Lately I have been reading Work Hard, Be Nice, the story of the Knowledge is Power Program, or KIPP. KIPP was started in the early 90′s by two men in their early 20′s. Mike Feinberg and David Levin, two alums of Teach for America, decided to do something about the crushing conditions they found in the public school system in urban Houston, TX.
This story is gripping. I’m reading it at the right time; it is renewing my vision, energy, and passion at a time in the year when those three things are at a low in my life. Recently I have found myself bitter, angry, and perpetually upset at what I see around me (and in myself) in education, and this inspiring story of two unlikely heroes is lifting my spirits that success is quite possible, even in the most dire environments. Their story is also very humbling to me–I was beginning to mope and feel sorry for myself about my problems (I never imagined anyone, much less a national teacher of the year, would have to teach class on the concrete in Texas heat every year!), but reading this book has cured me of that.
I could go on and on about what I’m learning through this book, but I’ll let the fellas speak for themselves. Here are a few videos about KIPP and their founders:
KIPP welcome video–
Mike Feinberg, co-founder of KIPP–
Feinberg again–
David Levin talks about KIPP NYC–
_________________________________________________________________________________________
If you liked this post, please consider subscribing to my RSS feed (RSS button at the top right in the sidebar).
If you agree with the following sentiments, or feel young people should see this perspective, please circulate it where current Teach For America teachers or potential recruits, may see it.
I am veteran teacher from Houston seeking a dialogue with current and past Teach for America teachers regarding a pattern of TFA leaders and alumni in leadership positions promoting conservative ideas and profiting from close relationships with reactionary corporations while presumptuously claiming to be the new civil rights movement. I first became aware of this when a former local TFA Director, now a school board member, recently proposed to fire teachers based on test scores and opposed allowing us to vote to have a single union. Having won school board positions in several cities around the country, former-TFA personnel are apparently pursuing these sorts of policies as an agenda.
The conservative-TFA nexus began when Union Carbide sponsored Wendy Kopp’s initial efforts to create Teach for America. Union Carbide’s negligence had caused the worst industrial accident in history, in Bhopal, India. The number of casualties was as large as 100,000, and Union Carbide did everything possible to minimize taking responsibility.
Ms. Kopp wrote in her book she nearly went to work for the Edison Project, and was all but saved in financial hard times by their managerial assistance. The Edison Project, founded by a Tennessee entrepreneur, was an effort to replace public schools run by elected school boards with for-profit, corporate-run schools. Ms. Kopp’s husband, Richard Barth, was an Edison executive before taking over as CEO of the KIPP’s national foundation, where he has sought to decertify its New York City unions.
In 2000, two brilliant TFA alumni, the founders of KIPP Academy, joined the Bush’s at the Republican National Convention in 2000. This was pivotal for Bush, since as Governor had no genuine educational achievements of his own These charter schools do great service, but they start with families that are committed to education. They claim to be improving public schools by offering competition in the market-place, but they take the best and leave the rest. It’s not a level playing field.
Superintendent Michelle Rhee’s prescription for improving D.C. Schools is two-fold: close them rather than improve them—and fire teachers rather than inspire them.
TFA teachers do great work. But better schools are only part of the solution. Stable families are more able to be ambitious for their children than insecure, overworked and struggling ones. Our society has failed our schools by permitting the middle class to shrink. It’s not the other way around. Economic inequality and insecurity fosters the achievement gap. Its not the other way around.
Blaming teachers, public schools and our unions brings money and powerful allies to TFA and KIPP but it also feeds corporate ideology and their power. Corporate domination of politics, and the weakness of counter-balancing forces like unions, are the obstacles to national health insurance, generous college funding and revitalized unionism.
Ms. Kopp claims the civil rights mantle, but Martin Luther King would take principled positions—against the Vietnam War and for the Poor Peoples March—even when it pissed off powerful people. His final speech was for striking sanitation workers. His last book argued for modifying American capitalism to include some measure of wealth distribution. WK is no MLK. I would like a dialogue about what I have written here. My e-mail is JesseAlred@yahoo.com. Your hard work as a TFA teacher gives TFA executives credibility and a platform to espouse their ideas. Its not the other way around.
Jesse,
I toyed with deleting your comment, b.c it appears spam-like. For one, its hard to decipher your main point. Another, I did some google snooping, and it seems like you’ve copied and pasted your comment wherever TFA is mentioned in the blogosphere. But I’m going to let it stand in the hopes that it creates some sort of dialogue.
I agree that stable families are part of the solution…that’s one reason why I’m a conservative, which is ironic, given that you use that very point to critique conservatives.
I don’t know of anyone, save a few radical liberals, who think that better schools is the whole solution to what ills our nation’s youth. Good luck on pinning that one on conservatives.
If your main beef is that TFA alums and leaders are adopting conservative principles, then at this juncture I part ways with you. I’m a conservative, not because I’m a greedy white capitalist, but because I think conservative principles are the most sound when it comes to morality, sociology, and human flourishing.
If you do want to dialogue, you are welcome to come back and add more thoughts, but I challenge you to pick out specific conservative principles that you think are damaging to society and carefully critique them, instead of trotting out a series of irrelevant character attacks (i.e, Union Carbide’s responsibility for an accident in India, Feinberg and Levin appearing at the Repub. nat’l convention….ooooohhh, man that’s daming! Bush=bad!).
I realize TFA has its critics, and most likely they make some legit points, but that was not the subject of my post, afterall.
I appreciate your thoughtful response. Obviously, conservative behavior, in the sense of self-control and individual responsility, are the keys to success for anyone, including students and families. I support what KIPP and YES are doing, and would send my own kids there, and disagree only when they claim they are taking the same kinds of kids we have in the neighborhood schools and doing better with them. They take kids from famlies already committed to education and leave us with a much larger mix of students who are not. They do not work miracles, and we do not either.
I disagree with conservatives when they imply the public sector always does things less efficienty and effectively than the private sector. I disagree with them when they imply competition and free markets are the solution to the education and nearly every other social ill. The truth is markets are rarely free and compeition is often not fair. How many new US auto companies have appeared in the past fifty years. The entrepreneurial start up of today is the monopoly of tommorrow. KIPP and YES want competition with public schools because their victory is predetermined by the quality of kids they take in.
TFA alumni are trying to apply these principles to urban districts across the country by firing teachers or closing schools where students score poorly on tests. Teachers do not cause student failure. We take kids as they come and most of us do the best we can. I have never seen a teacher so great they could turn around kids who view education as irrelevant to their lives. You are going to see a lot more cheating on test scores if jobs and bonuses are on the line.
I do not think the corporate and conservative connections with TFA and KIPP are irrelevant because I do believe other issues have such a big impact on school success. As I wrote, I believe society has let our schools down by allowing the middle class to shrink. We probably disagree on this. How can they be for our kids and their families on one issue, and against them on ten others?
You asked me to identify a specific disagreement with conservatives. A big one for me is the way large corporations exert so much influence over our politics. The founding fathers did not foresee this and it was not their original intent. For our first hundred years, most businesses were individually owned or were partnerships.
Thank you for letting me post and respond.
Jesse,
I’m no expert on KIPP; I’ve only read one book on it so my perspective is limited. But nevertheless, I’ll share with you what the book detailed.
First, much more research needs to be done in regards to whether KIPP’s kids are as disadvantaged as other public school kids from the same area and whether or not the results are as astounding as they seem. An in depth study is being done, but this will take some time.
Second, Matthews does address KIPP’s critics, so I recommend reading the book.
In the critics chapter, he talks about the claim that KIPP kids aren’t as disadvantaged as other kids from the same area.
As the objection is stated, its kinda vague and amorphous. Whether or not the parents are more motivated, of course the kids are extremely disadvantaged–they come from the very same neighborhoods as the other kids. South Bronx, Gulfton, etc…its not like they are coming from Irvine, California or Thousand Oaks, CA.
Coming from the book, just going on the anecdotal evidence offered, the claim of advantage seems exaggerated to me. I realize this isn’t solid unbiased data though…but it does count.
In addition, even if the parents are more motivated and involved and even if this gives the kids a large advantage (not an outlandish thought…perhaps), what programs like KIPP offers is *choice.* They offer these families a way out of subpar education. This needs to be acknowledged.
Really, in order to get a good grasp of whether KIPP schools are really all they are cracked up to be, we need a look at two things: 1) the results, and 2) observe KIPP classrooms in action. 1) speaks for itself. In regards to 2), I haven’t observed a KIPP class so I’m not authoritative, but the voice from the folks that have observed KIPP classrooms is pretty unanimous: the kids are engaged, the pedagogy and strategies have a proven track record of success (even outside of KIPP), they stress discipline (this is one reason why many transfer out: the discipline required to meet the high standards is too much for some…I’d rather this be a reason for transfer than the opposite), they have a longer school day, they require tremendous amounts of homework, and they are willing to do whatever it takes to get results.
The list goes on, but what is clear to me is that this list is not indicative of public schools in the inner city in general. You’ll find individual teachers in a school that possess those characteristics, for sure, but their efforts are often dwarfed by the inertia of the system as a whole. I don’t have scientific data to back this up, I admit, but my experience, observation, and the testimony of many, many other teachers and admins corroborates this.
As to some of your other comments: I’m not aware of conservatives that claim competition and the free market are the solution to *all* social ills, so if you know of someone like that, please quote them. I personally think that competition isn’t the *whole* solution, but it does help because it motivates those who are in control to improve–they realize that if they don’t improve, someone else will soon eclipse them. That’s playing towards the more prideful parts of human nature, but it works.
As far as firing teachers who don’t produce is concerned, we agree on part of that. I agree in that test results should not be the only determiner. However, the current union-influenced system in place isn’t working either. After three years a teacher becomes tenured and it then becomes very, very difficult to get rid of a tenured teacher, even if they are subpar teachers. In addition, mere seniority is given way, way too much weight. Excellent teachers are let go in districts just because there’s someone else with more seniority…who cares if this teacher is better or not!
I’m personally in favor of firing teachers that do not demonstrate an ability to produce. That needs to be detailed further, of course…checks and balances need to be in place. The teacher needs to be given an opportunity and means to improve. But if the teacher cannot demonstrate results as shown by several markers and does not improve after given the opportunity…you got to go.
This is not in the best interest of teachers, but it is in the best interest of the students, and that’s the bottom line.
Thanks for being more specific on a disagreement with conservatives, but that’s still pretty vague for me. How, specifically, do large corporations influence politics (in regards to education, which is the subject of this post)? Can you give me a relevant example?
I’m willing to agree with you that the problem of educating our youth is a multifaceted problem, and many of the sources are outside the reach of teachers and educators. We can only do so much. However, in my circle of teachers (and out there in the blogosphere), I see a lot of pointing fingers and not a whole lot of looking in the mirror. Until we do this, not much will improve (I’m including myself in this critique as well).
That is one thing that impressed me about Levin and Feinberg: their project was birthed out of them “looking at the man in the mirror” after they bombed their first two years in teaching.
Richard Bordner:
Great response, and I do not have time to respond to every point, but I will address one argument that really enrages me.
Just because students come from the same neighborhood, the same race and even the same class, does not mean they are the same. I have taught for fourteen years in a working-class Hispanic neighborhood. For ten years I taught Advanced Placement courses. For three I have taught regular classes. The magnet and regular students look alike, and are often relatives of some kind, but rarely siblings. When I taught Advanced Placement I was doing the same thing KIPP and YES are doing. I was drawing a special minroity, the best out of a very large high school.
Teaching AP and regular classes in a working-class urban school is like being on separate planets. The AP kids are smart, ambitious and feed your own enthusaism. Among regular students you have some who are dedicated and others who are open but plenty who I will describe as oppositional. A lot of these kids think nothing of cursing you out. And it takes a lot to remove the miscreants.
Anecdotally I do believe there are small economic differences on average between the charter schools and neighborhood schools, but the differences are small enough to be undectable by any measurements. But the real issue is that every working class school has dedicate students. Draw them away, put them together, make sure all staff are passionate and you have a recipe for magic, but you do not have the same kind of kids as in a neighborhood school and you do not have a level playing field.
Corporation drive our politics through donations mainly and through interpersonal influence. Example, Ms. Rhee wants to weaken tenure while allowing teachers to make more money through merit pay. The money will come from corporate sources. Why don’t they go ahead and donate the money now. No, they want a school system that represents us all to do what they want.
When as a teacher I look in the mirror I see someone who had 28 working class students pass AP exams one year, 24 in another, 16 in another, and one who is frustrated most days teaching regular kids because I run into a brick wall. I am in the middle of my career. But if I had never had the AP student experience, and I had 25 years of the brick wall feeling, I would be pretty cynical, so I think some teachers, yes, are victims of their experiences, and its not fair use them up and fire them.
Jesse,
I hear you on your frustrations with teaching non-AP/honors kids. I taught an intervention class for students 2+ years behind grade level in reading (this year I teach regular English I, but still feel at times like I’m teaching the intervention class), and I often wanted to run out of the room and tear my hair out (what little I have left)! I’m only in my third year, and I feel like I’ve aged 10 years in that time!
I also agree with you when you say that kids coming from the same neighborhood, background, etc does not make them the same. I apologize if I came off as saying they are the same. All I was trying to point out is that your objection, at least as I read it, made it sound like the KIPP kids weren’t disadvantaged at all, like they came from middle or upper middle class neighborhoods and families. It was vague and too general, that’s all.
I don’t get the sense that they are specifically targeting the upper eschelon. Seems to me like Feinberg and Levin just marched into a neighborhood and school and took what came their way.
Parenting makes a *huge* difference. I acknowledge that…in fact, I think that’s the biggest factor. But the culture and surroundings still affects a kid with even awesome parentage.
And really, *is* KIPP drawing the “very best” out of a high school? I don’t know enough to answer this question definitively, but I’m skeptical of your claim. Just from reading the book (and again, its only one somewhat biased source….but it counts some), when Feinberg and Levin did their recruiting in the early days, teachers and admins would recommend students not because they were gifted but because the teachers and admins just wanted these kids out of their hair! That happened with some frequency, seems like, though it wasn’t 100%. This is anecdotal, but it makes me skeptical of your claim.
Lastly, about firing cynical teachers–is it unfair for the teachers? Perhaps. Again, though, that is not the bottom line question we need to ask. The question should be: “what is best for the students?”
I don’t have an answer to everything…I’m pretty young. Perhaps there’s a way to provide students with better teachers in those cases but still not “put the teachers out to pasture.” But I sense enough to know that the current system, where seniority is the bottom line and energetic, awesome, genius teachers are passed over just because they haven’t been around for long enough, isn’t working either. The way things are currently done, a bad teacher can easily become deeply entrenched in a school and do tremendous harm. There has to be a better way.
I’m willing to play by my own rules, btw…if getting rid of me is in the best interest of my students, so be it. I’d want the criteria to be fair (i.e. I’m judged on my ability to get the students learning, not my political beliefs, willingness to go along with the typical admin public school games, or personal grudges an admin might have against me), but if I can’t make significant progress in my ability to teach and educate the kids, I’ve gotta go. It doesn’t matter to me if I’ve taught for 3 or 30 years or how many mouths I gotta feed. I gotta go.
And really, if it comes down to that, I would be happy to forge another career doing something I’m better at. There are a plethora of ways to make a living…:)
We agree on plenty I think. KIPP/YES do not have to target the best in the poor neighborhoods, since parents have to apply to an extended day, extended year school with a reputation for very high standards, the filtering is done by the application process itself. Until KIPP/YES has responsibility on a neighborhood-basis, rather than an application basis, the burden is on them to show they are competing on a level playing field. Houston has had application based schools for years, and they do better than neighborhood schools. As for the teachers, they equally human to the student. I have never seen teachers holding students back from learning. The TFA elite here talk about the need for great teachers. In 14 years I have seen maybe two I would define as great–great is hard to come by in any profession–and I have seen just as few who are bad. Most of my colleagues are neither great or bad, they range from fair to very good. I suspect. This Michelle Rhee is not going to produce results. KIPP/YES does but only for some familes and kids. Its natural their egos and interests make them want to believe they are miracle workers.