The Sunny Side of Corruption by Jay Mathews

American print media's most prominent charter school cheerleader is at it again.  In his most recent Washington Post column, Jay Mathews is preaching the virtues of IDEA Charter Schools, Inc., which recently lost its CEO founder and other senior leaders due to corruption charges involving private jets, NBA sky boxes, and routine use of public funds for "personal benefit:"

A financial investigation “uncovered substantial evidence that … a small number of IDEA senior leaders directed the use of IDEA financial and staff resources for their personal benefit on multiple occasions,” Board Chair Al Lopez wrote in a letter Tuesday. “Furthermore, their actions appeared to be done in a manner to avoid detection by the standard external audit and internal control processes that the Board had in place at the time.”

None of this corruption or efforts to conceal the crimes could ever dampen Jay's enthusiasm, however.  Nor has Mathews departed from his unique brand of dissembling propaganda. Just one example from this latest column:

Charters are independently run public schools that use tax dollars. Most are no better academically than regular public schools. But a 2013 Stanford University report showed that 25 percent of charters were significantly better in reading achievement and 29 percent were significantly better in math achievement than neighboring regular public schools serving the same kinds of students.

When we go to the actual research report that includes Jay's numbers, we find the details that put a whole new light on Jay's sunny summary.  From the Credo Study, 2013, p. 22 Executive Summary:

Figure 8 shows the performance of charter schools relative to the TPS in their market. Based on our analyses, we found 25 percent of schools had significantly stronger growth than their TPS market counterparts in reading, 56 percent were not significantly different and 19 percent of schools had weaker growth. In math, the results show that 29 percent of charter schools had stronger growth than their TPS market counterparts, 40 percent had growth that was not significantly different, and 31 percent had weaker growth. These results were an improvement over those in the 2009 report.

 

 

 

 

"No Excuses" Realities Remain As KIPP Makes Rhetorical Retreat

This may be remembered as the summer that "No Excuses" became too toxic for charters to admit that they are still clinging to the abusive reality.  

The rhetorical retreat from "No Excuses" began with a New York Times piece in July, "Why Some of the Country’s Best Urban Schools Are Facing a Reckoning."
In it, I found so little to substantiate the claim that New York's "no excuses" charter schools are actually implementing any policies that would negate their brutal discipline systems that I read the piece a second time, looking for something that might justify a delay in these punitive charters' well-deserved day of reckoning. At the risk of dating myself, I could only ask, "Where's the beef!?" 

The discipline changes noted at the Ascend charter schools was covered in a bit more detail in a Times piece from 2017, even though that piece, too, doesn't say much. The other big change at Ascend appears to be a new school that lumps disabled students into one school, a practice that lost pedagogical credibility decades ago and one that cripples efforts to create inclusive learning environments. It's hard to say why Success Academy is even mentioned in this piece, since its management is staying the course on its total compliance penal variety of schools. 

As for KIPP, there seems to a kinder, gentler change in rhetoric from the top, but in terms of policy change, I can't find it. There seems to a belief that more black and brown teachers will be enough to humanize the zero tolerance "no excuses" approach. Sadly, KIPP seems to have put most of its black and brown New York teachers in a single school. In the end, KIPP teachers follow school policy, or else, and there is nothing in the NYTimes article to indicate a change of practices that demean and humiliate both students and teachers.

What is clear is that KIPP Model hell school operators would like to mold the media in order to convince politicians that the brutality of "no excuses" charter school has changed.  With growing numbers of citizens now realizing that these racist penal-style KIPP Model schools are emptying public school coffers while making policymakers complicit in crimes against children, PR campaigns now abound to present these cultural sterilization charter schools in the best possible light.  

Enter Jay Mathews, who has remains a tireless mouthpiece for corporate charter hell schools for the past 25 years. Jay's August 2 column, ‘No-excuses schools’ make no excuse for updating their approach, is devoted to downplaying the punishing practices and policies that have earned KIPP the reputation of "Kids in Prison Program." 

A formidable propagandist, Mathews cherry-picks individual policies from the Big Five "no excuses" chains (Achievement First, Success Academy, KIPP, YES Prep, and Uncommon Schools) to make it sound as if universal changes are happening to make these educational sweatshops less inhumane.  

Jay mixes in some plain old lying, too.  A couple of examples:

Sitting straight in class with hands folded on the table and eyes continuously on the teacher: Those were the rules when I started visiting KIPP schools in 2001, but no longer. . . .Walking silently through the halls in single-file lines: That is no longer the rule in these networks.

I did a cursory search on the web and found many examples of KIPP networks with these student contract elements still in place.  Here is just one: 

I will SLANT during instruction· 
I will track whomever is speaking· 
I will greet and respond to greetings from others in the hallway· 
I will raise my hand to speak and share· 
I will enter and exit rooms silently and close doors carefully· 
I will say please, thank you, and excuse me· 
I will walk quietly on the right side of the hallway· 
I will hold doors for people behind me· 
I will be team and family and include others· 
I will speak like a scholar and friend to all· 
I will keep hands, feet, and objects to myself· 
I will communicate with my parents by providing them with flyers from school

Jay says that "No-excuses is so 20th century. Let’s talk about something new."  That will only be possible, Jay, when realities in these lock-down schools actually change to match the misleading rhetoric that you continue to propagate.

Jay Mathews’ Cheap Shots Backfire Badly

Jay Mathews’ Cheap Shots at Former KIPP Teacher Backfire Badly

by Jim Horn

It was back in March 2018 that I sent Jay a link to my article about Jessica Marks’s KIPP teaching experiences, and he wrote back saying “I will check it out.” Obviously, it took KIPP some months to come up with a response, which Mathews used as a basis for spinning an attack against Jessica in the pages of the Washington Post. 

Jay Mathews sent me an email last month on the eve of Winter Recess, with a draft story for his Washington Post education column.  The story consisted of KIPP’s defense of the unethical and abusive practices against former KIPP Austin teacher, Jessica Marks. Jessica was also a recipient of the email, and Jay offered us 6 days to respond to “factual errors” in his piece. 

Jessica, I found out, was away from work and away home when Jay emailed us both his finished draft. Even so, she did manage to find a wi-fi hot spot to respond to his severely flawed article about her horrific KIPP experiences. I responded as well, even though Jay ignored most of my efforts to clean up some of the slime oozing from his draft.

Before I share my response to Mathews’ column published January 5, I have to say something about the belittling and demeaning tone of the column.  Mathews’ dismissive demeaning of my work I am accustomed to, but before these last two weeks I had not witnessed Mathews’ obvious delight in sliming an individual who has already suffered mightily as a result of KIPP’s amoral ideology, dehumanizing methods, and hard-fisted administrative practices.  Obviously, Mathews and KIPP fear the fearless, and Jessica’s courage in stepping forward with her story sets a precedent that the multi-billion-dollar charter chaingangs would rather nip in the bud.  Sorry, corporate KIPPsters—Jessica is one of many brave souls whose stories will be shared.

Mathews’ imperious callousness toward KIPP’s victims and his lack of empathy for the uncounted KIPP teachers and students who the KIPP organization has used, abused, and discarded still remains the most remarkable aspect of his weird attraction to KIPP’s miseducative reform school experiment.  His lack of caring in his column is palpable, and the utter lack of curiosity about how the brutal No Excuses KIPP model now affects and will affect children and adults into the future is remarkable and shameful, especially for an education writer who would know better if he were not blinded by a mysterious devotion to what could pass for a corporate cult. 

Mathews' continued excuse-making for an organization that accepts no excuses from those that KIPP destroys is mind-boggling to me, even as it is exactly what I have come to expect from him. Mathews has been spinning for KIPP for long time, and his loyalty to KIPP's billionaire patrons has earned for him many royalties. 

The Mathews column is below. My comments on Mathews’ column are interspersed, indented, and italicized.

Jim Horn’s 2016 book, “Work Hard, Be Hard,” examines “no excuses” schooling, including KIPP, the nation’s largest public charter school network. The book offers excerpts from 25 interviews with “no excuses” teachers, 23 of them former KIPP teachers who were mostly critical of the program.

In his book, Horn, a professor of educational leadership at Cambridge College in Massachusetts, does not reveal the teachers’ names or where and when they taught. But he has since identified one former instructor who tells an interesting story.

All the teachers I interviewed for my book requested anonymity at the time the book was published in 2016, and I respect that.  It’s not unusual for research participants to remain anonymous, which offers some advantages in terms of candor and authenticity, while protecting those who fear further victimization from the perpetrators of their misfortune. Jessica is the first of those research participants to step forward to share her story publicly her identity since the book was published.

I consider KIPP one of the best charter networks in the country, mostly because of its success attracting and developing great educators who help impoverished students learn.

If not for Teach for America and the alternative certification knock-offs that TFA has inspired, KIPP, with its brutal teacher attrition rates, could not stay in business. As for the “great educators,” TFA provides its recruits, which it spends millions of dollars in PR to “attract,” four weeks for instant “developing” before they are dumped into some of the most challenging classrooms in America.  The average KIPP life expectancy for a teacher is two years, and KIPP strenuously tries to hide the real attrition numbers, as noted here.

Even by Mathews’ admission, KIPP teachers who have not developed to suit KIPP by the holiday break of their first year are most often fired. 

The teachers I have interviewed at 42 of KIPP’s 224 schools have supported the network’s long hours, high standards, intricate field trips, focus on character development, and creative use of music and games.

As for interviews with teachers, Mathews has never published one, either positive or negative, either anonymous or named, either before or after his celebratory book about KIPP written over 10 years ago.  He did talk a great deal to Dave Levin and Mike Feinberg for his book, even though he has since distanced himself from Mike Feinberg, since Feinberg was booted by KIPP in 2018 for allegedly sexually abusing a KIPP middle school girl and for sexual harassment of a KIPP employee.  Of the KIPP founders, Feinberg and Levin, Mathews said, “They are terrific interviews. Turn on the tape recorder and the book is already written.”

When I asked Mathews where I could find those interviews with “hundreds of KIPP teachers and administrators” to which he refers, Mathews referred me to the KIPP employees’ names in the index of his celebratory book about the KIPP founders—the one he wrote over 10 years ago.  No transcripts, no published interviews, no nothing, not even any extensive quoting. 

In one of Mathews’ many rejoinders to skeptical readers of his published column, he even falsely claims to have interviewed Jessica Marks. This is a lie of Trumpian proportion.

Jessica Marks, the former KIPP teacher Horn has identified, gives a different view on Horn’s blog “Schools Matter” and in an exchange of emails with me. Marks joined KIPP in 2013 after four years of successful teaching in Prescott Valley, Ariz.

Jessica had been one of three county finalists for First Year Teacher Award back in Arizona.

She said she wanted to help KIPP’s mission “of sending all students to and through college.” But she did not like what she found at the KIPP Austin Academy of Arts & Letters. She said: “I think it is harmful for students and teachers to go there.”

Before hiring her in July 2013, she said, the school’s leaders interviewed her at length and watched her teach classes. She said the principal told her she was a great teacher but not “necessarily a KIPP teacher” and was hiring her because she was “a hard worker” who deserved “a try.”

Marks said most of her eighth-grade English students came from homes where other languages were spoken, and the students were not fully proficient in English. She said the class had gone through three English teachers in the seventh grade. Her students, she said, did well on the first interim assessment test. But she was coming to work at 5:15 a.m. and not leaving until 9 p.m. to prepare for a 7:05 a.m. to 4:35 p.m. school day.

Marks sought help. She saw a therapist. To reduce her workload, she accepted the principal’s offer to coach her and teach her first-period class four days a week. During that reprieve, she worked reasonable hours, but after two weeks, she said, her first-period class was given back to her and the pressure resumed. Many of her students failed an exam the principal asked her to give on Homer’s “Iliad” because, she said, it used terms different from those she had used in class.

After that, she said, video cameras were placed to observe her. Applicants interested in her job circulated through her room. “I was harassed, ridiculed and intimidated by administrators,” she said.

According to KIPP’s own projections, Jessica’s students were on track to pass the annual STAAR, which was to be given in the Spring. All of her SPED students actually passed the first Interim Assessment.

Jessica’s larger problem with her principal, Kevin, began after he took over her first period class for two weeks in November.  Kevin taught 8 lessons, and he taught the Iliad to Hispanic 8^th graders with marginal English skills, who complained that he had taught them the same material the previous year when Kevin filled in for one of the three English teachers who left before the end of the year.

Jessica said that Kevin told her explicityly to take the lesson he was teaching first period and, throughout the rest of the day, “to make it my own.”  

At the end of the eight first-period class sessions that he taught, Kevin put together a test that required students to recall the actual words that he used during those first period classes.  He insisted that Jessica use the same test with her other classes, even though he had told her to teach the lesson in her own words, rather than parroting what he had exactly said.

This was Kevin’s set-up that initiated Jessica’s downfall. 

A couple of days after the test, which significant numbers of Jessica’s students predictaby failed because the students had not heard to exact terminology on the test that Kevin had used during first period, Kevin presented her with an evaluation rubric that scored her as a 1.5 out of 4.0.  Among the various shortcomings marked up on the checklist, Kevin noted that Jessica provided an “unsafe environment” by not immediately correcting students who were whispering in her classes.  When she asked how this could construed as “unsafe,” she was told that the students could be bullying one another—even though Kevin admitted he did not hear what any the students were whispering.

Jessica was given just a few work days (until December 19) to bring her evaluation score up from 1.5 to a 3.0.  During those following days, applicants for her position paraded in and out of her classes, and she was subjected to ongoing video surveillance and other forms of harassment, such as notes left on her desk that said, “You’re still not getting it.” 

Then, even the brief time that Jessica was given to improve was cut short without explanation.  Kevin announced to Jessica on December 17 that she was fired.  Jessica told me recently in an email:

When I was fired, he [Kevin] rounded up all of the other teachers into a meeting to discuss it and to isolate me further. I was told I was never again welcome at the school and that if I should need to speak to anyone, I should call the HR department, as I should not even call the school ever again.

The day after my termination, they had a big assembly about my firing, letting the kids know what happened. I was told by my friend that the kids were very upset, but that Kevin had said something like, I had to let her go because you deserve the best, and Ms. Marks let you down. One of the kids piped up, “why did you fire her when we were the problem?” He ignored the question. 

Over a year later, Jessica returned to Austin, at which time she did visit the KIPP Austin’s HR Department:

I went back to the HR department at KIPP because I needed them to sign some form for my student loans, and they were not answering on the phone or through email. I stood in their little space, next to a tall, full-size filing cabinet marked "TERMINATIONS". Each drawer was labeled with a school year on it. The year I was fired, 2013 - 2014 had two drawers. How can any district [with 11 small schools] have so many terminations in a single year that it would need two full drawers?? I think the Universe wanted me to see that drawer so that I would not feel alone. 

According to his LinkedIn page, Kevin Newman has moved up in the KIPP organization since Jessica’s brief tenure at KIPP. He now is Director of the prestigious Fisher Fellowship, which recruits new KIPP administrators who will now learn from Kevin and the instructors he hires how to be a KIPP CEO.

By the way, the teacher that Kevin hired to replace Jessica quit after one day. The rest of the year Kevin taught Jessica’s eight grade English class.

KIPP leaders believe it hurts students to let teachers have two- or three-year probationary periods — standard in regular public schools — when their classroom results are not good. If new KIPP teachers are still doing poorly in December, a supervisor often takes their place until a replacement can be found.

If KIPP is replacing teachers who don’t fit the KIPP model in December before the first semester is over, why is Mathews talking about a 2-3-year probationary period?  Contractually, KIPP teachers can be fired at any moment for any reason—whether or not that reason is shared with the fired teacher.  KIPP’s bottom line is measured in test scores, which are extracted from children by whatever means necessary. If that means the dehumanization of and callous disregard for the welfare of both teachers and students, then so be it.

KIPP officials said they respected Marks’s right to share her recollections but challenged the accuracy of some of her account. They said only 13 percent of her students had ever been held back. They said that she was not harassed and that few other teachers spent so much time at the school. Marks’s principal said teachers were not required to arrive until 7:05 a.m., were free to leave any time after 4:35 p.m., and were mostly gone before 6 p.m.

This is a quote from the the interview I conducted with Jessica in 2014:

. . . we had really old kids in eighth grade. I had two kids that were 16 years old in eighth grade. And one turned 17 while she was in first semester. She turned 17. And most of my kids, at some point, had been retained. So a majority of my kids were 15 years-old in eighth grade. Like, they [KIPP] started the kids in fifth grade, and there’s always fewer eighth graders than fifth graders. But they weren’t brand new to KIPP. So a lot of these kids had been retained at KIPP. Some of them had been retained before. I had a lot of old kids.

KIPP is free to tell whatever tale they think the their Washington Post education writer will print, but I have the transcribed interviews that detail the grisly specifics of Jessica’s and other teachers’ hellish schedules. 

Of the 20 teachers at Jessica’s KIPP school, she was never the first to arrive or the last to leave.  KIPP knows that, and KIPP also knows about the lack of textbooks that requires teachers to photocopy lessons.  KIPP knows teachers must arrive early or stay late to access one of the two photocopy machines at the school.  KIPP also knows about the heavy doses of staff development after school, regular required parent nights, bulletin board redos, exit tickets and other bookkeeping minutiae, and student tutoring after school that required teachers to regularly stay late and/or arrive early. And then there is the homework, lesson planning, grading, and let’s not forget being on-call after hours until 9 PM. 

Horn said Marks told him that the year before she taught there, the school lost nine of 20 teachers at semester break, with one fired and the rest quitting. KIPP officials said the loss was six of 31 staffers, with one being fired and the rest leaving for graduate school, marriage, new jobs or a return home. They said the teacher retention rate was 60 percent when Marks was there but has increased to 82 percent after teacher duties were “drastically reduced.”

First, what teacher who has signed a contract for the year leaves at semester break, unless she is under duress?  Secondly, if KIPP did, indeed, have 31 “staffers,” only 20 of those staffers were teachers. Did Mathews ask KIPP how many “staffers” at the school were not teachers? Of course not.  Thirdly, the 60 percent retention rate that KIPP admits would seem to support everything that Jessica has pointed out about the unsustainable job of teaching at KIPP.

Marks was crushed at being dismissed but also told Horn in retrospect that “getting fired from KIPP was probably the best thing that has ever happened to me.” Four years later, back in Prescott Valley, she was named the Yavapai County teacher of the year. Horn published a photo of her smiling as she held up the trophy.

I was happy to see that. We need all kinds of teachers. The KIPP Austin Academy has shown strong student performance for several years. Nationally, KIPP has results verified by an independent firm, Mathematica Policy Research, good enough to justify choosing and training teachers its way, even if it is hard on some aspirants such as Marks.

Billionaires buying research for their favorite paternalistic social control projects is nothing new.  James Anderson's book on education of blacks in the South following the Civil War reminds us that it was white philanthropists who were the crucial backers of the dehumanizing Hampton Model of schooling, which sought to acquire from black citizens “complicity in their own subjugation” as second-class citizens who would work hard and be nice.  Everyone from James Eastman to Andrew Carnegie to Rutherford B. Hayes supported the Hampton Model of indoctrination and miseducation for blacks.

Mathematica has collected at least $5 million from The Atlantic Philanthropies, and then there's KIPP's own payment of $1.2 million to Mathematica to “verify” KIPP data.  At the end of the Acknowledgements in each of the numerous and ongoing Mathematica research papers that Mathematica posts without benefit of peer review, Mathematica includes something like this, which can be found in the final 2013 Report: 

Finally, the study and this report benefited greatly from input at various stages from Danielle Eisenberg, Jonathan Cowan, and Steve Mancini at the KIPP Foundation, as well as Carrie Hahnel at The Education Trust—West, Ila Deshmukh Towery at TNTP [The New Teacher Project], and Jason Atwood at Teach For America.

KIPP’s method for “choosing and training teachers” was institutionalized long before the venture philanthropists paid for the “independent research” to which Mathews refers.  The KIPP corporate methods were chosen because they are consistent with the “no excuses” paternalistic corporate model of segregating and controlling the children of the poor.  The KIPP Model represents a conscious attempt to neurologically alter and culturally sterilize children, rather than spending money to end child poverty or to implement a schooling model that will improve equity, diversity, and achievement at the same time. 

If you look at the determined resistance among parents on New York’s Upper West Side to KIPP’s recently announced plan to open a “diverse”KIPP school there, you will see that thinking people know the swindle that the big money investors, hedge funders, and the corporate paternalists are trying to sell—and they are not buying it anymore.

In 20 years, KIPP will have been added to the dustbin of bad education ideas and labeled as a prime paternalistic example of racist corporate colonialism applied to public education in the early 21^st Century.  KIPP and Jay Mathews are on the wrong side of history.

I hope readers will go to Mathews’ column and check out the many insightful comments by readers there, most of whom are skeptical, disgusted, or appalled at Mathews’ unguarded abuse of his position of power to go after a former KIPP teacher should have long ago received, at minimum, an apology from KIPP. 

Jay Mathews' Sisyphean Defense of KIPP

Even as the drumbeat grows louder each day against the dehumanizing "no excuses" charter reform schools, the Washington Post's Jay Mathews holds out in his cushioned cell of corporate reportage that is designed to intercept and deaden any protest against Jay's favorite billion dollar corporate welfare charity, the KIPP Foundation. 

For Jay's skinny-ties-and-white-socks generation of old privileged white guys, the allure of the KIPP Model has always been KIPP's false promise to dissolve the education problem of the disadvantaged without the need to implement expensive, unpopular (among whites) social and economic interventions that acknowledge poverty as a systemic cause for education deficits.  Following a long tradition of racist social policy, the KIPP Model treats the multitudinous manifestations of poverty as resulting from cultural and character deficiencies among the poor, which must be stringently treated with abrasive behavioral solvents that break down the nasty residues left by poverty.  In other words, cleanse the children's character/culture, rather than doing something about ending child poverty.

The KIPP Model's miseducative and racist whitewash is implemented by white-girl schoolteachers who are marginally prepared and tyrannically managed by white male overseers.  Whether employed by Success Academy or KIPP or Uncommon Schools one of the other KIPP knock-offs, the KIPP Model claims to wash away the cultural grime of the poor, thus leaving behind middle class versions of black and brown children whose character has been fortified by pipe dreams of Ivy League colleges that, unbeknownst to them, remain the inherited intellectual preserves of the elite.

When a new book appears that is critical of the KIPP Model's callous disregard for democratic values, humane treatment of children, and responsible public accountability for the billions of public dollars sent each year to the KIPP Model corporate hell schools, Jay is quick to spin, defend, and, otherwise, try to upend any such criticism, whether empirically based or logically argued.  He tried as much when my book came out last year (my responses here and here), and this week he has once again sprung to KIPP's defense following the publication this fall of another book that criticizes KIPP's dehumanizing and racist practices.

Try as he may, however, Jay has no way to refute the glaring fact that the KIPP Model embraces apartheid schooling for black and brown disadvantaged children.  In responding to the observation that KIPP is "segregated by design," Mathews whines this week that KIPPs are "mostly located in low income neighborhoods where children need better instruction." 

Indeed.  Schools using the KIPP Model are intent upon making the case that segregation and poverty don't matter, and that test scores can be wrung out of the poorest and most isolated communities, thus proving that working harder and being nicer are all that is required to upend generations of institutional racism.  KIPP, in fact, goes looking for these poorest communities when deciding upon new KIPP locations.  For in poor communities of color, KIPP encounters the least resistance to inhumane practices that middle class parents would never allow, and in the poorest communities KIPP managers encounter minimal amounts of oversight and accountability.  There they have free rein to impose their draconian and corrupt experiments.

It is in these poor communities that KIPP is free to exercise its extreme paternalism and zero tolerance programs that require total compliance among children and parents, where the goals of intellectual and ethical development are displaced by a rigid and isolating corporate character training that places blame for society's most egregious moral failures of the past or future at the feet of the most vulnerable children who are expected to blame themselves should they fail to live up to KIPP's expectations.

At some point, we may assume that Jay will stop pretending that his feigned stupidity will protect him from the culpability that he shares in KIPPs' crimes against children.  Or maybe not.

Review of Jay Mathews' "Work Hard, Be Nice"

An earlier post linking my review to Jay Mathews' tribute to KIPP got lost in the ether somehow.  So here is the link to "The KULT of KIPP: An Essay Reiew" published at Education Review in 2009.

Mathews Reviews His Own Book

When Jay Mathews rushed out a response to his WaPo editors before my book was even on sale, I wasn't surprised that he would disparaging in his assessment of this, or any, book that provides a critique of the segregated corporate KIPP schools.  

What did surprise me, however, is that he would post a picture of his own book, which was published six years ago as a exuberant paean to the "founders," Feinberg and Levin, as they are referred to by their acolytes.  At the end of Part 2 of his review, published yesterday, he invites the reader to read his book, as well as mine, and decide for yourself who is right and who is wrong.  The problem with this proposal is that the two books, with a couple of exceptions that Mathews seizes upon, cover very different terrain and ask very different questions. 

In fact, Jay's book asks no questions at all but, rather, sets out to tell us how, in a wooden sort of fairy tale fashion, how "two inspired teachers created the most promising schools in America." Mathews would have us believe that this sprouting and kudzu paced growth of KIPP resulted from two young geniuses inspired by a "magical" teacher godmother who sprinkled her fairy dust on them and gave them her blessing. 

The facts, however, are a bit more complicated and prosaic.  KIPP sprang from the corporate conceptual ground provided by Teach for America and its market-centered and publicly-fed neoliberal agenda, and it was fertilized and manicured by tons of tax-sheltered cash provided initially by renowned conservative GAP founder, Donald Fisher.  It did not hurt, either, that KIPP was asked to do a skit at the 2000 National Republican Convention.

As for the godmother teacher in Jay's fairy tale, Harriet Ball, her ideas were harvested by the KIPP machine, and she was left unpaid for her intellectual property.  

The questions that I ask in the preface of Work Hard, Be Hard: Journeys through "No Excuses" Teaching are below (from the Preface):

As an antidote to the KIPP Foundation’s marketing and public relations outreach, which can be found in any number of examples from both print and non-print media, this book offers a critical eye and raises serious questions related to public culpability for a punitive type of tax-supported segregated schooling that our dominant culture celebrates only for children who are disenfranchised by poverty and discrimination. 

As one former KIPP teacher wondered aloud near the end of our interview, would such schooling practices that we see at KIPP be allowed for the children of white philanthropists who fund these schools.  Or would KIPP practices be allowed in the private schools attended by the supportive politicians’ children, or for the KIPP administrators and teachers who would never allow their own offspring to be subjected to a harsh, total compliance charter school like KIPP?

            Readers are asked to keep in mind this central question that I try to answer throughout this book: As a result of the spread of the No Excuses charter school teaching model exemplified by KIPP, “who wins and who loses, and by what mechanisms of power?” (Flyvbjerg, 2000).  In addition to trying to answer that core question, this book attempts to unravel a number of conundrums and apparent paradoxes:

1. How did the spread of an unsustainable boutique education intervention like KIPP reach its exemplary status among the advocates of education reform?
2. How did high achievement expectations become exemplified by total compliance enforcements that are applied only to the segregated and economically disadvantaged children?
3. How did economic and social advantages and resources become insignificant factors to school achievement only for those who don’t have such advantages and resources?
4. What rationale is used for insisting that children who are handicapped by poverty and all its attendant problems will achieve equally on standardized measures with children who have every economic and social advantage? 
5. How do the grim and punitive environments of No Excuses schools remain underreported by the media and, otherwise, ignored by policymakers and child welfare advocates?
6. What may serve as more humane, sustainable, diverse, and democratic alternatives to the No Excuses charter school teaching model?

      By presenting the firsthand facts about teaching within total compliance No Excuses schools, this book goes beyond accounts offered in news features, articles, and interviews that focus only on KIPP Model’s test scores and its goals for expanding college opportunities among economically disadvantaged children.  In short, this book offers a naturalistic palliative to the naïve and misleading portrayals of No Excuses schooling that have garnered support among political and economic elites.

      From discipline that crosses over from rigorous intent to abusive practice, and from teacher expectations that go beyond the upper reaches of possibility into the stratosphere of the absurd, this book presents accounts by former teachers who forthrightly share experiences in total compliance schools that have not been heard before and that are not likely to be soon forgotten.

Finally, Work Hard, Be Hard… examines new developments in No Excuses schooling practices that, in addition to academic remediation, now focus on psychological interventions intended to alter children’s neurological schemas in order to effect changes in their emotional and socio-cultural values and behaviors.  Fraught with potential for abuse by non-professionals who remain laser-focused on test performance and grades for “performance character,” these latest developments are explicated and then contrasted with other orientations and practices that acknowledge both the sociological and psychological sides of children’s experiences.  In doing so, I hope to reawaken the virtues of teaching and learning within the expansive boundaries of the science and art of humane pedagogy applied to children who require the most caring, qualified, and experienced teachers.

Jay Mathews and KIPP Journalism

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by Jim Horn

Before my book on teaching in KIPP Model schools went on sale yesterday, Jay Mathews and the “No Excuses” charter empire were already at work.  In fact, Jay had already delivered to his Washington Post editors a two-part response/review to my book.  Part 1 appeared yesterday.

Jay’s dubious assessment of Work Hard, Be Hard… may reassure KIPP’s corporate patrons, venture philanthropists, and the hedge funders that all is well in "No Excuses Land," but his remarks do nothing to shed light on the intent and content of my book, which was conceived and executed with the principal aim of allowing former No Excuses teachers to share their stories with the public. At the same time, I wanted to show that these grueling accounts of life inside "No Excuses" corporate charter schools reflect the realization of a paternalistic social vision and a hard-fisted privatization agenda that jointly constitute two of the greatest threats to democracy in our era.  

Because “No Excuses” charters are key to achieving this corporate-sponsored vision and mission, it is, indeed, important that Jay Mathews go all out to downplay my book and the importance of hearing former KIPP teachers’ shared experiences of life inside KIPP.  For if parents, policymakers, and prospective teachers come to understand the patronizing aims, draconian methods, and unhealthy outcomes of the KIPP Model charter schools, then a major tool of the education privatization and social control agenda could be jeopardized. 

Here is a the first clip from Jay’s Part 1 that requires a response:

I wish the book [Work Hard, Be Hard] were not so one-sided. In the great tradition of American polemics, Horn is entitled to his relentlessly anti-KIPP view. But he never satisfactorily explains how a charter network, if it is as harmful to teachers and children as he says, could attract nearly 70,000 students to 183 campuses in 20 states and the District.

I should first acknowledge my utter failure in this regard, for if there is anything I have learned from my years of sparring with the heavyweight champ of KIPP apologists, it is that there is no way to satisfactorily explain to Jay Mathews, at least, how the KIPP Model could reflect anything other than the spit-shined corporate image that he and the Washington Post editorial board have helped to carefully polish for the past decade. My book, however, explores in some measurable depth how we have come to fund thousands of these “No Excuses” charter schools that educate the brown and underprivileged in ways that the white and powerful have chosen for them.

And while Jay has remained steadfast in his support of the “no excuses” philosophy when applied to KIPP students and their teachers, he has found a litany of excuses for looking the other way when confronted with the kinds of abusive school practices that Jay would never, ever allow to be practiced on his own grandchildren. 

My book is not at all the first opportunity that Jay has had to use his position of trust to defend the indefensible.  When confronted, for instance, in 2009 with a detailed, formal state report of abusive and humiliating practices against children by one of KIPP’s school leaders (click here to read the Report in its entirety), Jay Mathews accepted the KIPP principal’s denial of the charges of abuse and illegal acts as fact. Having received an assurance from the alleged offender that student accounts, parent accounts, and school personnel accounts were all wrong, Jay was happy to pursue the story no further.

As blogger and public official, Thomas Mertz, observed in back in 2009 when the KIPP Fresno events unfolded, this kind of spin we may expect from public relations firms out to protect corporate clients, but we cannot accept this kind of unquestioning fealty from those represent themselves as journalists: “… the first step in spinning a story is to ignore any information that undermines your position; the second step is to include information that supports your biases, and throughout use every trick in the book to evoke sympathy for your cause…”

And here is a second clip that deserves comment:

…Having been refused access to KIPP Memphis two years ago, he [Horn] asked me for help. A KIPP spokesman told me the school’s staff had rejected the request because Horn had suggested in one piece that KIPP schools were like concentration camps.

I previously explained to Jay how this KIPP allegation is false in an email dated May 27, 2014, an email that followed Jay’s failed effort to get me permission from KIPP’s home office to visit a KIPP school:

KIPP’s well-financed meme that I called KIPP schools concentration camps has been around for a few years now, and it began when a KIPP fan in New Orleans asked me a question following a presentation at AERA.  I did not say at AERA or elsewhere that KIPP schools are concentration camps, even though I did reference concentration camps in response to the question as to whether or not I have ever visited a KIPP school. I said, no, in fact, I have not, nor have I ever visited a WWII concentration camp.  But the documentation is clear what it was like there in those camps (despite the Holocaust deniers), just as it is clear, thanks to evidence supplied by former teachers, what life is like in a KIPP school–despite the KIPP propaganda pieces.

And even if KIPP’s claim were true, is that enough to bar even the most skeptical researcher from access to a KIPP school?  What kind of exalted petulance are we witnessing? Or does KIPP want to keep out anyone who has looked underneath the KIPP “shine” that is reapplied with daily regularity to disguise some ugly truths?   

Even though I did not get to visit KIPP Memphis, I did find out subsequently that one Memphis KIPP school has test scores are low enough to put them repeatedly on the state's priority schools list (list here), which is comprised of the bottom five percent of test performers. Could a KIPP be shuttered for low performance?  Would the Washington Post cover the story?

Mathews ends his Part 1 with this, which cannot go unanswered:

KIPP teachers welcome into their classrooms students who have said worse things about them. KIPP schools have the power to invite Horn if they want to. Why not give it a try? The vibrant creativity of KIPP teachers refutes his dark perspective, and may persuade him to interview at least some of the many people who love those schools.

Did I say something derogatory about KIPP teachers that I missed?  What was it?  Mathews' feeble attempt to incite KIPP teachers to rush to the defense of KIPP, Inc. will surely fall short if those teachers come to read my book’s recorded accounts by former “no excuses” teachers, many of whom remain friends with teachers who are still in the “no excuses” schools. 

While many of the stories that these former teachers relate are difficult to read for their severity, there remains with most of those interviewed a solid appreciation and empathy for those who continue to struggle within a system that regularly grinds up teachers and spits them out.

Finally, despite Mathews’ clear suggestion that I intentionally avoided interviewing former KIPP teachers who had more positive accounts to share, let me repeat what I have told Mathews previously:  I interviewed every former “no excuses” teacher who contacted me and volunteered to be interviewed.  With one exception, those teachers chose to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals from a system of corporate foundation influence that reaches into every corner of the educational ecosystem.  I will continue to respect that.

KIPPster Jay Mathews, Practiced in the Art of Deception

Leader Feinberg

That's a line from the Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want," of course.  If Jay could get what he wants, it would be a KIPP in every black or brown community of America, where Alpha male CEO "school leaders," with  shaved heads, white shirts, and bad attitudes ride herd on a clueless group of white female TFA "corp members," who were successfully brainwashed during the 6 weeks of basic teacher training to run themselves and their students into the ground if the Fisher-trained school leader commands it.  Whatever is good for the Family.

If Jay is not already part of the Family, he is trying hard to prove his worth.  In his latest celebration of the final installment of the Mathematical KIPP study, he begins by making stuff up, i. e., lying:

The $4 million study was paid for by the Atlantic Philanthropies, which focuses on improving the lives of disadvantaged and vulnerable people. It will not be the last word on KIPP and other organizations that employ strong principals, creative teacher teams, extra time and strong rules of behavior. But the report provides more data for those of us arguing about this, and sheds new light on what works and doesn’t work at KIPP.

Fact: The only, though substantial, donation to KIPP from Atlantic Philanthropies (AP) was in 2006 for $14+ million. And AP never commissioned a KIPP study from Mathematica. To say this study was paid for by AP is simply untrue. KIPP bought this study from its hundreds of millions of dollars, and it would be just as easy to assume that the $4 million for the study had come from a mix of cash from the Waltons or the Bradley Foundation. Or Gates.  

How was the study shaped by KIPP's paid handlers?  This is from the Acknowledgements:

. . .the study and this report benefited greatly from input at various stages from Danielle Eisenberg, Jonathan Cowan, and Steve Mancini at the KIPP Foundation, as well as Carrie Hahnel at The Education Trust—West, Ila Deshmukh Towery at TNTP, and Jason Atwood at Teach For America. 

To Jay's credit, he does mention in his final paragraph that the study found some negative outcomes, despite the KIPP and TFA handlers:

Mathematica found that the schools had no significant impact on persistence and educational aspirations, based on surveys of students and parents. But KIPP students were more likely to report misbehavior such as losing their temper or giving teachers a hard time. 

Was that because they were more prone to mouth off or more prone to admit they had mouthed off? 

Actually, Jay, the researchers found that KIPP students are more apt to lie than to be more "prone to admit" their actions.  Trained as as they are in "grit" production but not so much in honesty, these children are more prone to prevaricate after the KIPP-notization process:   "the findings suggest that enrollment in a KIPP school leads to an increase in the likelihood that students report engaging in undesirable behavior such as lying to or arguing with parents" (p. xii).   

Does an association with KIPP cause one to lie, Jay??

The study does not mention the learned helplessness displayed by KIPPsters or the off-campus acting out that results from children in pressure cooker schools 9-10 hours a day.  

And this study only examines attitudes, behaviors, etc. in the 13 lottery KIPP schools in the sample, where teacher pay is higher, classes are smaller, and turnover is lower than other KIPPs. And we only have info from those who signed consent forms. So we know nothing of the behavior and perception issues of the other 31 schools in the study or the vast majority of KIPPsters who are locked down in total compliance penal pedagogy schools at the other 112 KIPP camps. 

There is more that Mathews leaves out, including the fact that KIPPs have about a third fewer special ed and ELL students.  I address some of these, including the misleading attrition numbers, in this post.