Friday, December 29, 2006
Views Differ on Defining College Prep
According to a 4/26/06 Education Week article titled "Views Differ on Defining College Prep,"
One of the overarching goals of the national push to redesign high schools is increasing the number of students who graduate ready for college. Yet pinning down what people mean by "college readiness" and how to measure it is no easy task.
So what does "college readiness" mean? Here are the crucial aspects:
- willingness to amass colossal debt - according to an Associated Press story, nearly two of every three undergraduate students are going into debt to go to college, owing an average of more than $19,000, most often to the government. About 65 percent of students who graduated in the 2003-2004 school year did so after getting student loans, according to the Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics.
- willingness to attend lecture-driven courses with 400 or more other students
- capacity to sit passively and take notes for hours
- ability to accurately guess what will be on the test or quiz and then study the night before to engorge the short-term memory on those items which are most likely to be on the test or quiz
- ability to fully purge short-term memory during the test or quiz
- capacity to forget what was studied for the test or quiz
- capacity to manage time and assignments in order to do the least amount of work possible
- ability to binge drink on the weekends
- tendency to view college as a means to acquire a high-paying job
- cultivated interest in material acquisition and consumption, with a special emphasis on 42" plasma screen TV's and Hummers
Preparing Our Young
SOURCE: 2005 Skills Gap Report. The National Association of Manufacturers, The Manufacturing Institute, and Deloitte Consulting
It seems we are not prepping the kiddies well enough. What, then, do our Manufacturing Brethren want?
Our Manufacturing Brethren said nearly half of their current employees had inadequate basic employability skills, such as attendance, timeliness, and work ethic. Forty-six percent reported inadequate problem-solving skills, and 36 percent pointed to insufficient reading, writing, and communication skills.
And what is this? It is an agenda from our Manfacturing Brethren, The National Association of Manufacturers.
It seems that our Manufacturing Cousins have interests other than deriding public schools. For example, they understandably crow . . .
"total manufacturing output and productivity are at record levels, capital investment is rising, and product quality has never been higher."
Yet they also express concern that "U.S. manufacturers face rising production costs and intense foreign competition" and warn that without policies to help bring costs under control, "manufacturers will be stuck in a cost-price squeeze that slows growth and job creation and impedes our ability to prevail against unprecedented global competition."
Holy smokes! This is indeed cause for concern. So what, then, do our Manufacturing Brethren urge us to do? Aside from training students how to show up for work, show up for work on time, and work really hard and really well and enjoy working really hard and really well, our cousins urge us to do the following:
- drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to be rid of those pesky moose
- take away the rights of indivduals to bring lawsuits involving asbestos and medical litigation because these lawsuits are, by definition, frivolous
- encourage the growth of business-oriented options for health care such as Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) and Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRAs) so that healthcare is for the privileged, not the sick
- support the President's Clear Skies initiative so that we will have more pollutants to inhale
Another poll last year sponsored by the Business Roundtable found that 62 percent of the public thought public high schools were not doing a good job “adequately preparing graduates to meet the demands they will face in college and the world of work.” Our Manufacturing Brethren have shown us what the world of work should look like. But who, pray tell, are these Business Roundtable'ians? And why might they be interested in preparing our youth for the world of tomorrow?
What's this? A list of members of the Business Roundtable. And who is there? Why it's my friend E. Neville Isdell from the child-friendly Coca-Cola Company. What magic sweet liquid candy syrup they make for those precious little ones! No wonder they are so concerned with children!
And who is this? Why it's my good buddy Peter R. Dolan from the Bristol-Myers Squibb Company. What a wonderful drug they make -- ABILIFY -- a prescription medicine indicated for
- the treatment of acute manic and mixed episodes associated with Bipolar I Disorder,
- maintaining efficacy in patients with bipolar disorder with a recent manic or mixed episode who had been stabilized and then maintained for at least 6 weeks.
Thursday, December 28, 2006
KIPP on "Making Schools Work," Part 1
Here's part 1 of the Hedrick Smith piece on KIPP. It begins by focusing on a Latino boy named Ray, a 16-year-old 8th grader enrolled in KIPP 3D Academy in Houston.
At 3 minutes, 14 seconds into this video segment, there is a glimpse into how KIPP achieves its results.
Here's the transcript:
Hedrick Smith (voiceover) - At the start of school, Ray had his first confrontation with 3D Academy's principal, Dan Caesar.
Ray: We were going over our chants, and -- just being myself, still trying to figure out how this school works and everything . . .
Dan Caesar - We say, "Is 3D in the house?!?!" and all the kids raise up their hands and say, "YES!" and Reynaldo raised up his hands and said "NO!"
Ray: I waved my hand. I said, "No." And then he looked at me and he said it a second time. And I said "No" again.
Dan Caesar - I knew right then, "Here's the first test, the first person testing our culture." So I let him know in front of everybody in the room that that's not going to be tolerated. We all want to be here. We chose to be here. If you don't want to be here, find the door.
So much for KIPP's motto, "No excuses."
KIPP on 60 Minutes, Part 1
Here's part 1 of 4 video segments on KIPP. Parts 1 and 2 are from the CBS news show 60 Minutes. Parts 3 and 4 are from PBS reporter Hedrick Smith in a series called "Making Schools Work." All 4 segments show KIPP in a very positive light.
It's hard to imagine what might possibly be wrong about KIPP if these videos were your only source of information. More comments later.
Monday, December 25, 2006
Behaviorism With a Beat?
The problem, then, is to design a culture that can, theoretically, survive; to decide how men must behave to ensure its survival in reality; and to plan environmental influences that will guarantee the desired behavior. Thus, in the Skinnerian world, man will refrain from polluting, from overpopulating, from rioting, and from making war, not because he knows that the results will be disastrous, but because he has been conditioned to want what serves group interests.
Source - "Skinner's Utopia: Panacea, or Path to Hell?", Time, 9/20/71
Part of KIPP's success is attained through the setting of high expectations. The school day starts at 7 a.m. and doesn't end until 5 p.m. Students are assigned at least three hours of homework every night. There are also Saturday half-days and mandatory summer school. So why are the students so eager to enroll? After just a few minutes in a KIPP classroom—with students using songs to learn subjects like state capitals and multiplication tables—Anderson says it's obvious that this school isn't like any others. "The KIPP style of teaching sets facts and figures to music," he says. "The three R's here are repetition, rhythm and rap." That's a big part of the KIPP philosophy. "We felt like we could make learning fun and we could get kids to come to school and they would not want to go home," Dave says. Mike and Dave say they got the idea for this style of learning from a teacher named Harriett Ball whom they met in an inner city public school. "Harriet Ball was kind of like a rock star of teaching in the elementary school I was in," Dave says. "She came into my room and in one day—in 45 minutes—taught what I had failed to teach in three months." How quickly do the students take to this new approach to learning? "By lunchtime on Day One," Mike says.
Source - The Oprah Winfrey Show
Is it just me, or does what Feinberg and Levin and the rest of the KIPP'sters call "teaching" look an awful lot like what B.F. Skinner did with pigeons and lab rats?
Watch Harriett Ball teaching.
Friday, December 22, 2006
We Always Need Drivers
The cover story of Time magazine is titled "How to Bring Our Schools Out of the 20th Century." Here's an excerpt:
Kids are global citizens now, even in small-town America, and they must learn to act that way. Mike Eskew, CEO of UPS, talks about needing workers who are "global trade literate, sensitive to foreign cultures, conversant in different languages"--not exactly strong points in the U.S., where fewer than half of high school students are enrolled in a foreign-language class and where the social-studies curriculum tends to fixate on U.S. history.
The next time the UPS guy drops off a package at my house, I'll be sure to assess the degree to which he is global trade literate, sensitive to foreign cultures, and conversant in different languages.
Eskew conveniently glosses over the fact that for every student who becomes "competitive in the global economy," 9 others are left to deliver packages. Sure, big businesses like UPS want to cut their training and development costs and make all potential employees ready to hit the ground running. But how many will run into the corner offices at corporate headquarters? The future UPS executives -- global trade literate, sensitive to foreign cultures, and conversant in different languages -- will always need the drivers. And there are a lot more drivers.
So what does this say about the focus of education on global competition? Do we really want K-12 public education to be synonymous with a pre-MBA program? Do we want every kid to be trained to be a little junior executive?
As those of us who have been following this long enough know, NCLB actually leads to the creation of lots of drivers, especially in the way that it manifests itself in high-poverty schools: the dumbed-down curricula, the near-exclusive focus on reading and math test prep, the drill and kill, etc., etc., ad nauseum. Which is just fine with executives like Eskew, notwithstanding all the rhetoric to the contrary. After all, he's only got so many corner offices. But he needs lots of drivers. We always need drivers.
Kids are global citizens now, even in small-town America, and they must learn to act that way. Mike Eskew, CEO of UPS, talks about needing workers who are "global trade literate, sensitive to foreign cultures, conversant in different languages"--not exactly strong points in the U.S., where fewer than half of high school students are enrolled in a foreign-language class and where the social-studies curriculum tends to fixate on U.S. history.
The next time the UPS guy drops off a package at my house, I'll be sure to assess the degree to which he is global trade literate, sensitive to foreign cultures, and conversant in different languages.
Eskew conveniently glosses over the fact that for every student who becomes "competitive in the global economy," 9 others are left to deliver packages. Sure, big businesses like UPS want to cut their training and development costs and make all potential employees ready to hit the ground running. But how many will run into the corner offices at corporate headquarters? The future UPS executives -- global trade literate, sensitive to foreign cultures, and conversant in different languages -- will always need the drivers. And there are a lot more drivers.
So what does this say about the focus of education on global competition? Do we really want K-12 public education to be synonymous with a pre-MBA program? Do we want every kid to be trained to be a little junior executive?
As those of us who have been following this long enough know, NCLB actually leads to the creation of lots of drivers, especially in the way that it manifests itself in high-poverty schools: the dumbed-down curricula, the near-exclusive focus on reading and math test prep, the drill and kill, etc., etc., ad nauseum. Which is just fine with executives like Eskew, notwithstanding all the rhetoric to the contrary. After all, he's only got so many corner offices. But he needs lots of drivers. We always need drivers.
Crazy, Nutty, Loopy Ideals
The Declaration of Independence was pretty crazy.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
The Constitution was downright loopy.
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
But we need crazy, nutty, loopy ideas like these to serve as our foundation. Indeed, these ideas came from people we often call "The Founding Fathers." These ideas are actually our ideals -- who we as a country aspire to be.
People who cling to ideals are often said to be divorced from reality. They are called "idealists." They are dismissed as impractical people, as dreamers, as out-of-touch Pollyanna's. These days, a lot of mud is being slung at people -- idealists -- who call for public education to be something other than job training, especially when it comes to educating low-income minority children. We need to serve these poor children, they argue. And the way to serve them is to train them to get high-paying jobs. All this stuff about critical thinking, preparing students to be good citizens, immersing them in the experience of democracy -- these are all wacky ideals preached by wacky idealists. They have never worked for poor kids and they never will. Best to leave all that fancy-schmancy, high-falutin' democracy stuff to kids that will be able to apply it later on in life. For these low-income kids, the best we can hope for is that they graduate being able to read and write. The rest is gravy.
As racist and as classist as this line of thinking is, it is incredibly popular. It comes in much more attractive packaging, of course. But the core is there in organizations like KIPP, Edison, etc. There even seems to be a grain of truth to it. After all, being able to read and write is better than not being able to read and write. Getting a high school diploma is better than not getting a high school diploma.
But here's where those crazy, nutty, loopy ideals come in. Yes, being able to read and write is better than not being able to read and write. Getting a high school diploma is better than not getting a high school diploma. But being able to read and write without knowing how the government functions or how laws are passed is not the kind of compromise we should be willing to make. Being able to read and write without knowing anything about history, about other countries, about music or art or foreign languages is not the kind of compromise we should be willing to make.
If we make these kinds of compromises, then we are compromising our ideals. We are compromising who we are as a nation. And we are giving up on truly closing the achievement gap between low-income minority children and their middle class and upper-class peers. We are sanctioning in our actions and in our institutions the position of Plessy v. Ferguson, that "separate but equal" facilities are OK, that the haves get one kind of education while the have-nots get another. Of course, we call this other kind of education "job training" and refer to it as "preparing students to enter the world of the 21st century workforce." But we should call it for what it really is: an injustice that runs counter to those crazy, nutty, loopy ideals that used to define us.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
The Constitution was downright loopy.
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
But we need crazy, nutty, loopy ideas like these to serve as our foundation. Indeed, these ideas came from people we often call "The Founding Fathers." These ideas are actually our ideals -- who we as a country aspire to be.
People who cling to ideals are often said to be divorced from reality. They are called "idealists." They are dismissed as impractical people, as dreamers, as out-of-touch Pollyanna's. These days, a lot of mud is being slung at people -- idealists -- who call for public education to be something other than job training, especially when it comes to educating low-income minority children. We need to serve these poor children, they argue. And the way to serve them is to train them to get high-paying jobs. All this stuff about critical thinking, preparing students to be good citizens, immersing them in the experience of democracy -- these are all wacky ideals preached by wacky idealists. They have never worked for poor kids and they never will. Best to leave all that fancy-schmancy, high-falutin' democracy stuff to kids that will be able to apply it later on in life. For these low-income kids, the best we can hope for is that they graduate being able to read and write. The rest is gravy.
As racist and as classist as this line of thinking is, it is incredibly popular. It comes in much more attractive packaging, of course. But the core is there in organizations like KIPP, Edison, etc. There even seems to be a grain of truth to it. After all, being able to read and write is better than not being able to read and write. Getting a high school diploma is better than not getting a high school diploma.
But here's where those crazy, nutty, loopy ideals come in. Yes, being able to read and write is better than not being able to read and write. Getting a high school diploma is better than not getting a high school diploma. But being able to read and write without knowing how the government functions or how laws are passed is not the kind of compromise we should be willing to make. Being able to read and write without knowing anything about history, about other countries, about music or art or foreign languages is not the kind of compromise we should be willing to make.
If we make these kinds of compromises, then we are compromising our ideals. We are compromising who we are as a nation. And we are giving up on truly closing the achievement gap between low-income minority children and their middle class and upper-class peers. We are sanctioning in our actions and in our institutions the position of Plessy v. Ferguson, that "separate but equal" facilities are OK, that the haves get one kind of education while the have-nots get another. Of course, we call this other kind of education "job training" and refer to it as "preparing students to enter the world of the 21st century workforce." But we should call it for what it really is: an injustice that runs counter to those crazy, nutty, loopy ideals that used to define us.
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
NCLB and Suburban Malaise, Part 2
I'm now convinced that failure to make AYP in suburban districts like mine will certainly not inspire a parent revolt, and it will not inspire a mass exodus from the public schools. I base this on what has already happened and what is happening here in metro St. Louis. Sadly, NCLB is not an issue.
I've been trying to make NCLB an issue in my area for the last 2 years by talking to parent groups, political groups, church groups, anyone that will listen. But what I realize is that I have been trying to get people to care about something that will very likely not affect them at all. Public schools in the city of St. Louis are in utter chaos right now. There is a strong likelihood that the state of MO will take the city schools over next year. More than 81% of children in St. Louis public schools are eligible for free/reduced lunch. More than 81% of students are black. But who cares about this if you live in the suburbs? My answer so far: basically no one. They don't care because it's not their problem. It's not their kids. It's not their schools.
Consider the following:
- 3 of the 8 schools in my suburban St. Louis district receive Title 1 funds. Very few of the schools in the surrounding suburban districts receive any Title 1 funds at all.
- Because they don't receive Title 1 funds, there are no sanctions for failing to make AYP. Failure to make AYP amounts to is a symbolic slap in the face from the Feds. But life will go on as usual for these schools because there are no consequences. Given that these largely white, largely well-off school districts already think they are doing a good job, a symbolic slap from the Feds might make headlines in the local paper, but it will - sadly - result in very little change. The school district I mentioned in my first post failed to make AYP, but it was just awarded a "Distinction in Performance" award from the MO Dept. of Ed for the sixth year in a row.
- The suburban school superintendent I spoke to mentioned the possibility of doing without any of the little Title 1 money he gets now. It's a tiny drop in the bucket, about 2% of the district's total budget. At the end of the day, he said, he could do without the money, esp. if it freed him from the feds and NCLB. So telling the Feds to take a hike is a real option for him. I suspect it's a real option for lots of well-off districts who receive little to no federal money.
- The St. Louis city schools and suburban schools have been working together in a voluntary desegregation program. But this is ending in 2008, meaning there will be fewer of the kids who typically fail to make AYP coming to the suburban schools. Translation: pressure to raise test scores is decreasing, not increasing, for these schools because they will have less racially and economically diverse schools. As we all know, schools with the most diversity have the greatest likelihood of failing to make AYP.
Think about possible responses to this sentence: "White suburban parents will leave the public schools if they . . .
1) perceive that the school is not giving children the best education possible; they will spend the necessary money to send their kids to private school.
2) perceive that the school is no longer committed to or supportive of racial desegregation.
3) perceive that white children and black children, although integrated, are receiving qualitatively different educations.
I doubt many people will care about #2 and #3. Sad, but true. In all honesty, with the end of the deseg program and voluntary transfer in 2008, who is going to stand up for desegregation? The insidious aspect of this is that -- ultimately -- very few people are going to stand up for desegregation because desegregated schools mean AYP headaches. With a handful of black kids, the scores don't count. Better to keep it this way?
As for #1, the only way that parents are going to see this is if the schools continue to fail to make AYP. But if the number of black children decreases in these schools, esp. the Title 1 schools, then the schools will make AYP because there won't be enough poor/black/Hispanic kids to make up a sub-group. Plain and simple. However, they may not make AYP when the cut scores are really high, e.g., above 80%. At this point, the schools -- even the affluent, nearly all-white schools, will fail to make AYP and will face sanctions. Yet, if the schools have very few poor/black/Hispanic kids in them, they would no longer qualify as Title 1 schools and, therefore, will be immune to sanctions.
So now the real question remains: what are suburban officials prepared to do about making AYP? From a 20,000 foot perspective, they can either (1) work against NCLB and expose it for what it is or (2) buckle under it. I fear they will buckle and work on raising test scores. My district is using Tungsten -- a "benchmark assessment" tool from Edision, Inc. -- to monitor the progress of students as they prepare to take the state standardized test in the spring. "Benchmark assessment" tools like those from Tungsten, McGraw-Hill, et al, will likely be used to determine which poor/black/Hispanic students are on the edge of the proficient cut score, i.e., “the bubble kids.” The children that are going to do well on the test and the children who are clearly going to fail it may not receive the kind of instructional attention that the children on the edge of proficiency will receive prior to taking the actual test in the spring.
The great tragedy in all of this would be to buckle under NCLB and raise test scores while at the same time gutting the depth and breadth of the curriculum for poor/black/Hispanic children. The administration would report higher test scores. The public would be pleased. Maybe even the parents would be happy. Of course, the losers would be the poor/black/Hispanic children who got the dumbed-down test prep curriculum instead of the rich, broad-based curriculum that their white, well-off peers got.
So, perhaps what we'll see in the suburbs is nominally desegregated schools with educationally segregated classrooms. But we're not going to see a revolt.
I've been trying to make NCLB an issue in my area for the last 2 years by talking to parent groups, political groups, church groups, anyone that will listen. But what I realize is that I have been trying to get people to care about something that will very likely not affect them at all. Public schools in the city of St. Louis are in utter chaos right now. There is a strong likelihood that the state of MO will take the city schools over next year. More than 81% of children in St. Louis public schools are eligible for free/reduced lunch. More than 81% of students are black. But who cares about this if you live in the suburbs? My answer so far: basically no one. They don't care because it's not their problem. It's not their kids. It's not their schools.
Consider the following:
- 3 of the 8 schools in my suburban St. Louis district receive Title 1 funds. Very few of the schools in the surrounding suburban districts receive any Title 1 funds at all.
- Because they don't receive Title 1 funds, there are no sanctions for failing to make AYP. Failure to make AYP amounts to is a symbolic slap in the face from the Feds. But life will go on as usual for these schools because there are no consequences. Given that these largely white, largely well-off school districts already think they are doing a good job, a symbolic slap from the Feds might make headlines in the local paper, but it will - sadly - result in very little change. The school district I mentioned in my first post failed to make AYP, but it was just awarded a "Distinction in Performance" award from the MO Dept. of Ed for the sixth year in a row.
- The suburban school superintendent I spoke to mentioned the possibility of doing without any of the little Title 1 money he gets now. It's a tiny drop in the bucket, about 2% of the district's total budget. At the end of the day, he said, he could do without the money, esp. if it freed him from the feds and NCLB. So telling the Feds to take a hike is a real option for him. I suspect it's a real option for lots of well-off districts who receive little to no federal money.
- The St. Louis city schools and suburban schools have been working together in a voluntary desegregation program. But this is ending in 2008, meaning there will be fewer of the kids who typically fail to make AYP coming to the suburban schools. Translation: pressure to raise test scores is decreasing, not increasing, for these schools because they will have less racially and economically diverse schools. As we all know, schools with the most diversity have the greatest likelihood of failing to make AYP.
Think about possible responses to this sentence: "White suburban parents will leave the public schools if they . . .
1) perceive that the school is not giving children the best education possible; they will spend the necessary money to send their kids to private school.
2) perceive that the school is no longer committed to or supportive of racial desegregation.
3) perceive that white children and black children, although integrated, are receiving qualitatively different educations.
I doubt many people will care about #2 and #3. Sad, but true. In all honesty, with the end of the deseg program and voluntary transfer in 2008, who is going to stand up for desegregation? The insidious aspect of this is that -- ultimately -- very few people are going to stand up for desegregation because desegregated schools mean AYP headaches. With a handful of black kids, the scores don't count. Better to keep it this way?
As for #1, the only way that parents are going to see this is if the schools continue to fail to make AYP. But if the number of black children decreases in these schools, esp. the Title 1 schools, then the schools will make AYP because there won't be enough poor/black/Hispanic kids to make up a sub-group. Plain and simple. However, they may not make AYP when the cut scores are really high, e.g., above 80%. At this point, the schools -- even the affluent, nearly all-white schools, will fail to make AYP and will face sanctions. Yet, if the schools have very few poor/black/Hispanic kids in them, they would no longer qualify as Title 1 schools and, therefore, will be immune to sanctions.
So now the real question remains: what are suburban officials prepared to do about making AYP? From a 20,000 foot perspective, they can either (1) work against NCLB and expose it for what it is or (2) buckle under it. I fear they will buckle and work on raising test scores. My district is using Tungsten -- a "benchmark assessment" tool from Edision, Inc. -- to monitor the progress of students as they prepare to take the state standardized test in the spring. "Benchmark assessment" tools like those from Tungsten, McGraw-Hill, et al, will likely be used to determine which poor/black/Hispanic students are on the edge of the proficient cut score, i.e., “the bubble kids.” The children that are going to do well on the test and the children who are clearly going to fail it may not receive the kind of instructional attention that the children on the edge of proficiency will receive prior to taking the actual test in the spring.
The great tragedy in all of this would be to buckle under NCLB and raise test scores while at the same time gutting the depth and breadth of the curriculum for poor/black/Hispanic children. The administration would report higher test scores. The public would be pleased. Maybe even the parents would be happy. Of course, the losers would be the poor/black/Hispanic children who got the dumbed-down test prep curriculum instead of the rich, broad-based curriculum that their white, well-off peers got.
So, perhaps what we'll see in the suburbs is nominally desegregated schools with educationally segregated classrooms. But we're not going to see a revolt.
Monday, December 18, 2006
NCLB and Suburban Malaise
Which set of data will parents trust -- the federal NCLB data that say the schools are failing, or the local data that say the schools are doing well? It depends on the parents. If you're white, fairly well-off, and your kid doesn't have an IEP, you're likely to believe the school. But if you are a minority, not so well-off, and/or your kid has an IEP, the federal data are going to be hard to ignore, especially if the data get the district to pay attention to your kid.
Here's the thing about the suburbs: most of the people are white, and most of them are fairly well-off. Some of the kids have IEP's. Most don't. So all these data that show that their schools are failing just don't make any sense to most suburban parents.
Bottom line: NCLB is not a problem for most suburban parents.
I met with the superintendent of a suburban St. Louis school district recently, and he confirmed this. This particular district, normally considered top-notch, did not make AYP this year. It's being called a failure.
However, according to the superintendent, no one believes this. No one -- not a single parent -- called him to complain. The parents all said, "That's crazy. Our schools are great!" The superintendent said that parents in the district believe and trust him. He and the district have a long enough track record to have earned this trust.
So maybe they will continue to trust him. Maybe they will say the NCLB Emperor has no clothes. But maybe they won't. Maybe they'll start to give in to the federal data. Maybe when they see the transfer option kick in or funds being drained into SES, they'll start to demand that scores be raised.
Somehow, I doubt it. I don't think a single measure is going to convince anyone in affluent suburban districts like this. These schools are doing well. They will continue to do well. For certain kids.
But for the kids that are not so lucky, the ones that do not make AYP are being given "special attention." And who are these kids? Black, Hispanic, poor, English Language Learners, and kids with disabilities. In an effort to raise the test scores of these kids, suburban schools are adopting "differentiated instruction" techniques and focusing on ways to raise achievement for the relatively small number of poor kids, minority kids, ELL's, and kids with IEP's in their district.
Ideally, differentiation takes into account the different needs and learning styles of each student. But in practice, what does it look like? What assurance do we have that these low-performing kids are getting the same high-quality education that their white, well-off peers are getting? How can we be sure that these kids are being well educated, not being trained to raise their scores?
The answer for most suburbanites? Who cares. As long as my kid is doing OK, I'm happy. Too bad about everyone else. Instead of NIMBY - Not In My Back Yard - this version is called ALAMKIDASEE - As Long As My Kid Is Doing Alright, Screw Everyone Else.
I used to believe the NCLB revolt would happen in the suburbs when it started to hit the majority of people's homes in a tangible way. But I don't think it's ever going to. So the revolt is not going to happen in the suburbs. Like most social justice issues of our day, the revolt will continue to be relegated to the inner-city. And it will have to wait in line behind all the other reasons for revolt. If there is any kind of skirmish in the suburbs, it will be a replay of the same old thing: powerless people attempting to get noticed. It will pit disenfranchised suburbanites against the powerful majority. And it will likely result in the same thing: the status quo.
Here's the thing about the suburbs: most of the people are white, and most of them are fairly well-off. Some of the kids have IEP's. Most don't. So all these data that show that their schools are failing just don't make any sense to most suburban parents.
Bottom line: NCLB is not a problem for most suburban parents.
I met with the superintendent of a suburban St. Louis school district recently, and he confirmed this. This particular district, normally considered top-notch, did not make AYP this year. It's being called a failure.
However, according to the superintendent, no one believes this. No one -- not a single parent -- called him to complain. The parents all said, "That's crazy. Our schools are great!" The superintendent said that parents in the district believe and trust him. He and the district have a long enough track record to have earned this trust.
So maybe they will continue to trust him. Maybe they will say the NCLB Emperor has no clothes. But maybe they won't. Maybe they'll start to give in to the federal data. Maybe when they see the transfer option kick in or funds being drained into SES, they'll start to demand that scores be raised.
Somehow, I doubt it. I don't think a single measure is going to convince anyone in affluent suburban districts like this. These schools are doing well. They will continue to do well. For certain kids.
But for the kids that are not so lucky, the ones that do not make AYP are being given "special attention." And who are these kids? Black, Hispanic, poor, English Language Learners, and kids with disabilities. In an effort to raise the test scores of these kids, suburban schools are adopting "differentiated instruction" techniques and focusing on ways to raise achievement for the relatively small number of poor kids, minority kids, ELL's, and kids with IEP's in their district.
Ideally, differentiation takes into account the different needs and learning styles of each student. But in practice, what does it look like? What assurance do we have that these low-performing kids are getting the same high-quality education that their white, well-off peers are getting? How can we be sure that these kids are being well educated, not being trained to raise their scores?
The answer for most suburbanites? Who cares. As long as my kid is doing OK, I'm happy. Too bad about everyone else. Instead of NIMBY - Not In My Back Yard - this version is called ALAMKIDASEE - As Long As My Kid Is Doing Alright, Screw Everyone Else.
I used to believe the NCLB revolt would happen in the suburbs when it started to hit the majority of people's homes in a tangible way. But I don't think it's ever going to. So the revolt is not going to happen in the suburbs. Like most social justice issues of our day, the revolt will continue to be relegated to the inner-city. And it will have to wait in line behind all the other reasons for revolt. If there is any kind of skirmish in the suburbs, it will be a replay of the same old thing: powerless people attempting to get noticed. It will pit disenfranchised suburbanites against the powerful majority. And it will likely result in the same thing: the status quo.
Monday, December 04, 2006
My Wild Child
There is so much that I would like to tame in my daughter, my wild child. She just turned four. She frequently drives me nuts -- her demands, her tantrums, her desire to control her environment so meticulously, and -- most pointedly -- her desire to control me and my wife so meticulously.
But I would not change her for the world. It is her wildness that I most cherish about her.
What does it mean to be "a wild child"? Essentially, it means the freedom to be a child: free, spontaneous, unfettered, chaotic, joyous, curious, rageful, and loving all packed into two-and-a-half feet of human being.
My control fantasies often run wild. I say to myself, "Today, she will do what she is told! Today she will be a good girl!" And then I stop and listen to myself, how I want to equate "being good" with doing what I tell her to do. I then realize that, by this logic, she is "bad" when she is not doing what I tell her to do. In short, she is only good when she is being who I want her to be, not who she is.
This is pretty heavy stuff for four-year-olds. Or so we'd like to believe. We reason, "Well, she is a child, and she needs to be told what to do. She needs the limits. She needs the boundaries. She yearns to know what they are so she can feel secure. Without them, she is lost."
But I'm not so sure about this. I can say with absolute confidence that I need the boundaries and the limits, that I need to know what they are so I can feel secure, and that I often feel lost without them. So I wonder if we simply misspeak when we talk about children. Perhaps we need to be more honest and talk about OUR need for clear structure and let the kids be kids.
Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not advocating that my daughter be allowed to play in the street if she wants to, stay up until 2 a.m., and eat nothing but chocolate pudding. I recognize the need for certain rules and structures because these make sense. Playing in the street, for example, will likely lead to death. Staying up until 2 a.m. will likely lead to health disorders, as will eating nothing but chocolate pudding. So I tell her -- sometimes in a very loud voice -- "Don't play in the street!" or "Time for bed!" or "Eat your noodles!"
But here are two things I don't tell her:
1) "Do it because I said so."
2) "When I tell you to do something, you have to listen to me and do it."
These are my all-time favorite things I do not say. Believe me, I have wanted to say these things more times than I can possibly count, but I bite my tongue and do not let them slip. I take pride in the fact that neither I nor my wife subscribe to these viciously manipulative tautologies, statements made as angry demands that use fear, aggression, and intimidation for tactical purposes.
The irony, of course, is that my wild child uses fear, aggression, and intimidation for tactical purposes all the time. But here's the difference: she's four, and I'm forty. In my mind, it's OK for immature little wild animals to rely on base tactics to get what they want. But it's not OK for mature animals to use these same tactics to force compliance.
Of course, the next layer of irony is that we mature animals use these tactics all the time, and not just with our children. We use them to teach other children, we use them to correct miscreants, and we use them to get our way at the office with our underlings (to name only a few examples). But in each instance when we employ these tactics, we are avoiding the difficult work of having to be with other people and all the stuff that comes with them -- their emotions, their ideas, their fears, their doubts, their joys, their distractions. Better to just tell them what to do. Better to just intimidate them into compliance. And even if we recognize that these tactics are not really "better," we know for a fact that they are a hell of a lot easier.
So what it all comes down to is that we are aggressive, manipulative, tyrannical dictators because we are too lazy to do the work of communicating effectively with each other -- including our children.
But there is a cost to avoiding the hard work.
I see the cost in the facial expressions of many girls I know. They are all between the ages of 6 and 16. They have made it safely out of the fire of four. They are all good girls. They are all quiet. They all do as they are told. There is nothing terribly distinctive about any of them. They are all, in a word, nice. They are also incredibly boring. The fact that we do this to children -- make them nice -- is bad enough, but that we do this much more efficiently with girls is proof of our participation in and sanctioning of our misogynist society.
An unexamined sense of duty, compliance, doing what you are told, to shut up and be still -- where did they learn all these things?
It gets more complicated when we do this to racial and ethnic minorities. It gets even more complicated when we do this to minority girls. It reaches its pinnacle when we do this to low-income minority girls. Poor black and Hispanic girls are the lowest of the low in our society.
So I'm not impressed with any organization that raises academic achievement at the expense of the wild child. I am less impressed with organizations that focus on raising the academic achievement of low-income minority children when they raise scores at the expense of their wildness, their innate quality as children. But I am deeply troubled by organizations that claim to raise academic achievement not only at the expense of the innate childness of children, but that do so in order to make them more productive members of society so that they may better compete in the global economy.
In an essay published in the New York Times Sunday Magazine on 11/26/06, Paul Tough observed,
Students at . . . [Knowlege Is Power Program schools] . . . follow a system for classroom behavior invented by [KIPP co-founders] Levin and Feinberg called Slant, which instructs them to sit up, listen, ask questions, nod and track the speaker with their eyes. When I visited KIPP Academy last month, I was standing with Levin at the front of a music class of about 60 students, listening to him talk, when he suddenly interrupted himself and pointed at me. “Do you notice what he’s doing right now?” he asked the class. They all called out at once, “Nodding!” Levin’s contention is that Americans of a certain background learn these methods for taking in information early on and employ them instinctively. KIPP students, he says, need to be taught the methods explicitly. And so it is a little unnerving to stand at the front of a KIPP class; every eye is on you. When a student speaks, every head swivels to watch her. To anyone raised in the principles of progressive education, the uniformity and discipline in KIPP classrooms can be off-putting.
The future of this country will not be determined by how well we train poor black and Hispanic kids how to nod. The prosperity of our country will not rest on how well these low-income children are shoe-horned into passive modes of doing what they are told. Rather, the future of this country and the future of the planet depend on the restless passion of minds awake to nuance and originality, to free, spontaneous, unfettered, chaotic, joyous, curious existence. Indeed, our futures depend on what lies within the wild child.
But I would not change her for the world. It is her wildness that I most cherish about her.
What does it mean to be "a wild child"? Essentially, it means the freedom to be a child: free, spontaneous, unfettered, chaotic, joyous, curious, rageful, and loving all packed into two-and-a-half feet of human being.
My control fantasies often run wild. I say to myself, "Today, she will do what she is told! Today she will be a good girl!" And then I stop and listen to myself, how I want to equate "being good" with doing what I tell her to do. I then realize that, by this logic, she is "bad" when she is not doing what I tell her to do. In short, she is only good when she is being who I want her to be, not who she is.
This is pretty heavy stuff for four-year-olds. Or so we'd like to believe. We reason, "Well, she is a child, and she needs to be told what to do. She needs the limits. She needs the boundaries. She yearns to know what they are so she can feel secure. Without them, she is lost."
But I'm not so sure about this. I can say with absolute confidence that I need the boundaries and the limits, that I need to know what they are so I can feel secure, and that I often feel lost without them. So I wonder if we simply misspeak when we talk about children. Perhaps we need to be more honest and talk about OUR need for clear structure and let the kids be kids.
Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not advocating that my daughter be allowed to play in the street if she wants to, stay up until 2 a.m., and eat nothing but chocolate pudding. I recognize the need for certain rules and structures because these make sense. Playing in the street, for example, will likely lead to death. Staying up until 2 a.m. will likely lead to health disorders, as will eating nothing but chocolate pudding. So I tell her -- sometimes in a very loud voice -- "Don't play in the street!" or "Time for bed!" or "Eat your noodles!"
But here are two things I don't tell her:
1) "Do it because I said so."
2) "When I tell you to do something, you have to listen to me and do it."
These are my all-time favorite things I do not say. Believe me, I have wanted to say these things more times than I can possibly count, but I bite my tongue and do not let them slip. I take pride in the fact that neither I nor my wife subscribe to these viciously manipulative tautologies, statements made as angry demands that use fear, aggression, and intimidation for tactical purposes.
The irony, of course, is that my wild child uses fear, aggression, and intimidation for tactical purposes all the time. But here's the difference: she's four, and I'm forty. In my mind, it's OK for immature little wild animals to rely on base tactics to get what they want. But it's not OK for mature animals to use these same tactics to force compliance.
Of course, the next layer of irony is that we mature animals use these tactics all the time, and not just with our children. We use them to teach other children, we use them to correct miscreants, and we use them to get our way at the office with our underlings (to name only a few examples). But in each instance when we employ these tactics, we are avoiding the difficult work of having to be with other people and all the stuff that comes with them -- their emotions, their ideas, their fears, their doubts, their joys, their distractions. Better to just tell them what to do. Better to just intimidate them into compliance. And even if we recognize that these tactics are not really "better," we know for a fact that they are a hell of a lot easier.
So what it all comes down to is that we are aggressive, manipulative, tyrannical dictators because we are too lazy to do the work of communicating effectively with each other -- including our children.
But there is a cost to avoiding the hard work.
I see the cost in the facial expressions of many girls I know. They are all between the ages of 6 and 16. They have made it safely out of the fire of four. They are all good girls. They are all quiet. They all do as they are told. There is nothing terribly distinctive about any of them. They are all, in a word, nice. They are also incredibly boring. The fact that we do this to children -- make them nice -- is bad enough, but that we do this much more efficiently with girls is proof of our participation in and sanctioning of our misogynist society.
An unexamined sense of duty, compliance, doing what you are told, to shut up and be still -- where did they learn all these things?
It gets more complicated when we do this to racial and ethnic minorities. It gets even more complicated when we do this to minority girls. It reaches its pinnacle when we do this to low-income minority girls. Poor black and Hispanic girls are the lowest of the low in our society.
So I'm not impressed with any organization that raises academic achievement at the expense of the wild child. I am less impressed with organizations that focus on raising the academic achievement of low-income minority children when they raise scores at the expense of their wildness, their innate quality as children. But I am deeply troubled by organizations that claim to raise academic achievement not only at the expense of the innate childness of children, but that do so in order to make them more productive members of society so that they may better compete in the global economy.
In an essay published in the New York Times Sunday Magazine on 11/26/06, Paul Tough observed,
Students at . . . [Knowlege Is Power Program schools] . . . follow a system for classroom behavior invented by [KIPP co-founders] Levin and Feinberg called Slant, which instructs them to sit up, listen, ask questions, nod and track the speaker with their eyes. When I visited KIPP Academy last month, I was standing with Levin at the front of a music class of about 60 students, listening to him talk, when he suddenly interrupted himself and pointed at me. “Do you notice what he’s doing right now?” he asked the class. They all called out at once, “Nodding!” Levin’s contention is that Americans of a certain background learn these methods for taking in information early on and employ them instinctively. KIPP students, he says, need to be taught the methods explicitly. And so it is a little unnerving to stand at the front of a KIPP class; every eye is on you. When a student speaks, every head swivels to watch her. To anyone raised in the principles of progressive education, the uniformity and discipline in KIPP classrooms can be off-putting.
The future of this country will not be determined by how well we train poor black and Hispanic kids how to nod. The prosperity of our country will not rest on how well these low-income children are shoe-horned into passive modes of doing what they are told. Rather, the future of this country and the future of the planet depend on the restless passion of minds awake to nuance and originality, to free, spontaneous, unfettered, chaotic, joyous, curious existence. Indeed, our futures depend on what lies within the wild child.
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Elephants Seem to Like It This Way
In an op-ed in today's New York Times titled "Teaching the Elephant," David Brooks makes this rather extraordinary statement: "Many of today's most effective antipoverty institutions are incredibly intrusive, even authoritarian."
Wow, I thought. Brooks, the conservative, might make a sensible argument for a change.
But then the other shoe dropped when Brooks concluded with this: "Up to a point, elephants seem to like it that way."
He cites the example of the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) schools, and admits that KIPP is an authoritarian institution, citing the anecdote from Paul Tough's recent essay from The New York Times Magazine in which KIPP pupils were trained to nod along as people talked. Up to a point, according to Brooks, elephants seem to like it this way.
Up to a point? Which point exactly? The concept is familiar: those who are held captive long enough, effectively enough, seem to like it that way.
At what point does such authoritarianism become totalitarianism? The safest, most efficient forms of government in the world -- and throughout history for that matter -- have been totalitarian dictatorships that leave nothing to chance, that control every aspect of society, even reality.
Michel Foucault's chapter on discipline in Discipline and Punish keeps coming to mind, "the body as object and target of power" and the notion of "docile bodies" that are "subjected, used, transformed, and improved."
These docile bodies in KIPP schools are uniformly brown and black. No white body is subjected to this same kind of disciplined transformation. Indeed, the school motto is "Be nice, work hard." What white, suburban, middle-class parents would want this to be the goal of their child's education?
Yet according to Tough and Brooks, 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 students spend exponentially more time at school -- from 7:30 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. during the week, four hours on Saturdays, and for a month during the summer. They put in roughly 70% more time in class than typical public school students. So KIPP is 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.
Up to a point, according to Brooks, elephants seem to like it this way.
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. It raises test scores. And, according to the KIPP people, what these children need.
Elephants seem to like it this way.
This is all the more troubling given the way the KIPP origin story is told: two bright, highly-educated, white male crusaders who went out of their ways to save poor minority children from the ravages of the failed system of public education. The story too closely resembles tales of white missionaries, explorers, and anthropologists not to be noticeable. In darkest Africa at the turn of the twentieth century, white men descended into the jungles to convert, trade with, and study the savages they encountered. Implicit within all their encounters was the unquestioned axiom that defined these exchanges: the white people were civilized, the black people were uncivilized; the white people were advanced, the black people were behind. To this day, “Third World Debtor Nations” are looked down upon as drains upon the world economy, as incompetent at managing their own affairs, and in need of a good lesson or two.
The KIPP origin story is told with a great deal of pride, that the two young crusaders (both from Ivy League schools) displayed enormous courage and commitment to turn things around to produce “schools that work.” I'm reminded of Kenneth Saltman’s point from The Edison Schools:
"The two questions most asked about Edison by liberals and conservatives are whether it works to raise test scores and whether it works financially to decrease costs. Asking whether or not something “works” brackets out of consideration the broader goals, purposes, and underlying assumptions about what something works to do. The focus on test performance and finances has thoroughly eclipsed discussion of whether Edison facilitates democratic education and a democratic society. If one assumes that the democratic potential of public schools should be at the forefront of debate, then the question of whether or not Edison “works” may be the wrong way to approach the company and public schooling more generally." (p. 68)
So what do KIPP schools work at doing? What do they accomplish? What do they produce? Or, more precisely, who do they produce and by what means? And at what cost?
While the intentions of those early missionaries are now clear to us centuries later, and while we can now condemn their racist, elitist, ethnocentric project to "civilize" the non-Western planet and make it into its own image, we are quick to celebrate the project of these modern KIPP'ster missionaries. We find it quaint -- and maybe a trifle classist -- in My Fair Lady when Professor Henry Higgins sings, "Why Can't the English Teach Their Children How to Speak?" and gives Eliza Doolittle elocution lessons so she can pass for royalty at a high-society gala. But we label similar approaches at KIPP schools as "efforts to close the achievement gap" and think nothing of the relationship between training children when and how to nod appropriately and Eliza pronouncing, "The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plane."
Higgins abhors Eliza. It not that she cannot speak proper English. Rather, it is that she will not. She chooses not to participate in the mores, values, and language patterns of elite society, and it is this conscious act of rejection that Higgins detests. He knows full well that she can change, but her choice not to is loathsome. So too with the children that KIPP targets. Falling under the all-encompassing, seemingly innocuous mantra "All children can learn," KIPP treats all children as willful and loathsome that might prove them otherwise. To convert them to acceptable forms of social behavior, to give them the cultural capital that will allow them to pass in high society, is the gift of liberation that they have to give to these children. Who, they ask, would not want to be given this gift?
It's not that I wish to romanticize the "otherness" of black, low-income, urban culture. I'm not suggesting that "they" are really better than "us," that "those people" are more in tune with how things really are. But I do want to point out tow things: (1) the revulsion that so many people feel towards poor people, a disproportionate percentage of whom are black and Hispanic, and (2) the need to make our diverse culture of heterogeneous beliefs and practices into a single, efficient, monolithic culture that has a single objective: "success" in capitalist culture.
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. The greater tragedy is the extent to which such a victory -- even if it were possible -- would signal the victory of monolithic capitalist conformity to an ideal of efficiency and productivity.
So in praising KIPP, we lose sight of the bigger issues and the bigger challenges. And, with KIPP, we say, "This is good enough for the elephants" while we send our kids to private schools or the best suburban schools, further sustaining the monolithic culture that got us there.
Wow, I thought. Brooks, the conservative, might make a sensible argument for a change.
But then the other shoe dropped when Brooks concluded with this: "Up to a point, elephants seem to like it that way."
He cites the example of the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) schools, and admits that KIPP is an authoritarian institution, citing the anecdote from Paul Tough's recent essay from The New York Times Magazine in which KIPP pupils were trained to nod along as people talked. Up to a point, according to Brooks, elephants seem to like it this way.
Up to a point? Which point exactly? The concept is familiar: those who are held captive long enough, effectively enough, seem to like it that way.
At what point does such authoritarianism become totalitarianism? The safest, most efficient forms of government in the world -- and throughout history for that matter -- have been totalitarian dictatorships that leave nothing to chance, that control every aspect of society, even reality.
Michel Foucault's chapter on discipline in Discipline and Punish keeps coming to mind, "the body as object and target of power" and the notion of "docile bodies" that are "subjected, used, transformed, and improved."
These docile bodies in KIPP schools are uniformly brown and black. No white body is subjected to this same kind of disciplined transformation. Indeed, the school motto is "Be nice, work hard." What white, suburban, middle-class parents would want this to be the goal of their child's education?
Yet according to Tough and Brooks, 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 students spend exponentially more time at school -- from 7:30 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. during the week, four hours on Saturdays, and for a month during the summer. They put in roughly 70% more time in class than typical public school students. So KIPP is 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.
Up to a point, according to Brooks, elephants seem to like it this way.
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. It raises test scores. And, according to the KIPP people, what these children need.
Elephants seem to like it this way.
This is all the more troubling given the way the KIPP origin story is told: two bright, highly-educated, white male crusaders who went out of their ways to save poor minority children from the ravages of the failed system of public education. The story too closely resembles tales of white missionaries, explorers, and anthropologists not to be noticeable. In darkest Africa at the turn of the twentieth century, white men descended into the jungles to convert, trade with, and study the savages they encountered. Implicit within all their encounters was the unquestioned axiom that defined these exchanges: the white people were civilized, the black people were uncivilized; the white people were advanced, the black people were behind. To this day, “Third World Debtor Nations” are looked down upon as drains upon the world economy, as incompetent at managing their own affairs, and in need of a good lesson or two.
The KIPP origin story is told with a great deal of pride, that the two young crusaders (both from Ivy League schools) displayed enormous courage and commitment to turn things around to produce “schools that work.” I'm reminded of Kenneth Saltman’s point from The Edison Schools:
"The two questions most asked about Edison by liberals and conservatives are whether it works to raise test scores and whether it works financially to decrease costs. Asking whether or not something “works” brackets out of consideration the broader goals, purposes, and underlying assumptions about what something works to do. The focus on test performance and finances has thoroughly eclipsed discussion of whether Edison facilitates democratic education and a democratic society. If one assumes that the democratic potential of public schools should be at the forefront of debate, then the question of whether or not Edison “works” may be the wrong way to approach the company and public schooling more generally." (p. 68)
So what do KIPP schools work at doing? What do they accomplish? What do they produce? Or, more precisely, who do they produce and by what means? And at what cost?
While the intentions of those early missionaries are now clear to us centuries later, and while we can now condemn their racist, elitist, ethnocentric project to "civilize" the non-Western planet and make it into its own image, we are quick to celebrate the project of these modern KIPP'ster missionaries. We find it quaint -- and maybe a trifle classist -- in My Fair Lady when Professor Henry Higgins sings, "Why Can't the English Teach Their Children How to Speak?" and gives Eliza Doolittle elocution lessons so she can pass for royalty at a high-society gala. But we label similar approaches at KIPP schools as "efforts to close the achievement gap" and think nothing of the relationship between training children when and how to nod appropriately and Eliza pronouncing, "The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plane."
Higgins abhors Eliza. It not that she cannot speak proper English. Rather, it is that she will not. She chooses not to participate in the mores, values, and language patterns of elite society, and it is this conscious act of rejection that Higgins detests. He knows full well that she can change, but her choice not to is loathsome. So too with the children that KIPP targets. Falling under the all-encompassing, seemingly innocuous mantra "All children can learn," KIPP treats all children as willful and loathsome that might prove them otherwise. To convert them to acceptable forms of social behavior, to give them the cultural capital that will allow them to pass in high society, is the gift of liberation that they have to give to these children. Who, they ask, would not want to be given this gift?
It's not that I wish to romanticize the "otherness" of black, low-income, urban culture. I'm not suggesting that "they" are really better than "us," that "those people" are more in tune with how things really are. But I do want to point out tow things: (1) the revulsion that so many people feel towards poor people, a disproportionate percentage of whom are black and Hispanic, and (2) the need to make our diverse culture of heterogeneous beliefs and practices into a single, efficient, monolithic culture that has a single objective: "success" in capitalist culture.
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. The greater tragedy is the extent to which such a victory -- even if it were possible -- would signal the victory of monolithic capitalist conformity to an ideal of efficiency and productivity.
So in praising KIPP, we lose sight of the bigger issues and the bigger challenges. And, with KIPP, we say, "This is good enough for the elephants" while we send our kids to private schools or the best suburban schools, further sustaining the monolithic culture that got us there.
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