, etc. throughout this year. The next one is Jan. 10 at a location to be announced (check the Teachers Unite web site.) Class SIze Matters' Leonie Haimson and Michael Fiorillo, chapter leader of Newcomers HS in Queens will speak, followed by a discussion. There will be follow-up forums in March and May and more next year.
I hate going to a location to be announced. Can't you have it somewhere else?
Let's just name the elephant in the room here: the main reason there's so much hostility toward KIPP schools is that they are constantly used as an argument against teacher unions and even the basic protections of teacher contracts. Most of what KIPP teachers do could be accomplished within the UFT contract in NYC. As for working longer hours, that's already possible as long as the overtime rate is paid and there are schools that regularly have teachers working extra hours. There are plenty of teachers at my school working 9-10-hour days most days because of after school programs. The reason why many of the KIPP innovations will never be implemented here is not because of the teachers or the teacher unions, but because of the administration. Yet KIPP is constantly cited as an argument against us teachers, our union, and our contract.
Also, in addition to the difference in administration, there are two basic issues with KIPP-public school comparisons I see:
1) When a KIPP school does really badly, as has happened in NY and California, they take the KIPP name off the door and kiss that school and its students and its statistics good-bye. Even when NYC goes crazy and "closes" a school, in reality all its students are still there.
2) KIPP doesn't have to deal with as much mobility because they don't have to deal with kids being dropped in from the sky mid-year--and those are kids whose education is undoubtedly suffering from the lack of continuity. The kids who do leave a KIPP school will go into a public school and become part of their statistics. And yes, in the public schools, those kids' scores are counted, not just the ones we got to work with all year. I have a student who came to the US from the DR two years ago, attended public schools for a few months, and then went back to the DR until this September. He will now have to take the state ELA exam.
I agree with J that that's the main elephant: the way KIPP is used to put down teacher's unions.
There are other elephants as well. One is the question of "best practices." Some individuals in the business community already poke fun at the term, and I'm with them 100%. To me, there's no such thing as "best practices"; they depend on the situation and the individuals involved. There are many good practices, and we can certainly learn from each other.
Thus, while some KIPP schools may be great, they are not for everyone. There are plenty of students and teachers, every bit as goodhearted and talented as anyone else, who would be miserable in a KIPP environment and who would thrive elsewhere.
For example, there are those who tend toward solitude. Some people do their best thinking on their own. Recently the trend in schools (particularly reform-heavy ones) is toward collaboration. Perhaps this is a reaction to the relative lack of collaboration in a lot of places. However, if we swing all the way toward collaboration, then we ignore a basic need to think things over in quiet and to bring one's special ideas and knowledge to the table.
In high school and college, I loved my teachers for their difference, nonconformity, and eccentricity. They collaborated a great deal, but they also respected the solitary part of education. They encouraged me to think on my own, and I am grateful to them. By contrast, I couldn't stand environments where I had to work in groups ALL THE TIME and come to consensus with people who thought very differently from me. One might argue that that's "bad" groupwork, but I've seen it too often. Groupwork is necessary; it just shouldn't take over the whole picture.
I'm not saying that KIPP is all collaboration and no solitude. What would I know? I've never set foot inside a KIPP school. I'd like to, out of curiosity, but haven't had a chance yet. However, I do get the impression that KIPP emphasizes collaboration, consensus, and, yes, conformity. All to a good end, I'm sure--but not everyone's cup of coffee, even with the right fixings.
So my recommendation would be to go after those who are using KIPP as a weapon against the unions. I could be wrong, but I doubt that anyone at KIPP has ever said any such thing, or even proclaimed that KIPP is The Answer in education reform. KIPP is, in my opinion, An Answer, hopefully one of many. I'm sure people do use us to bash unions, but that's not what we're doing - most of us are former union teachers who understand very well the need for unions in the traditional public school system. I'm pretty sure that some KIPP schools do have teachers who are union members, in fact.
I would encourage those of you who haven't been to one to visit a KIPP school. As far as I know they all have open door policies for visitors. But if you go, all I ask is that you go with an open mind. If you're going with the intent of finding problems, you will find problems for sure - I'm sure any KIPP teacher or principal could point them out - but if you go in giving KIPP a blank slate without preconceptions, I think you'll come away with a different perspective.
"KIPP is, in my opinion, An Answer, hopefully one of many."
That's an excellent point. As we are sometimes so busy looking for The Answer, it's well worth noting that Many Answers can be very healthy and helpful, too.
Teachers that choose to work during breaks are, in the long run, going to effect future contracts. I am sure some of these teachers are building up per session pensions too. (Was this school on the merit pay list??)
The principal of course wants these extra classes since his report card ass in on the line. The sad fact is that there is very little learning going on. Instead just tricks of the test to get those extra points.
If these extra days were really working, there would be no need for them to continue the following year. But they do because real reading and writing is not mastered due to test prep.
My problem with KIPP and other NCLB policies is the assumption that everyone should go to college. Going to college to enable a career change to me is ludicrous. Should someone decide to go to car mechanic school so that if they don't like teaching they have a career to fall back on without the return to school? And, there seems to be a strong implication that following a vocational career implies learning disabilities which is not true. Being a mechanic requires a different kind of intelligence. My neighbor was never interested in school but he built up a wonderful car repair business, extended it to body work and used car sales. He is a success and has never set foot in college. One of his sons tried college for a while and gave it up to help expand the business.
Education snobs seem to think the only things worth doing require academics. It is time to realize that academics are not for everyone. While a liberal arts education is nice, it is not a necessity.
Again, the assumption is not that all will go to college. The assumption is that as many as possible go to college and then can choose any career available to them. Nobody is worse off for going to college. For those who don't go to college (we're aware that it may not be the best option for everyone), we want them to be successful in whichever career they choose. Our assertion is not that 100% should go to college; it's that way more kids should go to college than currently do.
Schoolgal- 50 posts ago, that was exactly the point I was trying to make- that teachers really, truly need to stop showing a willingness to work over the December and February breaks. From what I read of the school's principal (a google search of his name turned out a number of hits), he is quite the character- he was removed from one school, has a reputation for bucking the system, to mention a few. The school is not part of the merit pay program, however.
Not really sure when this became a debate on KIPP schools.
15 more years -
The debate about KIPP started around the 5th or 6th comment. I think the charter schools issue is huge. And folks on all sides were eager to engage in that conversation. To me this eagerness is clearly evidenced by the fact that folks are still commenting 5 days after nyceducator's original blog posting.
P'd Off Teacher,
Every time I write out a check to my plumber, electrician, exterminator, etc., your point is made and then some. I suppose I don't know for sure if these guys didn't go to college, but those careers certainly don't require it. Lucractive those businesses.
Ummm...that's "lucrative", of course. (What's one more post here? We're trying to set a record!)
For the record....
I wouldn't work for any system that took away weekends from the family or myself. To do so is also a selfish act if you are a parent.
For the record....
I wouldn't work for any system that took away weekends from the family or myself. To do so is also a selfish act if you are a parent.
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