First let me start by saying Florida’s school grading system
is whacked. It’s been adjusted, bent, warped and messed with to the point that,
well it’s whacked.
Next I don’t doubt there are some good things going on
there. I can’t imagine a staff of teachers either not working hard or not
caring. Yet despite all this I feel comfortable saying the KIPP impact school
is a colossal failure.
Grades are out and KIPP is projected to be a D, now they
will call it a C because friend of KIPP Gary Chartrand voted to lie to the
citizens of Florida and make it so schools can only drop one letter grade. Hmm,
since he has a lot riding on the success of the KIPP School I wonder if that
played into his decision.
But Chris you just said the grades should be meaningless?
How does that register? Well it’s because of the grading system that many
considered the schools on the north side of town failing which led to KIPP
coming here in the first place, well that and a million bucks form the
aforementioned Chartrand. KIPP can’t benefit form the grading system then turn
a blind eye to it when it is inconvenient.
Worse however is the KIPP school was supposed to be a
savior, to take those poor black kids out of poverty and give them the
education they deserved and like it or not the grading system is the one that
we have right now and its says the KIPP school isn’t delivering the promised
goods.
Some of you might say because KIPP was allowed to expand
this two letter grade drop is just an expansion hiccup. To which I would reply,
well why were they allowed to expand in the first place without proving
sustained productivity and furthermore since this would be their second
expansion, shouldn’t they have know what the hiccups would have been and been
able to mitigate them?
Then lets not forget the KIPP school benefits from selection
bias, counseling our poor performers, putting requirements on parents and a
budget that sees them spend about a third more per child. Yes friends that’s
right, they spend about a third more per child, and despite all these huge
advantages their grades have gone from worst school in Northeast Florida to a B
back down to an F.
Charter schools are not the cure to the problems facing
education and the KIPP school which none of the top private or public schools
emulate is definitely not the answer even though it was sold as such.
Chris...keep reporting the truth! I am a former Duval teacher who reads your blog frequently although I am no longer a resident of Duval County.
ReplyDeleteNot only is our state problematic but Duval has another level of issues--truly a special consolidated county :)
I have come to the conclusion that the ONLY way to send the Wall Street and Jeb Bush Inc. education profiteers packing will be to make it unfrofitable for them to operate.
ReplyDeleteOne possible way would be for students who have attended these failing cash-cows to pile into class-action lawsuits that seek damages of lost future income resulting from the significantly reduced academic outcomes that the for-profit school industry has been able to artfully dodge. They've dodged accountability by the above-mentioned methods, but a host of others that are as complex as the webs of deceit present in practically every criminal enterprise. They rely heavily on the high cost of paying someone to unencrypt their financial trickery, and the fact that they are the only entities with enough expendable money to police them. In other words, they are the fox, and the henhouse is bankrupt, and unable to hire a replacement for the fox, who enjoys getting fat, day in and day out, on the backs of the taxpayers they CLAIM to want to help.
Know this: a corporation exists to help ONLY the stockholders, and NO ONE else. They do not exist to help students, teachers, principals, parents, or school boards, unless the school board members have a vested interest in those corporations, either in pure stock capital gains, or in the form of political backing, or both (see also Jason Fischer and the Tea Party and CSX employee/stockholder).
The truly sad and shocking aspect of this phenomenon is the utter gullibility of the progressive side of our democracy, and how they were suckered into handing even more public money to corporations than Bush/Cheney and the U.S. Treasury robbers ever imagined. Add to this the future college loan apocalypse that WILL happen, and we get a glimpse of just how desparate the situation is, and how we CONTINUE to kick the can down the road, rather than pick it up and recycle it.
Lawyers will someday become our saviors, if they take on the corporations and hold them accountable for the terrible product which is for-profit education.
i am from kipp and this is just the way we are a big flunk
ReplyDelete