KIPP schools are designed for black and Hispanic kids from inner-city ghettos. The success of these schools proclams, "Here is how you raise the achievement of poor minority kids." In fact, most of the press I read about them says this explicitly.
I'm concerned that KIPP, Edison, and other "back to basics" approaches operate under the implicit assumption that the best we can hope for (re: the achievement of black and Hispanic children) is to give them nothing but the basics. Yes, KIPP, et al, might improve test scores, but at what price? Less social studies? Less art, foreign languages, and music? Yes, KIPP might offer a trip to Central Park as a reward for good behavior, but middle-class white parents such as me cringe at the idea that our children would be taken on field trips only as a reward for good behavior. Middle-class whites assume that it is the duty of schools to provide our children with a high-quality education and that every child, regardless of whether he or she is deemed "good" or "bad," has a right to such an education. Student behavior might influence the kinds of options that white middle-class children are exposed to, but good or bad behavior is not the sole determinant of these options.
Why, then, should poor black and Hispanic parents not have the same assumptions? Why should poor black and Hispanic students not have the same rights and the same options? Ultimately, it appears that approved behavior is the key to success at KIPP. I can think of no middle-class white school that makes this kind of bargain with its students except for military academies.
By "docile" I don't (necessarily) mean "quiet" and "inactive." Students may be noisily and actively engaged in practices that (1) confirm their own thoughts concerning their self-perceived racial and intellectual inferiority and (2) fail to interrogate or critique systems of government that produce institutionalized racism. For example, "skills-based" programs like Open Court, Direct Instruction, and Success for All are -- by definition -- created for low-achieving populations of students. "These programs have proven to be especially effective for students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds, have limited proficiency in English, or have special needs. Lesson plans are highly structured." (from The McGraw-Hill Companies "2005 Investor Fact Book") If you've read the Report of the Subgroups from the National Reading Panel, you know that this claim is completely groundless. Nevertheless, poor children are given strict instruction in unproven literacy and numeracy programs because they are poor children. The curriculum itself -- designed for "disadvantaged children" -- creates an artificial ceiling on achievement and, thus, a self-fulfilling prophecy.
How many wealthy districts use these programs? What kinds of ceilings are imposed on the achievement of wealthy children?
As for interrogating and critiquing socio-historical systems that produce the status quo, I'd be willing to bet that the name "Malcolm X" is not uttered at KIPP schools. I'm sure there's not enough time to cover everything. But, then again, what do they cover in the time they have? Surely black children should know not just who Malcolm X is, but why he believed what he believed and how he conducted his activist work.
I don't mean to suggest that these kinds of racist practices are intentional. They are not. They are undertaken with the best of intentions. But they start with the unexamined premise, "This is how you teach these kind of children." Simply by asserting that "these kind of children" exist empirically and that "they" have certain a priori needs and inherent limitations on what they are capable of achieving as reflected in the curriculum and the structure of the schools (with their heavy emphasis on "the basics" and large doses of rewards and punishments), KIPP schools contribute directly to the educational achievement gap between wealthy whites and poor blacks. Yes, it may appear that this gap has been closed by these same poor black children scoring higher on standardized tests. But I would seriously question these gains as anything other than illusory, especially when these gains are made at the expense of these children knowing about themselves and their oppression as well as at the expense of their intellectual potential.
Here's the troubling thing: KIPP schools appear to work. But what they work at remains in question. What does it mean for a school to "work"? Some would say that KIPP works because it produces high test scores and gets kids into elite prep schools and then on to college. But others would say that KIPP fails because it does not produce democratically-engaged, independently-minded critical thinkers. In its worst form, KIPP represents a failure of imagination and an abdication on the part of educators who are convinced, albeit with the best of intentions, that this is the best "these kids" can hope for.
But would the KIPP approach be welcomed by a mostly white, affluent school? After all, if KIPP works so well to get black kids into good schools, then why don't the best elementary and middle schools -- both public and private, black and white -- immediately adopt its approach?
Are KIPP schools serving as surrogate parents for their students, given the amount of time students spend at school? To what extent does the apparent success of each KIPP school serve to mask the underlying problems of the neighborhoods where KIPP schools are found? In other words, is KIPP a way to treat the symptoms of the achievement gap, with its insistence on personal triumph over adverse conditions, and turn attention away from the more pernicious causal factors at the root of the achievement gap?
KIPP works because it brings a kind of suburban, middle-class milieu to an urban, working-poor milieu. But let's imagine the implications of this for a moment. KIPP schools are basically charged with raising these children. That in itself may or may not be a good thing, e.g., should a publicly-funded educational institution overseen by the state be charged with unofficially raising children? Maybe yes, maybe no. But if yes, what kinds of parents are these KIPP schools? And whose interests do they have in mind? Biological parents have an investment in the well-being of their children that differs on several different orders of magnitude from the interest that a state-controlled parent might have. In some instances, the KIPP parent might actually be better than the biological parent. But in other cases, the biological parent might do a better job inculcating in the child the values that are important to his/her family, race, religious tradition, and practices of ethnic origin.
If we leave it to KIPP to raise poor black children, how will they raise them? With what outcome in mind? As many social dominance theorists have suggested, the most stable societies are those in which historically oppressed groups accept the legitimacy of the hierarchical structure, thus internalizing their oppression by rationalizing to themselves their place in the order of things.
Left to choose its own priorities, surely the state (through the mechanism of KIPP) will choose stability over something else. The effect and impact of this choice can only be guessed at, but I'd venture an educated guess and say that stability means more phonics and less Malcolm X. Again, this is by no means a consciously-constructed plan to exert racial dominance. It is, in a word, efficient. And, according to the KIPP people, what these children need.
Until we look at the totality of education reform and stop insisting that education reform should be exclusively about school reform, we will never come close to closing the gap. Even a best case scenario with KIPP -- where KIPP schools flourish across the country -- can only hope to educate an extraordinarily small percentage of poor urban kids. So in praising KIPP, we actually lose sight of the bigger issues and the bigger challenges. And, with KIPP, we say, "This is good enough for them" while we send our kids to private schools or the best suburban schools.
11 comments:
You are just making stuff up, huh? Of course KIPP schools teach Malcolm X. Many a KIPP hallway is decorated with quotes from this important leader, and I'd wager that every KIPP school includes his writings in their curriculum. Stop making up lies and actually do some research into that of which you speak. You make yourself and all your other writings look really suspect when you just fabricate information out of whole-cloth. It makes for compelling fiction, I suppose, but if that's your aim, you should label it as such.
"educator" - This is the last post of yours I'm going to publish. So here's my last word to you:
Having pictures of Malcolm X on the wall does not mean that Malcolm X is in the curriculum. He may or may not be in the curriculum, but to suggest that having his picture on the wall is evidence is just plain stupid.
You'd wager that every KIPP school includes his writings in their curriculum, huh? So your wagering is what you call research?
Bye-bye.
The most compelling aspect of Mr. Campbell's diatribe is the inference that the best way to bridge the achievement gap between the haves and the have-nots is to tackle societal, socio-economic and institutional discrimination and repression. I wholeheartedly agree with that assertion. However, I vehemently disavow the approach of attacking a results-oriented, obviously successful approach in educating children who historically have been relegated to second-class schools. As a formerly poor, still very much African-American person and now public school administrator, I have the unique advantage of being on both the receiving and giving end of public education in America. While I do not work in a KIPP school, I have implemented very successful, KIPP-style programs in a traditional public school with significant success. I know it works, and I know it can work without sacrificing independent, critical thought on the part of students. As a middle class white, it is easy for Mr. Campbell to throw stones at the notion of punishments and rewards, as it is more likely that he has the means and the proclivity to take his offspring on a New York City excursion. No doubt, his children respond to the very system of incentives and consequences that any capable parent would provide. Moreover, if the pursuit of undergraduate and graduate degrees is too trivial an expectation for students of color, perhaps Mr. Campbell should review current college graduation rates of KIPP’s typical clientele. Rather than criticizing the well-intentioned, successful efforts of KIPP, which admittedly is and can only be a small part of the national solution, perhaps Mr. Campbell should focus his attention on throwing stones at the root cases to which he alludes. Every conflagration begins with a tiny spark. Perhaps KIPP is that spark.
Paul - please see my other post on this issue which asks the question, "What if KIPP worked?"
Let me ask you something. You wrote, "As a middle class white, it is easy for Mr. Campbell to throw stones at the notion of punishments and rewards . . . No doubt, his children respond to the very system of incentives and consequences that any capable parent would provide."
So what does that mean?
Are you suggesting that I hang signs around my children's necks that say "Bench" or "Miscreant" if they misbehave? I don't, Paul. As a parent and educator, I find the notion of rewards and punishments to be extremely challenging. It's much, much easier to bribe kids with carrots and threaten them with sticks. But it also violates my own ethics and values, and it deprives kids and students of experiencing any sort of internal motivation. In those instances when I've resorted to using bribes with my own daughter, I've always regretted it. Why? Because she's more interested in getting the goody for the behavior I'm trying to coerce her to perform. This also robs her of experiencing real consequences because she is not part of choosing the reward or the punishment. As much as I'd love, love, love to use time-outs as a way to punish her and manipulate her and coerce her to "be good," my wife and I don't use them because time-outs are manipulative, coercive. They also suggest that my love is conditional on whether or not I approve of her. Yuck.
As I say, I'd love to use them, though, because it would be SO much easier! But I choose -- perhaps masochistically -- to use other means. I talk to her. I explain what her choices are. I help her understand the consequences of her choices. And then I let her choose. I very often -- very often -- do not like the choices she makes. But she is a human being that is learning how to make good choices, so I allow there to be bumps in the road. Life is kind of like that -- bumpy. But for the KIPP'sters and their ilk, there is only candy for good behavior and a sign around your neck for bad. Some choice . . .
Peter, I appreciate the thoughtfulness and the mental provocation of your blogs. I hear what you're saying about "coercion", but aren't consequences a natural part of life and making choices? Are the consequences used by the criminal justice system in America as deterrents for most and consequences for many intrinsically flawed? In this electronic age that engenders so much immediate gratification, if we do not teach our children with immediacy of consequences, then all too often – particularly among minorities – the criminal justice system is more than happy to apply a swift, albeit often ineffective, consequence that simply perpetuates the cycle of poverty. While, I’m not advocating hanging signs around students’ necks or any other particular consequence at KIPP, as a father, I find it most effective to apply a swift consequence when my children make bad choices so that I may fully take advantage of teachable moments.
I ran across your blog yesterday while doing an Internet search for “why KIPP works” as I prepare to make a greater impact in my school district. It pains me to see so many African American students not live up to their full potential because a) parents are failing to parent, and b) public schools are typically ill-equipped to take up the slack.
At your suggestion, I read your other entry about “what if KIPP worked”, and I totally agree with your statement about Equal Protection. My concern is, what if no one dared to venture out of the box to pilot an idea that could serve as a model for more broad-based implementation? Truly, KIPP and other similar efforts cannot solve the nation’s educational disparity by themselves. But KNOWLEDGE IS POWER -- it is LIBERATING. I know this from my own experience. I was the “token Black” in my classes as a child, and my atypical exposure to rigor and opportunity transformed my life. I have always been convinced that so many others fell through the cracks for lack of “token status”. In my view, KIPP expands the opportunity for exposure and rigor to a greater number of minorities. If we could implement these principles in a way that more students could benefit, we could get some traction.
Paul - I appreciate your take on this. Thanks for writing back. I also really appreciate the ability to talk openly and critically about race and class and how KIPP enters into all of this.
That said, I still disagree with a lot of what you wrote.
For starters, take a look at my post from today on my daughter. You and I are probably going to have to agree to disagree on how we raise kids. I'm not a believer in time-outs and spanking because these practices are inconsistent with how I want to live my life and be in the world. I know that might sound woo-woo and soft, but to me it feels very real and very hard. As I said -- no offense -- I feel that time-outs and spanking are short-cuts. They're really simple ways of handling very complex phenomena.
Do you know Annette Lareau's book Unequal Childhoods? If not, I highly recommend it. Lareau describes the approaches to parenting taken by low-income parents and middle to upper income parents. She also brings race into the picture. In the studies I've read, a disproportionate percentage of low-income parents use what I'd call coercive and manipulative tactics when disciplining their kids. I don't blame these parents for doing what they do, and I attribute these behaviors to the ravaving effects of living in poverty for generations and generations.
What concerns me about your explanation -- and the explanation of many prominent blacks including Barack Obama, Bill Cosby, and John McWhorter -- is that you all blame parents and schools for the failures of children without looking at the systemic effect of institutional and generational racism and classism. Why do so many black kids end up in jail? I don't think it's because these kids have crappy schools and dead-beat dads. I wonder why we have so many crappy schools and dead-beat dads in high-poverty neighborhoods. It's not a character flaw on the part of dead-beat dads and that all they need to do is suck it up. How easy is it to suck it up under the conditions in which these people live?
Your experience is wonderful. But it's clearly anomalous and exceptional. It's very similar to the experience of KIPP graduates -- anomalous and exceptional.
If you want to systematize success, you have to create a system that allows success to be expanded indefinitely, not limited to a lucky few.
One more thing.
As a middle-class white parent, I find parenting to be unbelievably difficult and incredibly draining. But I have a stable income, a house, I can pay my bills, and I have someone to share household duties with -- my wife. My life -- and esp. my experience as a parent -- would be exponentially more difficult if these conditions were not in place. As it is now, I have to exercise an enormous amount of self-control when my kids are misbehaving. How would I act if I was unemployed, couldn't pay my bills, and was single? Quite honestly, I don't know how low-income people do it. Really. What surprises me -- and this might sound really awful -- is that there aren't more incidents of domestic violence.
For those low-income families that experience domestic violence, it's not terribly difficult for me to see the relationship between having the shit beat out of you at home and them coming to school and acting out in class.
It's also not hard for me to understand that if you get the shit beaten out of you as a kid, then you're more likely to do the same to your own kids. Lots of studies have been done that show precisely this.
It's also not hard for me to understand that if you're beaten as a kid, you are more likely to be violent and engage in crime.
And this goes on and on for generations. How do you break the cycle of violence and poverty and deprivation? There are many ways we can approach it, but the one way we MUST NOT approach it is to blame low-income people and low-income minorities for acting this way and blame them for their own fates. Doing so is immoral.
Of course everyone has the capacity to make better choices in life. But we have to increase the likelihood that more kids in low-income schools and neighborhoods can make good choices. We can't just leave them to rot in squalid conditions, get angry with them for making bad decisions, and then say "I told you so" when so many are not able to turn things around.
Thanks for the book recommendation. I will buy it today. Haven't read your blog from today, but I look forward to doing so shortly. As you said, we will agree to disagree on certain strategies in raising children. I use corporal punishment as a measure of last resort, and even then only sparingly. But I appreciate your philosophy as well. Perhaps I will fully share your philosophy after I read the book you recommended.
Other than that issue, you and I basically agree about the ills of society. Our country has truly failed impoverished people. The system is, and always has been, broken. Our institutions must be reconstituted. However, until that happens, we cannot simply remove all responsibility from individuals to do all they can to improve their own situation. It must happen both on the institutional and individual levels simultaneously. To absolve the poor of the responsibility of participating as co-equal partners in the process is perhaps as dehumanizing as the evils you and I aim to correct in society. No great change (individual or institutional) has ever occurred simply by playing the blame game. Until there is wholesale, societal change, the under-privileged must forge ahead at the grassroots level, making as much incremental change as possible. I think that is the position of the prominent Blacks to whom you refer previously - it certainly is my position. We must attack the issue at both a macro and micro level in order to be most effective.
Paul - I think we are in agreement. That said, I doubt the commitment of our national leaders to the macro issues, e.g., poverty, health care for all, etc. I have one more book for you to read: Class and Schools by Richard Rothstein. In fact, I'd recommend you read this before you read the Annette Lareau book. I wrote about Rothstein in this post. He has some very practical, policy-oriented ways we can close the achievement gap and reduce human suffering.
I look forward to hearing from you after you've read it.
Peter, I have received both books in the mail (Class and Schools and Unequal Childhoods). I am on page 131 of Class and Schools, and I am mesmerized. That I found your blog a few weeks ago was not by chance. I have begun a new leg of my journey as a person and as an educator, and I have you to thank for your blog and your book suggestions.
I do find it interesting though that Rothstein sings the praises of such affirmative action programs as KIPP, suggesting that they play a critical role in working to close the gap, while being careful to emphasize that these kinds of reforms are only a part of the solution.
Having shared KIPPsters exceptional opportunities as a student in elementary and secondary school, I can't imagine how unfortunate it would be if these fortunate few thousand students weren't given the chance that they have at KIPP. Surely, many KIPP graduates will become a part of this army for comprehensive, socio-economic reform. And, having entered the ranks of intellectual and professional society, their voices will be more refined and pronounced.
I look forward to our regular communication as I continue reading, learning, and exploring. I am excited and encouraged.
Paul - thanks for your kind words. I find Rothstein to be one of the few bright spots on the public education horizon.
For my take on Rothstein and the impact his work has on framing the debate concerning closing the achievement gap, please see this post.
I wouldn't say that Rothstein exactly sings the praises of KIPP. He writes that KIPP students are "not typical lower-class students." The very fact that their parents would bother to enroll them in the lottery sets them apart from other inner-city children, he says, adding that there is "no evidence" that KIPP's strategy "would be as successful for students whose parents are not motivated to choose such a school."
In the end, KIPP works for students for whom it works. That much is clear. But how many students survive the KIPP gauntlet is very much in debate, as recent data suggest that KIPP students don't make it all the way through. This means that the only students left who graduate are not at all typical students.
I, as you might guess, have a very different take on the KIPP'sters joining the masses. My concern is that they will take the same approach that their Teach for America cousins take and will reduce the complexities of education to a few simple ideas about teachers needing to work harder and better. Most teachers I know work at least 60 hours per week and are very committed to their jobs. To say they need to work harder and be more committed is an insult to them. Sure, there are some awful teachers out there. But there are some awful hedge fund managers out there, too. And bank CEO's. And insurance company executives. Why don't we demand they work harder, or, at the very least, work for less money? Too bad we can't expect them to work honestly and with integrity. That would be too much to ask, I suppose.
:-)
Anyway, I look forward to our continued conversations and our points of agreement and disagreement. Tell all your friends about Rothstein!
Also, be sure to read David Berliner's new policy brief on poverty to understand that poverty is not an excuse - it's very real, and it's very damaging.
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