"A child's learning is the function more of the characteristics of his classmates than those of the teacher." James Coleman, 1972

Friday, March 23, 2012

Why Students Call KIPP the Kids In Prison Program

This morning the Vanderbilt Press Office issued a press release announcing a speech by KIPP's chief child abuser, Mike Feinberg, who recently relinquished his Superintendency of KIPP Houston to go on the road full time to promote the penal pedagogy system of KIPP, which represents the second coming of eugenics in America: segregate, contain, culturally neuter, psychologically sterilize, and behaviorally program the children of the urban defectives.

This firsthand account below was posted this morning at NYC Public School Parents.  This account mirrors some of the same themes that emerge from the interviews I am doing with former teachers of KIPP.  Note that special education students are regularly treated with the identical disrespect and test prep curriculum as the rest of children silently imprisoned each day in 109 of these total compliance isolation camps that receive public dollars to support this social control strategy that is top priority with Gates, Broad, and the Walton Klan:


A few months ago, Class Size Matters met with a former KIPP student who lives in the Bronx and her mother to hear about their experiences at the celebrated charter school. What follows are excerpts from this interview.  The girl’s name has been changed to protect her privacy.
 
Mom: Students who are accepted to KIPP and who have IEP's [individualized education plans] do not get the correct services or help to be successful.  The school would rather make it difficult, leaving the parent frustrated and forcing her to remove her child. The principal always invited me to take my child out if I did not like the way she was being treated.  My response was always, "She has a right to be here just like any other child who went through the lottery system.  She will stay until she finishes."  My reasons for her to continue were because the curriculum was good and I knew that she could benefit academically from the rigorous demands, but sometimes they went to the extreme and she suffered for it.
 
At the very first, I saw the way they were talking to some kids in the line as they’re going in. They’re like (shouting) “Oh you know you’re not supposed to come in here with those!” And I'm saying to myself, it doesn’t have to be like that – they were screaming at them. I said to myself, you know, I really have to find out about this school. So I decided that I was going to be very active. 
Well, that’s where my problems started. Because then it became war. I wasn’t welcome there, and I noticed it. Because I used to pop up unexpectedly and I would hear these teachers really being mean! And they would say, “You can’t be here, you’re interrupting, they’re in class, they’re in session” And I said, “I have a right to be here.” 
One day Celeste [her daughter] was sick. She was out for three days with a doctor's note. When she returned the teacher tells her, “Oh, take the test, it won’t be counted.” Celeste brings me the test, because parents had to sign the exams. So I said to her, wait a minute, you were out – why did you take the test? And she said, “The teacher said it wasn’t going to be counted.” And I said, “Yea, it’s counted!” So I went to the school and I said to her teacher, “I understand you told Celeste that this test wasn’t going to be counted. She’s been out for three days, you should have given her a chance to study and make up the material.” And she said, “Well, she should have had notes…she is having difficulty in science.” I said, “She was told it wasn’t going to be counted. I think you should give her a make-up.” And she said, “Well I don’t give make-ups.” 
So I told the principal that I think it’s unfair.  And she goes, “Well-” – here comes the double talk – “you know, Celeste is struggling.” And I said, “I know she is struggling and I don’t think you understand. She has a right to be here just like every other kid. And you guys, as educators need to understand that there are strategies to working with these kids.” But, you see, their strategy is “We’re not working with any difficult kid. We’re here to demand, and you perform.” That’s the attitude. 
You know what happens to the “difficult kids”?  The parents take them out. And nobody hears about them again. But I’ll be damned if I was gonna take her out. You know why? Because every child has a right. 
I knew there was something Celeste needed help with but I didn’t know what it was. So I said to her teacher, “Do you think you could proceed with recommending her for an evaluation and stuff?” I was thinking that maybe they provide the same services as the Dept. of Education. 
They said, “Well we don’t do that; we don’t have any help for her. So I submitted an application to have her evaluated with the Dept. of Ed, downtown, and they realized that she did need the help.  She started having someone to come in for a half hour every day to work with her on math, English, and whatever other problems. He was a SETTS [special ed] teacher.  He confirmed everything that I thought was going on. He said to me, “I can’t believe what goes on in there.” And I said, “Like what?” And he said, “Well there’s a lot of corporeal punishment.”
 
Celeste:  When my mom first told me about KIPP I was happy because they have the orchestra, and I really like music and I love playing the instruments and all of that. Towards the end of that first year [5th grade] is when I started really feeling the impact of it. They give so much homework, and I'm there for so long. I wasn't used to it. In elementary school you get a little bit of homework and you're there for, like, 8 hours. But there you were there for 13 hours. You do five hours’ worth of homework. And then I really started disliking the school

I had to sit like this. [demonstrates] It’s called S.L.A.N.T.: Sit straight. Listen. Ask a question. Nod your head. Track. Track is, if the teacher is going that way you have to… [demonstrates] follow… If you didn't do that, they'll yell at you: "You're supposed to be looking at me!" [points to demerit sheet] "No SLANTing." They'll put that on there. 
If I got into an argument with a teacher, I would have to stand outside the classroom on the black line, holding my notebook out. [Stands up and demonstrates, holding arms out] I would have to stand there until they decided to come out. For 20 minutes, 30 minutes, sometimes they’ll forget you’re out there and you’ll be there the whole period –an hour and forty minutes standing. if you have necklaces you have to tuck them away so they can’t see them – or else they’ll have you write four pages of a sentence about KIPP – “I must follow the rules of the KIPP Academy” or “I must not talk” for four pages.
They would have us stand on the black line for as many minutes as they felt was right for what I did. I would never get my homework during that hour when I was outside on the line. And I'd ask for the homework, they'd be like "I'll give it to you later". And the next day I would come in without homework and it goes directly on my paycheck [the demerit system]. 

My science teacher got mad once because I sneezed. He said "Get out of class!" And I said, "No, I won't get out of class for sneezing" And he was like, "Yes, you are." He called the principal and I still didn't leave. So they were like "We're going to call your mother. So let's go." And I was like, "Fine." And I just walked out. Then the teacher wrote down everything, like 'Not paying attention.'  He would write 'Talking' 5 times so I could get -5 points. He was saying I had a negative attitude.

I noticed that a lot of kids left.  In 5th grade, there were about 50 students. 6th grade, I came back and there were 30. 7th grade: 20. About 10 of them were held back and a lot of them left.

A lot of the teachers left too. When I got to 6th grade, the 5th grade teachers had all changed. By the time I got to 8th grade, there were only about four teachers left that I knew. And now it's all new teachers. None of them are there that I went to school with.

The teachers said, "We want you to be the best you can be. No attitude.” But they're the first ones to give you attitude. They're hypocrites.  We used to have 'Character Class' on Fridays where they would tell you to be open-minded and stuff. But they weren't open-minded. They were closed. If I needed help, they would say, 'Oh, well you have to figure it out.'

Teachers would scream at us all the time. Sometimes for things we did, and sometimes for things we didn't. A kid would raise his voice. Then the teacher would raise his voice. Kid would raise his voice higher and the teacher raised his voice higher.  Until it was a screaming match between the kid and the teacher. And then the principal comes in, and it's three people all screaming at each other. It would give me such a headache!

At KIPP, I would wake up sick, every single day. Except on Sunday, 'cause that day I didn’t have to go to school.  All the students called KIPP the “Kids in Prison Program.”

And now that I'm in this [district high] school I'm relieved. I'm glad I didn't go to KIPP high school. Now, I wake up and I want to go to school. I want to see my friends. I want to see my teachers. It's more welcoming. You walk in there, it's like "Hey! How are you doing?" 
 

1 comments:

Anonymous said...
I was a teacher at a KIPP school for 1 /1/2 years. (Not in NYC) It was the most horrible experience of my life. The teachers and students are literally in school for 11 hours a day. You basically have no personal life as it is all about KIPP. The school has a cult like mentality with chants, rituals, and an obsessive focus on "being nice, work hard, get into college". I saw numerous teachers experience nervous breakdowns from the extreme pressure and harassment of administration. There was a 50% turnover for staff each year. They made me chaperone a week long trip to another city to visit colleges. I had to sleep in the same room as the students. (They do NOT pay anywhere near what would be expected from a district school.) KIPP also made me go door to door in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods on the city that I worked in to recruit students. The most crazy thing I witnessed was at a KIPP summer seminar that had KIPP teachers from throughout the United States present. One of the main speakers asked the audience of KIPP teachers to stand up if they were first year teachers. About 30% of the audience stood up. Then they asked teachers with 2-5 years of experience to stand up. At that time 60% of the teachers stood up. Then they asked teachers with 5-10 years experience to stand up and 10% stood up. Then they asked teachers with more than 10 years of experience to stand up. At that time I WAS STANDING WITH 2 OTHER TEACHERS OUT OF AN AUDIENCE OF 500 TEACHERS!



28 comments:

  1. KIPP is part of the unfortunate fall out from NCLB and RttT. Emphasis on test scores to the exclusion of higher level thinking, problem solving, and creativity are leading the nation in a dangerous direction. It is time for a "do-over." Join more than 5000 parents, teachers and other concerned citizens and sign the Letter to Obama at http://dumpduncan.org.

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  2. When I used to live and work in NYC, we would hang out in the pub on Friday's to unwind and dissect the week. During one week, about 9 years ago, we happened upon another group of teachers doing the same thing. This group of teachers had decided that they were going to create a KIPP school in NYC, and I remember listening to them talk about how the kids were supposed to sit, and track people talking. This group of teachers was passionate and concerned about their students, and they could see that the current approach wasn't working for many of them.

    It's fascinating to me that passionate and concerned people can adopt models which are as problematic as the KIPP schools. How could we re-channel the efforts of these teachers to improve education for their students into more productive pursuits?

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  3. Anonymous8:48 AM

    Thank you for sharing this. KIPP is here in Austin Texas and I had put my son on the lottery list (he has autism and ADHD). I will be removing his name from the lottery as I would never tolerate what has been described here. Education has become the deliberate dumbing down of America so that we have compliant, non-thinking workerbees who won't buck the system. The public schools in some cases aren't any better which is why so many home school their children. There's a book called "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America" that explains it all. What a world we live in.

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  4. Anonymous2:41 PM

    It is truly wonderful to see people with enough courage to unveil the truths of such charter schools as KIPP who are supposed to be the exemplar for school reform. As a public school teacher, it disturbs me to constantly be compared to charter schools. Families are fighting to get into these academic "elite" institutions, all the while, many of theses schools are performing just as poorly if not worse than the public schools. Thousands of tax payer monies are being poored into charter schools instead of being redirected into improving our public school system. And, charter schools can get away with spending federal funding without any real accountability because the focus is on how horrible the alternatives are, and not on whether charter schools are truly the answer to a better education.

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  5. You typed corporeal (without body) instead of corporal. You might also want to describe what KIPP is since there are lots of people who read this and may not have heard of it before.

    Otherwise, this was an interesting article.

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  6. All a bit scary. In education we have to be careful not to confuse good student filtering with good education. If you remove all the challenging kids from a system, either by a rigorous entry system, or an aggressively managed early exit strategy than the academic results of the graduating cohort may not be a good measure of how well you can teach.

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  7. Anonymous8:06 PM

    I hate my school in Atlanta,Georgia

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  8. To me our school isn't all that bad it is just that teachers show favortism. We barely get to go out and enjoy the sun because of one person talking and causing us not to do anything. At least if you are going to hold us in the school all day; teach us the lesson correctly like a good teacher does and learn the deduction system so you can stop giving out your own number of deductions. One good thing I can say is that Tthey have good programs to teach the kids on higher levels and that they want us to go to college ,but if they want us to go to college they should teach us the lesson correctly. One last thing I want to say is that we have too many test ( benchmarks, MAP test, writing test ,and the new georgia milestone)

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  9. I don't agree with the comments at least for my kid's school here in Austin,TX.

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  10. Anonymous6:22 PM

    Shouting at kids does happen. I think what needs to happen is that charter schools need to be brought under local school Districts for all matters, not just oversight. Only day to day operation would be the charter's, all rules, practices and regulations would be school district. This needs to happen before charter schools turn into cults

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  11. Anonymous1:06 PM

    Kipp only caters to Mexicans!You have no choice to take any other foreign language,all you have is spanish! Not fair if you want other languages!Kipp also has some racial tension from time to time, if you are black you are always looked at when something comes up missing,totally not fair!Oh gosh, the teachers, some are cool and effective others complete opposite! Some of the teachers are moody and act way too childish.This past march we had two teachers who got in trouble for sexually related things!Kipp is not all what it's cracked up to be! Do not be fooled by their trips that's when the teachers are at their worst!

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  12. Anonymous11:00 AM

    Kipp is a horrible place. At kipp austin collegiate (highschool) everything describe in the article is what really goes on in there. They say you are here to proceed and be bold but honestly they don't help us. The teachers are rude most of the time or very demanding. There are exceptions to some but most of the time, it is the same ! Kipp waste money on things we don't even need. For example, we wasted money on may be around 5 flat screen TV around the campus that we don't even use! It is alot of pressure about being in uniform. Once I came with a wrong shirt and I got sent to iss for the whole day! I couldn't go to class and get the material I need because I was in iss for wearing the wrong shirt. Since when is what you wear more important than your education? Also the food is horrible! It's worse than prison food! We have little choices and little quantity. Sometimes the food it also bad quality. It is rare when students are conformed with the food. The time kids are required to be at school is too long. Students need time for personal things also. Some students even work but they don't have that time because they are in school for more than 11 hours. Not to mention the amount of homework adding on to the hours. Also they don't even have a nurse! You are just sent home. Sometimes just kept in the office. What good does that do? Kipp honestly is not what the claim to be. It is alot if emotional and physical stress for all the kids. And it's horrible how kids in elementary school and being introduced to this. Kipp has got to change.

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  13. Anonymous2:20 PM

    I go to a KIPP school right but mine is KIPP NASHVILLE COLLEGE PREP we have to work long hours on days end and when we get home it could be between 6 or 7 then we have to do homework that takes up half the night all the students could be sitting down and the teacher just starts yelling out of no where becuse someone isn't on S.L.A.N.T or they teacher asks a question and a student answers the teacher tells the student to get out of the room because they don't want to hear them that's why i can't wait to leave this school! so parents DO NOT send your kids here it's on your on risk to send them!!!!

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  14. Anonymous3:24 PM

    I'm a student at KIPP Kc and it sucks here

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  15. Anonymous3:24 PM

    stupid school

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  16. Anonymous3:39 PM

    I'm a student and KIPP makes me hate school and it doesn't prepare me for life

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  17. I can guarantee you, NONE of my Grandchildren will ever attend that concentration camp! That's all that it is, a concentration camp. They are merely trying to dehumanize these children. It sickens me at what length this sorry Government will go to get kids trained they way they want them. Reading this has made me sick to my stomach. Any parent with half of a brain would NOT allow their children to attend any KIPP schools!

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  18. Anonymous8:34 AM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  19. Anonymous8:34 AM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  20. Anonymous12:21 PM

    My son is currently enrolled and he is ADHD and on a 504 plan. Now by reading this I understand a lot of things. A couple of months ago my son complained about a teacher calling him names such as "PUNK" my son's response to that was "really mom"? with tears in his eyes. I called the teacher to get an explanation and he hung up the phone on me, when I spoke to the Principal she said she had a long conversation with that teacher about the situation and her excuse was "Oh Mr *** is going through a personal situation right now I apologize"
    I think all this is very unprofessional. I hate to say it but this has been a really bad experience for me and my son. Planning on withdrawing him asap.

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    Replies
    1. Kimmy9:49 PM

      My child is currently attending KIPP TRIUMPH as a 6th grader in St. LOUIS, he literally now hates school and i-a constantly in trouble, I get phone calls weekly. He is ADHD diagnosed with a 504 plan and his needs are not met at all. There are some great teachers at this school mixed in with the bad. He recently got suspended for what was documented as "refusing to read a public apology". It took me forever to get to the truth and get a clear answer on a suspension for such a small thing.the school is ran in a military like manner which is not what I understood I was signing up for otherwise I'd have No issues. When my son is in trouble for a valid reason I always, always make sure I speak with him and handle my part with him at home
      This school is slowly turning my child into a child I've never seen all cause he hates me sending him there so..... My search for a new school begins

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  21. Anonymous12:53 PM

    I go to the first ever Kipp school in Houston,Tx and this place is HELLLLLL.

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  22. Anonymous12:19 PM

    I go to KIPP the one in Houston and it is hell i hate it here their is so much drama and kids doing nasty stuff i want to leave. Shut Down KIPP Shut Down KIPP NOW

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  23. Anonymous9:20 AM

    My kids attend Kipp , this is they're first year and last year too. They talk to the kids anyhow and the students all talk like adults. I don't understand my kids getting bullied and they won't do nthn bout it.. Sick of it #kippDallas ��

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  24. Anonymous2:26 PM

    KIPP is .. a evil place . That's all evil... and we still have people funding for this ... it's so messed up

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  25. Anonymous2:43 PM

    I went to a kipp school in south fulton for 1 year, lets just say it was the worst expense of my life. Some teachers like to specifically favor others and hate on the rest. Some students make peoples lives worse and some others hate there lives because of it. The school is just a terrible school in general mostly because of the stupid rules. I pushed someone because they pushed me first and a teacher gets me suspended for pushing someone. Mind You he did not even see it. A few months later the gym teacher gets caught beating his meat but gets no punishment? Your telling me his job is to watch kids do fitness his whole time here and stare at us, then all of a sudden he gets caught masterbating in his office? Kids have also seen him many times staring at girls while running. It seems like to me he did not get his job to be around kids, seems like he wanted more but hey that's just me. If your a kid reading this right now and your parent is forcing you to go to any kipp school, I recommend you to tell your parent no.

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  26. Anonymous11:38 PM

    I have grand children at KIPP Nashville it is hell on earth the teachers are rude and don't really care about you or your children every year it's something new I'm not playing with them this year my grand child was being bullied he reported it to the teacher but because she felt he had been disrespectful she did nothing he recorded it all on his phone when the school was showed the video the only thing they could say was him having a phone out was a violation he was still expelled I will be contacting a lawyer I'm not playing with them this year!!!!!

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