With the help of the media and national marketing campaigns paid for by white philanthropists and their hedge fund managers, the "no excuses" KIPP Model has had a huge impact on others charter schools, as well as on public schools that serve the poor.
Below is Chapter 13 from Work Hard, Be Hard: Journeys through 'No Excuses' Teaching (2016).
Chapter
13
The
Reach of the KIPP Model
During
the early years of charter schools, policymakers who were eager to see various types
of charters expand emphasized the philosophy of “let a thousand flowers bloom,”
which led to new charter school growth with a variety of pedagogical approaches
and organizational options. By 2009,
however, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was looking to discourage the
proliferation of models and to replicate and scale up the test score successes
among the charter school industry’s “biggest brands” (Toch, 2009, p. 26).
With most of
funded charter research focused on test score successes of KIPP, the influence
of the KIPP Model reaches far beyond the KIPP’s 183 schools. For the 6,700 other charter schools with 2.89
million students (in 2015), the KIPP Model has been and remains the charter
school system to emulate.
With
billions of dollars in federal Race to the Top (RTTT) grants available in
2009-2010 to fund new charter schools to replace as many as 5,000 low-scoring
public schools nationwide, highly touted charter models like KIPP suddenly
became even more prominent. Even in
2009, the short list of highly regarded charter chains, which included Aspire,
Green Dot, Yes Prep, and Uncommon Schools, all sought to emulate the longer
hours, high expectation, and No Excuses of KIPP.
By 2014,
there were more than a dozen other highly-touted charter networks emulating the
No Excuses and “joyful rigor” of the KIPP Model. These charter chains and those
that share their commitment to the No Excuses ideology received the lion’s
share of RTTT grant money designated to charter schools in 2010 and 2011, as
well as from other federal charter grant programs in those years and since. In
October 2014, for instance, the US DOE Charter School Program (CSP) announced
$39.7 million in grants to “expand high quality charter schools,” with almost
$36 million of that total going to KIPP and the charter networks listed below. KIPP received more than third of the total ($13,789,074):
Achievement First Public Charter Schools (29
sites NY, CT, RI)
Alliance College-Ready Public Schools
(26
sites CA)
American Quality Schools
(8 sites IL, IN)
Ascend Learning (11 sites NY)
Aspire Public Schools (38 sites CA, TN)
Concept Schools
(32 sites OH, IL)
Gestalt Community Schools (4 sites TN)
Green Dot Public Schools
(22 sites CA, TN)
Harmony Public Schools (43 sites TX)
IDEA Public Schools (18 sites TX)
LEAD Public Schools (5 sites TN)
Lighthouse Academies
(18 sites AK, IL, IN, MI,
NY, OK, WI)
Mastery Charter Schools
(17 sites NJ)
Noble Network of Charter Schools
(17 sites IL)
Partnerships to Uplift Communities
(16 sites
CA)
St. HOPE Public Schools (4 sites CA)
Success Academy Charter Schools (32 sites NYC)
Uncommon Schools (41 sites NY, NJ, MA)
Uplift Education (13 sites TX)
Yes Prep (14 sites TX, TN)
The
federal Charter School Program (CSP) was funded at $253 million in 2014, and
President Obama’s 2015 budget requested $375 million. A powerful charter advocacy group, the
National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, announced its goal, however, of
$500 million per year for the CSP.
Outside
the charter movement, the KIPP Model has also had an impact in how school is
conducted. With increasing frequency, the public schools in urban areas that
are fighting to survive the next round of school closings have taken to
emulating KIPP’s unrelenting focus (Dillon, 2011) on test scores, the harsh
behavioral codes, the inculcation of performance character traits, and the
marginalization of subjects and activities that are not tested. Even if KIPP were to disappear overnight, its
influence would likely continue for some time, as the grammar, syntax, and tone
of urban schooling have taken on a number of KIPP’s more antediluvian aspects disinterred
from previous generations.
Along with interviews conducted with former KIPP
teachers, three teachers from two other No Excuses charter networks shared
their stories for this book. One was
from Ascend Learning, Inc. and the other two were St. Hope Public Schools,
Inc. These teachers the questions asked
of former KIPP teachers, and the overlap of their responses was striking. This should come as no surprise, perhaps,
since both charter chains share organizational and pedagogical features derived
from the KIPP Model. At Ascend Learning
(2015), for instance, their website states,
At Ascend, teachers assertively shape students’ habits,
values, and aspirations. Teachers hold stark
convictions: knowledge is the ticket to a better future. Effort, not talent, is
the determinant of success, and students are the masters of their own
destinies. They can beat the odds, there are no shortcuts, and the goal for
every child is college.
At St. HOPE Public Schools,
KIPP’s Five Pillars provide the schools’ philosophical and strategic
orientation, even though no credit or citation is offered on St. Hope’s website
(St. Hope, n.d.):
These basic principles form the five pillars are responsible
[sic] for the success of St. HOPE Public
Schools.
1. High Expectations
St. HOPE Public Schools has high expectations for academic achievement and
conduct that are clearly defined, measurable, and make no excuses based on the
background of students. Students, parents, teachers, and staff create and
reinforce a culture of achievement and support, through a range of formal and
informal rewards and consequences for academic performance and behavior.
2. Choice and Commitment
Students, their parents, and the staff of St. HOPE Public Schools choose to
participate in the program. No one is assigned or forced to attend. Everyone
must make and uphold a commitment to their school and to each other to put in
the time and effort required to achieve success.
3. More Time
St. HOPE Public Schools knows that there are no shortcuts when it comes to
success in academics and life. With an extended school day, week, and year,
students have more time in the classroom to acquire the academic knowledge and
skills that prepare them for competitive colleges, as well as more
opportunities to engage in diverse extracurricular experiences.
4. Focus on Results
St. HOPE Public Schools focuses relentlessly on high student performance
through standardized tests and other objective measures. Just as there are no
shortcuts, there are no exceptions. Students are expected to achieve a level of
academic performance that will enable them to succeed in the nation’s best
colleges and the world beyond.
5. Power to Lead
St. HOPE Public Schools strongly believes the measure of a person’s success is
in what he or she gives to others. Through community service, students develop
a strong sense of civic responsibility and establish the foundation for a
lifetime of meaningful community involvement. Students also deepen and
demonstrate their learning, are empowered to become leaders, and impact the
community in which they live.
As at KIPP, St. HOPE depends heavily on
Teach for America teachers. At St.
HOPE’s middle school, PS7, 15 of the 18 teachers were active TFA corps members
in 2014, and one other teacher was a former corps member. One of the former St. HOPE teachers noted,
“our principal, our deans, our superintendent, our HR people, our teachers that
get recognized frequently, are all Teach for America alumni.” She said that
with St. HOPE’s embrace of TFA, the “. .
. culture completely shifted. And it turned into a teach-to-the-test type
environment. And you know, suddenly all of our administration, there were tons
of turnover, and then there were tons of turnovers as far as teachers are concerned—so
the St. Hope now is just a completely different place than it was three or four
years ago.”
Whether we are examining teaching
strategies, curriculum, stress levels, management, discipline, attrition,
school environment, parent relations, or intended outcomes, similar issues and
problems are encountered by No Excuses charter school teachers, whether at KIPP
or one of the many KIPP knockoffs. The
teacher from Brooklyn Ascend, for instance, found that questioning the school
leader’s decisions “wasn’t tolerated,” and that “teachers were treated with the
same total compliance attitude as the children were.”
After being denied a day off near the end
of the school year to help a friend who had injured himself in an accident, the
audacity to “question things” earned him a blunt invitation from the school
leader to resign:
My
friend had fallen down the stairs. I
needed to take the day. It was the third
day that I'd asked to take off the whole year.
The other two times I was sick. I
didn't feel like I was screwing anybody over by taking that day. My friend needed the help, [but] our school
Director, he didn't want to hear it. He
told me that it seems that I had recently stopped being part of their mission,
and that it wasn't helpful to have somebody on the team that wasn't part of the
mission. He said that I should resign.
She said the first year teachers from TFA “got
the least grief” because they did not ask questions and were good at following
directions: “if they had to read a script that says, ‘now watch while I show
you how to do this,’ then they’d do it.”
As with many KIPP schools, Ascend Learning’s strict use of Doug Lemov’s Teach like a champion provides
justification for total compliance for both students and teachers: “There is one acceptable
percentage of students following a direction: 100 percent. Less, and your
authority is subject to interpretation, situation, and motivation”
(Lemov, 2010, p. 168). Translated into
practice, Lemov’s “technique #36” became part of an authoritarian mandate that
crippled this teacher’s capacity to be an effective teacher:
Lemov's
idea is that if you don't have one hundred percent compliance—one hundred
percent authority—then others will think they can question. There's something to that, maybe, but I think
that idea just got taken way, way too far at the school I was at. If a kid even giggles. The kids weren't even allowed to giggle. If a student giggled too loud, we had to mark
it down that they were being disruptive.
If I'm reading a story aloud, I'm okay with my kids giggling every now
and then. That's what kids do. That shows that they're listening. It shows they're interested. We had to mark it because any little
misbehavior was a threat to the one hundred percent authority, and one hundred
percent compliance. It was just so
exhausting, and it left no time. I was
there for a year, and I feel like I never got to know the kids.
As at KIPP, much of the school day was silent,
even whole class trips to the bathroom followed the HALLS dictum:
Hands by your sides
Attention forward
Lines straight
Lines together
Silent always
When asked if there remained an image of Brooklyn Ascend
that stands out to her, she said:
The image that
comes to mind is this kid with mouth closed, with hands by his side, and really
not looking happy. There wasn't a lot of
happiness there. The image that comes to
mind is kids with either their hands folded, or their hands by their side, with
their mouths shut. Also, really unhappy
teachers. I should have picked up on
that, and I wish I had picked up on that before I ever started working
there. The teachers at that
school—everybody just seemed annoyed and frustrated all the time. There was so much scowling. I got the impression that the kids were
pests. That's what comes to mind.
Another teacher who had
worked at both KIPP and at St. HOPE had similar reactions to the total
compliance enforcement. She said she had
learned a great deal working in a charter school before quitting to go to work
in a public school, and that she was grateful for the experience. However, she said, “I wouldn’t wish it on
anyone who wanted to be a teacher for the long-term.” When I asked why not, she said, “It’s exhausting. It’s demoralizing. And
it’s just, there are parts of it that are kind of a joke, you know, as far as
principals being promoted [from] within, after being teachers for two years,
and things like that. You know, totally unqualified people running every aspect
of the school.”
In comparing the two charter school
environments, she found St. HOPE a “step down” from KIPP. When I asked for specifics, she said:
It’s a step down from KIPP as far as the
commitment, because they didn’t require us to host Saturday school, which was a
requirement at KIPP. I had to be at school, you know, every Saturday. So PS7
did not require us to do that. PS7 did not require us to host students after
school and provide them with dinner. You know, we didn’t have to do that.
Whereas, at KIPP, we did.
The
other St. HOPE teacher had previously served as a teacher, teacher coach, and
public school administrator at both the building and central office levels
before returning to middle school teaching at St. HOPE. She echoed a number of the concerns that I
had heard from former KIPP teachers. She
felt pushed into an unfamiliar “mold” that she felt was “disrespectful to the
students.” As someone with a background
in research, she found the school’s student expectations “very contrary to what
research says about adolescent kids’ need to be able to grow and mature.” When
I asked her to be specific she said,
…all of student movement and activity is
controlled—l mean completely controlled by the adults. And by that I mean the
expectation is that students aren’t supposed to be talking in the classroom,
where my belief system says that children can’t learn if they can’t talk—and
that structured opportunities to practice language are critical for all
kids.
She
was visited on a regular basis and told her she was “too nice to the kids” and
“too soft on them.” She found “the
behavior that they modeled was, you know, very militaristic screaming at the
kids—I mean, shouting.” She found that
all the students in the school “were expected to line up in silence, facing
front, and accompanied by an adult for every transition in their day.” She
said,
…we’d waste 10 minutes [at every
transition] lining kids up to meet these expectations, making them, you know,
stand silently for a few minutes, walk in silence. If they didn’t, stop them
and, you know, do it again. And it just seems bizarre to me. And I tried to
meet the expectations of the school, to behave in the way that I was expected
to behave, but it just felt awful. I mean, it felt wrong in every way. And when
I found myself shouting at kids I just said, this is not right. This is not who
I am, and this is, I can’t do this.
As
at KIPP, St. HOPE uses the student paycheck as a way to control student
behavior. Students start the week with
100 dollars in their paycheck and must end the week with at least 70 dollars. During the week, teachers must carry the
clipboard with them at all times and record additions and deletions to student
paycheck totals for any offense.
Students who got to Friday with less than 70 dollars on their checks were
subjected to “culture reboot.” The offenders were escorted to lunch, where
. . .they would
get their food and go eat lunch in silence in a large room that they had, and
some of them would have to turn and actually face the wall, but they weren’t
allowed to talk. So they had to eat their lunch in silence and then just sit
there and do worksheets for the 90 minutes that was this electives period.
She said that everything
about the control of movement and control of thinking left her with the sense
that “everything about it was cult-like,” and the emphasis on team and school
identity could not disguise a school environment where “kids do not feel
connected to their school.” Her
realization that her first year with St. HOPE would be her last came on one of
her many late evenings at school, as she tried to finish all the work that had
be done the St. HOPE way:
I actually tried to drink the Kool-Aid
for a while. And so I think there was really a moment where, you know, one of
the many, many, many evenings that I was at the school site at nine o’clock
trying to finish up what we were supposed to have done, just thinking, this is
insane. This is certainly not good for me, and I really don’t think it’s good
for them, and I just, I can’t drink the Kool-Aid anymore.
When asked what she would
tell a friend who was thinking about applying at St. HOPE, she said, “I’d say, don’t do it. Don’t do it. Let
me help you get a job somewhere else. I’ve helped three teachers leave there
since I left. What I would tell them is to expect untenable work expectations
that are very discouraging.”
New
York Times Magazine
reported in 2006 that KIPP, Achievement First, Uncommon Schools, Amistad
Academy in Connecticut, and North Star Academy in New Jersey consistently
shared strategies and methods aimed to produce the high test scores. That list of KIPP emulators has proliferated
since then, and the emulation of KIPP methods with it. For instance, KIPP’s SLANT model for
classroom behavior (sitting up, listening, asking questions, nodding, and
tracking the teacher) is a widely shared strategy among No Excuses
charters. New York Times reporter, Paul Tough (2006), noted that David Levin
believes that, unlike KIPPsters, “Americans of a certain background
learn these methods for taking in information early on and employ them instinctively”
(para 39).
Because
KIPP students or the hundreds of thousands of other segregated charter students
in No Excuses lockdown schools are not among those “Americans of a certain
background,” they “need to be taught the methods explicitly.” Perhaps more eyebrows would have been raised
if No Excuses charter operators like Levin did not have gifted writers like
Paul Tough to make the paternalists’ condescension at least vaguely couched.
If
Tough had stated explicitly that Levin and Feinberg believe that brown and
black children of poor parents must be explicitly programmed to sit up, listen,
nod, and track the teacher in order to avoid chaos in the classroom, then the
KIPP Model’s ideology of the “Broken Windows” paternalism would have been clear
for all to see. This would surely
require the re-framing of the civil rights rhetoric of No Excuses schooling, at
least from those elites not entirely sanguine about corporate missionary work
aimed to isolate and treat, by behavioral and neurological alteration, the
defects of poor children.
References
Dillon, S. (2011, March 31). Study says charter network has financial
advantages over public schools. The New York Times. Retrieved from
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/31/education/31kipp.html?_r=1&
Lemov, D.
(2010). Teach like a champion: 49
techniques that put students on the path to college (K-12). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
St. Hope Public Schools. (n.d).
Five pillars. Retrieved from
http://sthopepublicschools.org/five-pillars/
Toch, T.
(2009). Charter-management
organizations: Expansion, survival, and impact.
Education Week, 29 (9), 26-27,
32.
Tough, P.
(2006, November 26). What it
takes to make a student. New York Times Magazine. Retrieved from
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/magazine/26tough.html?pagewanted=print&_r=0
