An Even Playing Field?

You gotta wonder. When people talk about charters, they marvel at their achievements, even though their results are clearly uneven. Yet no charter I know of is wedged into a 250% capacity building, as are all my students. Also, no fewer than 100% of charter students have parents proactive enough to select schools for their kids.

Then you find that billionaires like Eli Broad and Bill Gates are supporting these schools, in a manner of speaking. But really, when they earmark their donations to KIPP or Aspire, or whatever private chain comes down the pike, they provide startup cash and stick taxpayers for the rest.

Typical charter schools such as Green Dot, which Broad also subsidizes with what are probably tax-deductible gifts, are privately controlled and run by unelected, self-appointed boards that are effectively unaccountable to the public. The State Board of Education and the state agency that "oversees" charters are now dominated by pro-charter appointees.

That's in California, of course. But here in New York, Green Dot leader Steve Barr has UFT head Randi Weingarten firmly tucked into his pocket, and can continue to boast of "unionized" schools without tenure or seniority rights for teachers who work there. And, of course, when these attacks on the rights of working people succeed, our kids grow up with fewer rights themselves. And though charter schools can fire employees for offenses like comparing public school salaries, they don't appear to serve the same kids we do:

...Through what amounts to a contract with parents and students, they screen their applicants and admit a clientele that, in a traditional public school, would do as well or better than they are doing in the charter school.

If Broad's pet charters had to accept 3,000 limited-English, low-income students from ethnic backgrounds that include a high percentage of single-parent families, with widespread gang involvement and little commitment to education, scores that the charters now trumpet would fall significantly. But working with a select group of students who would score well at any school, Broad's charters garner only somewhat better-than-average test scores - despite the massive amount of public and private money poured into them.

It seems the cards are stacked in their favor. Of course, when you have billionaires and union heads effectively in your pocket, you're not really gambling anyway.

I love it when "reformers" talk about school choice, and pat themselves on the back for their generosity. Meanwhile, the biggest "reformer" of all, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, treats my community public school like an oversized can of sardines, reserving state of the art facilities for charter schools run by billionaires.

Thanks to California Teacher Guy

Competitive Bidding Is for the Little People

How on earth is Mayor Bloomberg supposed to get anything done? That goshdarn Thomas diNapoli is at it again. First, he went and audited the KIPP schools, finding the following:

lack of documentation of criminal background checks for seven employees at the school;

an unclear policy regarding the competitive bidding process that resulted in the awarding of four contracts totaling in $181,584 without the benefit of competition;

no written policies and procedures to determine and approve salary increases;

missing or incomplete overtime records;

no system to track employees’ sick or personal leave accruals; and

no written policies and procedures or Board approval for employee bonus and stipend pay.

With such indifference toward compensating their employees, it's no wonder they needed to send them on "vacation" (which supposedly consisted largely of work-related meetings and discussions). When this story came out, "reformers" round the net branded diNapoli as "political." I found that a very unpersuasive argument, as nowhere did they use the word "inaccurate." But it turns out that diNapoli has his eyes on public schools as well.

Apparently, the Bloomberg administration's policy of offering no-bid contracts to whomever they please does not please Mr. diNapoli. Sure, it's easier for Bloomberg to just hand out money to anyone he feels like, but is that in the public's best interest?

The city came under tough criticism in 2006 over a $15.8 million deal with Alvarez & Marsal, a consulting firm that was hired to restructure the schools’ financial operations and cut as much as $200 million from the city’s more than $15 billion budget. The consulting firm also restructured several school bus routes to save money, but the plan infuriated parents when it took effect last January.

You may remember when kids were left to freeze on the coldest days of the year last year. This led to widespread dissatisfaction with the Bloomberg regime, which came to an end only when UFT President Randi Weingarten unilaterally stopped a demonstration against reorganization number 3 (The clear implication that reorganizations 1 and 2 had failed was largely ignored by the press).

Some of the consultants charged as much as $450 an hour for their work, and were able to bill as much as $500 a day for such expenses as transportation and housing.

Perhaps competitive bidding could have saved the city money and avoided the bus fiasco, but apparently the Bloomberg administration feels doing what it wants, when it wants, however it wants is more important.

School officials have said that awarding contracts without bidding gives them more flexibility and allows them to get better and faster results...

What, exactly, are these results? Under Mr. Bloomberg's leadership, I've watched my school mushroom to 250% capacity, and by his own standards (standardized test scores) he's made no progress at all.

Is diNapoli political? Well, of course he is. In fact, that's an adjective I'd apply to virtually all politicians. After all, there's a reason they're called politicians.

Is he accurate? We'll have the results of his audit in six months. Perhaps we can't attribute the unconscionable overcrowding, or the failure to reduce class sizes or raise test scores to no-bid contracts. But kids freezing on NY streets were indeed a disgraceful spectacle, and not remotely the sort of "results" I want, particularly from someone who aspires to be President of the United States.

Low Rent Swift Boat

Here's how rumors are created---First someone takes your message out of context, and misinterprets it completely. That's what Eduwonk did yesterday, when he suggested the aim of this post was to "begrudge KIPP teachers" of their five day trip to the Caribbean. Anyone who'd bothered to read the post could see that my criticism was directed toward KIPP's leaders.

To buttress his position, Eduwonk used this link to claim the trip was not taken with public money. Only problem is--that's not at all what the link says. What it says, exactly, is this:

Although officials at the charter school told auditors the trips in 2005 and 2006 were funded by surplus funds from private and not public sources, state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said documentation was lacking to support those claims.

For a good rumor, you need others to extend the misinterpretation. Having read Eduwonk's post uncritically, his very first commenter managed to extrapolate that I was "profoundly anti-teacher." Perhaps this was because I suggested KIPP teachers work too hard and aren't paid enough. Perhaps it was because I bemoaned their complete and utter lack of job protection. Maybe it was because I thought they ought to be able to travel with their families rather than their supervisors.

Or maybe it was because he (like Eduwonk, perhaps) hadn't actually read the post very carefully. The commenter concludes thusly:

NYC educator, if your school produced results like KIPP, I'd want you to be given a trip to the Bahamas also. Until then, I'd prefer that you not assault the character of a group of outstanding educators, who deserve that trip and more.

Again, the very worst thing I suggested about KIPP teachers was that they were overworked and underpaid. Oh, and I called some of them "loyal." Still, it's quite a stretch to interpret that as "character assault."

As for my school, it's regrettable Eduwonk's commenter opts to speculate on topics about which he knows nothing. As it happens, my school is one of the very best regular high schools in the city, and our test results (a big factor for KIPP enthusiasts) are consistently excellent. Furthermore, individual kids don't need to be at our school from 7:30 to 5, and can have lives after school (just like their teachers).

Despite his apparent good wishes, I don't suppose that commenter will send me an airline ticket anytime soon.

By the way, as a direct result of the short-sighted policies of "reformer" Mayor Michael Bloomberg, our school's mushroomed to over 250% capacity. I can only hope that whoever replaces him puts an end to that trend, as our school is something well worth saving.

Related: PREA Prez weighs in here.

Documents? We Don't Need No Stinking Documents!

As NYC Educator posted yesterday, New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli found in an audit that the KIPP Academy Charter School in the Bronx paid nearly $70,000 dollars for staff development trips to the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas.

KIPPsters claim donated private funds were used for the overseas staff development trips but according to the report "auditors could not determine if this was the case because donated funds were not accounted for separately from state aid."

Lack of documentation seems to be a chronic problem with the KIPP Academy. The state audit also found the following deficiencies:

* lack of documentation of criminal background checks for seven employees at the school;
* an unclear policy regarding the competitive bidding process that resulted in the awarding of four contracts totaling in $181,584 without the benefit of competition;
* no written policies and procedures to determine and approve salary increases;
* missing or incomplete overtime records;
* no system to track employees’ sick or personal leave accruals; and
* no written policies and procedures or Board approval for employee bonus and stipend pay.

Notice how the KIPPsters just can't seem to provide much documentation for how they hire people, what kind of criminal background checks they do on hirees, how they pay them, how they dole out bonuses, how they dole out no-bid contracts or how they track sicktime/overtime.

Apparently the KIPP Academy Charter School in the Bronx, supported by free-market proponents who want to privatize public education in order to bring the efficiencies of the free market to the public education sphere, have taken the whole free enterprise thing to heart and are running the school with "Enron-style accounting."

You remember Enron-style accounting. That's where business CEOs and boards lie, cheat and steal from stockholders/customers all the while living high off the hog on their ill-gotten largess. You keep the documentation to a minimum, put all the bad stuff "off the books" so that regulators don't see it and have another drink on the poor suckers who don't know any better.

Currently Enron-style accounting is back in the news because many financial institutions like Citigroup, Wachovia, WaMu, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Bear Sterns and Merrill Lynch are using the "off the books" documentation method to avoid having to list billions of dollars of losses they've taken in the mortgage mess.

Apparently the post-Enron, post-Tyco, Post-WorldCom, post-Adelphia regulation that free marketers are always complaining about (Sarbanes-Oxley) didn't actually take care of the fuzzy documentation problem on Wall Street. Eventually these venerated financial institutions will probably have to acknowledge they've lost billions, but for now they play a game of hide and seek with the losses.

And KIPPsters, backed by Wall Street CEOs and hedge fund managers who have created and/or enabled this fuzzy documentation environment where truth is held off the books and money losses do not become real until you acknowledge them, have learned their lessons well from their free market masters.

Keep the bad stuff off the books. Keep as little documentation as possible. Complain about regulation. Shrug when regulators come and ask for the documentation. Extol the free market. Continue to hand out the no-bid, no-competition contracts. And most importantly, cheat the poor suckers who are providing you with the money for your operations.

POSTSCRIPT: One of the more disturbing findings in the audit is that the KIPP Academy couldn't provide documentation for the criminal background checks of seven employees.

The school lists 25 employees on its website, so they couldn't provide auditors with criminal background check documentation for 28% of the staff!

I don't know about you, but in this day and age I don't think I'd want to send my kid to a school where they don't know if the math teacher is an upstanding citizen or a felon.

Apparently the boys and girls running KIPP don't have the same concerns.

What Do We Do With All That Extra Money?

Imagine you run a charter school. Now, you've got the teachers and kids working six days a week, and longer days and years than public school teachers. Though you boast about how you pay your teachers more, for the time they work, you actually pay them less. The health insurance you offer is not equal to that which public school teachers have.

And of course, if anyone looks at you the wrong way, you fire them. Some NYC charters have fired the entire staff in the same school year. That's because the teachers were terrible, and had nothing whatsoever to do with administration making poor choices, of course. In any case, every time you get rid of one teacher, you hire another at minimum salary. No one ever makes it to maximum salary, except maybe one teacher who you trot out for press conferences.

"Step right up, folks, and look at the hundred-thousand dollar charter teacher! She walks, she talks, she crawls on her belly like a reptile!"

So by the end of the year, you've saved a bundle. What do you do with the extra money? You're on salary, technically, so you can't just keep it (you could do that more efficiently with vouchers).

Whopee! Let's spend five days in the Bahamas on the taxpayers' dime! That's what they do over at KIPP! Forget about vacationing with your family. First, you don't have time, and second, you can't afford it. It's go with your slavedrivers or don't go at all.

KIPP founder Dave Levin, who as superintendent of the academy attended the Bahamas retreat, called the trips essential to motivating teachers to work the extra Saturdays and extended hours demanded by the school.

Yeah, Dave, when you treat teachers and kids like dogs all year, they need a break. What--the kids didn't get one? Too bad for them. Well, if they're gonna grow up to work 200 hours a week with few benefits and no job protection, you can't train them too early, can you?

Loyal KIPP teachers rationalize the trips by explaining they don't actually have any fun while on them:

Math teacher Frank Corcoran, who attended a foray this year to the Dominican Republic, said formal meetings made up about 40 percent of the trip, but informal school-related chats dominated the spare time.

"So it feels like work even though people are walking around in swim trunks," he said. "Everyone comes out feeling motivated and pumped up, whereas at the end of the school year you're just burned out."

I can certainly understand being burned out after those six day weeks and being on call round the clock with the KIPP cell phone that allows parents to call you all night (precluding any sort of social or family life). And while workaholic executives may choose this very same lifestyle, KIPP teachers don't remotely earn executive-style money or perks.

Of course, KIPP denies using public money anyway, as they are beyond reproach:

Although officials at the charter school told auditors the trips in 2005 and 2006 were funded by surplus funds from private and not public sources, state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said documentation was lacking to support those claims.

"Having surplus funds is no excuse to spend taxpayer dollars on trips to the Caribbean," DiNapoli said. "Money intended for education should be spent on education."

I'll pay for my own vacation, thank you, and I'll go with my family rather than my assistant principal (who appreciates this arrangement just as much as I do). My kid goes to a public school where they don't need to work her or her teachers to death.

You can kipp KIPP, thank you very much.

The Walmartization of Education

Wal-Mart's an interesting place. They're a huge success story for corporate profits, yet the people who actually work there can barely afford to buy the shirts their uniform requires, let alone the health insurance that only 43% of their employees manage to acquire. How does Wal-Mart treat unions?

The only union success at a Wal-Mart branch was short-lived. In 2000, staff in the butcher's department at a store in Jacksonville, Texas, voted to join the UFCW. Shortly afterwards, in what Wal-Mart insists was an unrelated move, it closed the department.

Yes, perhaps it was just one of those remarkable coincidences. What happens when a whole Wal-Mart store is in danger of voting to unionize?

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. says it will close one of its Canadian stores, just as some 200 workers at the location are near winning the first-ever union contract from the world's largest retailer.

Wal-Mart said it was shuttering the store in Jonquiere, Quebec, in response to unreasonable demands from union negotiators that would make it impossible for the store to sustain itself.

Oddly, despite over 100 billion in assets, that hard-pressed Walton family can't afford a unionized work force. It's a question of values, I suppose. Now Whitney Tilson, hedge fund manager, voucher enthusiast and vice-chairman of KIPP Academy is running a group called Democrats for Education Reform. So you have to wonder, how does such a "Democrat" feel about Wal-Mart? Well, he's positively bullish, actually, projecting it will double in 3-5 years. Any worries about the company's long-term exploitation of working people all over the world? None that I could detect.

So with "Democrats" like this, who really needs Republicans? Another reason for Mr. Tilson's enthusiasm for Wal-Mart could be the company's continual financial support of charter schools. In fact, Wal-Mart will give up to a quarter-million bucks to folks willing to open charter schools in Columbus or Cleveland.

You have to ask yourself--is the Walton Family Foundation, the same folks who fight unionism by any means necessary, purely altruistic in this venture? Or are they simply interested in weakening one of the last bastions of unionism in the United States of America? And make no mistake, unionism has been in decline since the 80s, when President Reagan busted the only union foolish enough to have supported him.

I started looking at charters with a very open mind. But the more I hear about them, and the more I learn about those who support them, the more I'm convinced they're just another step in the Walmartization of America.

And that's far from a good thing for those of us who need to work for a living. And it's not a good thing for our kids either--if they're attending public schools, chances are good they'll have to work for a living too.

Thanks to Columbus Education Association

Tonight I'm Gonna Party Like It's 1984

How do they do it, those folks at KIPP? I mean, how do they achieve such amazing success with the kids (at least the ones who don't drop out of the schools they don't take their names off)?

Well, here's a comment, from a KIPP student:

I am a KIPP student from Oklahoma and KIPP is "GREAT".Ilove it very much.That I will go around the United States just to find a KIPP college.

Makes ya wanna pack up yer kids and send 'em, doesn't it? But the next comment, from a former teacher, goes into just a little more detail:

The Human Brain, regardless of aptitude, statistically learns best through repitition. Doing things over and over and over again until it becomes ROTE (like muscle memory for an athlete or Instrument Position for a Musician). KIPP Teachers all teach with the "No Child Left Behind" morality. This means that for the most part, students who have mastered their Multiplication Tables or can easily identify Nouns, Verbs, and Adjectives, do not continue with their specified curriculum, and ultimate year-end outcome until THE WHOLE CLASS or at least the MAJORITY of the (*usually) 30 students have ALL mastered the skill at hand.

• In order for that to occur at KIPP Schools, unlike Public Schools, students are provided with AMPLE opportunity in terms of "seat time." By the end of October each school year, KIPP students have already put in as many hours as Public School students do FOR THE ENTIRE SCHOOL YEAR. (*Taking into account KIPP's 2 week Summer School Session, and mandatory every-other Saturday morning School)

Well, you certainly won't leave anyone behind that way. Hopefully, you're not one of those kids who catches on quick and needs to sit through the rest of it. But it's all for everyone, kinda like a communist re-education camp (and I'm told they were often quite effective).

Despite that, this teacher remains distinctly unenthusiastic:

KIPP students do very well ... but ... it is due to REPITION and ROTE LEARNING. OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER ... (get it?...ok, once more...OVER AND OVER AND OVER....)

• Children will only be children ONCE. KIPP students are college-bound...so...after going to school for 55+ hours a week IN THE FIFTH GRADE, they can look forward to school for AT LEAST another TEN YEARS. (55hrs/week x School year...FOR TEN YEARS. Besides....didn't we learn anything from CHILD LABOR LAWS?!

My kid isn't perfect, and does not get straight As. But I adore her for what she is. I wouldn't dream of sending her to a place like this. Still, KIPP, and its various emulators are not really about the kids. As my buddy, reality-based educator, pointed out, they're about getting people used to working 200-hour weeks. They're about getting working people to give up any shot at personal lives. They're about worsening working conditions, and shedding crocodile tears for the children.

But the children will grow up, and when they do, I don't want them to be wage slaves. There's just no reason we need to treat one another like that. Make no mistake about it--teaching is one of the very last bastions of unionism in these United States. There's nothing some people would like better than to crush us.

But our kids will then grow up without the benefits of unions, at the mercy of their bosses, with few or no alternatives. If we love our kids, we have to protect them. We have to stand up, say we aren't slaves, we won't be slaves, and our kids won't be either.

It's tough to make kids just say no to sex and drugs. But we're supposedly wiser than they.

Let's just say no to the degradation and destruction of our calling. We're not robots, we don't aspire to be robots, and neither should our children.

Thanks to California Teacher Guy

All This, and More

Pressures of the job getting you down? You're not alone. It's getting to be the American Way, to borrow an old expression.

There's a movement afoot to make Americans work their butts off to support not only themselves, but big business as well. If you listen to US Senator Bernie Sanders, he'll tell you we already work longer hours than anywhere else in the free world.

How did it happen today that a two-income family has less disposal income than a one-income family did thirty years ago? How does it happen that thirty years ago, one person working forty hours a week could earn enough money to take care of the family; now, you need two, and they're still not doing it?

Closer to home, reality-based educator commented on this topic:

Notice all the rich corporate types behind the KIPP/longer school day/longer school year movement (e.e., Bloomberg, Gates.) I think they're trying to socialize Americans of all stripes to expect longer work days and longer work years as part of the wonders of globalization. If kids spend 9.5 hours in school, they won't blink later on when they have to work 10 hour days. And if kids get 4 weeks off all year, they won't blink when corporations lower vacation time to 1 week plus a few sick days.

Regular poster Xkaydet65 seems to think I'm missing this point, but perhaps I've just neglected it. I started this blog with my eye firmly on Klein and Bloomberg, and I saw where they were headed. Governor Spitzer, in calling for a longer school day and year (in lieu of smaller class size, no less), has made me acutely aware that electing democrats is by no means sufficient to protect working people.


Here in Fun City, we already have a longer school day and year, endorsed and enabled by Bloomberg and the UFT (Isn't it incredible to find union leaders on the wrong side of this issue?). Despite that, we still have the largest class sizes in the area. KIPP is a symptom, and a sign of things to come if we don't wake up.

A lot of people are all fired up about teachers and why they aren't working more hours. It's remarkable that so few think to ask why everyone else can't work less, like they do in Europe.

McTeachers

Find' 'em, use 'em, discard 'em, and then find new ones. And make the kids work the same hours. Forget about dance lessons, music lessons, karate, sports, and everything else that doesn't directly involve test scores. Playtime? Give me a break.

Honestly, they sound worse than the military schools parents used to threaten kids with, and if you consider the majority of their students don't even complete the program, their results are extremely unimpressive. When things look really bad, they simply take their name off the school.

KIPP's largely been presented as the magic pill that will cure all our ills, and it is simply no such thing. But KIPP, and its wannabees, help to explain the very troubling words that came from KIPP-enthusiast Jay Matthews the other day:

Some (innovators) even suggest that school systems should focus on recruiting waves of energetic young teachers, who would spend five or six years in the classroom before moving on, rather than career teachers, who might tire as they grow older.

That sounds like the whole McTeacher thing again, and I'm sorry, but thoughtful people need time to think. How much time do KIPP teachers get?

Students and teachers are in school from 7:30 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. on weekdays, for four hours on Saturdays, and for three to four weeks during the summer.

I'm gonna go out on a limb, consider being on call for parents evenings, and say "Not much."

In spite of the long hours, average daily attendance at KIPP Schools is 96%.

If you ignore the fact that most kids stop attending altogether.

Frankly, if you're going to work yourself and your students to death, you ought not to be a role model for my child. I think, though, if you do choose this lifestyle, you ought to be lavishly compensated for it. According to KIPP:

KIPP schools offer a benefits package, which includes an annual salary, medical and dental benefits, and life insurance. Teaching salaries at KIPP schools are comparable to those of traditional public school salaries and include a stipend for the longer school days.

A stipend? How about a number? I mentioned the other day I'm told KIPP has one 100K teacher. For what they ask, 100K ought to be starting salary, and 2 and 300K should be standard for the "senior" 6-year teachers.

But whatever you pay them, don't ask me to send my kid there.

The Cure

I often read Schools Matter, and often encounter very uncomplimentary remarks about KIPP schools. But the last week has brought a few reinforcing voices, including this one from Teaching in the 408:, which suggests that Education Week neglected to comment on some aspects of its own story:

...Ed Week correctly reports that fewer than half of the kids that begin the Bay Area KIPP schools as 5th graders in 2003 make it to 8th grade in 2006. In the Oakland incarnation, the attrition rate climbs to 75 percent. The article ignores the fact that these lost students are overwhelmingly African-American males. The three Bay Area KIPPs lost 77, 67, and 71 percent of its Young Black Males (YBMs) during this time period.

Hmm...what happened to all those kids? TMAO, the blog writer, knows a few:

Students at my school who have left KIPP have done so because of the debilitating effects of the shame and exclusion based discipline policy, because they were flat kicked out, or because they were told to change an aspect of their physical appearance (hair color; hair style) before being allowed to return. None of them left because their families moved.

Wow. Well, I suppose if I were able to dictate what my students should do, what color hair they could have, and kick out any and all who defied me, I could achieve outstanding results as well. In the real world, though, every kid kicked out of a charter would land in the classroom of a public school teacher (like me), who'd then be vilified by the Daily News for being unable to keep up with KIPP.

This brings me to another blogger, whom I'd almost forgotten about. Clever Newoldschoolteacher blogs at Oh, Snap (though not for some time now). Her last entry described how she loves working for KIPP. Her descriptions though, don't remotely move me to go out and sign up.

I taught for 3 weeks in July, went to the KIPP conference, worked in August on my room and curriculum, and started for real in September. I have not really slept or, for that matter, sat down, since then. I love the job, the school, and the kids though. It's an amazing experience.

It certainly sounds amazing. But I'm not amazed enough yet. Let's hear some more:

It has a REALLY long school day that's hard on the kids and hard on the teachers. I teach 3 90 minute classes, 2 45 minute homerooms, and 1 45 minute test prep/reading class. My schedule is such that I teach straight from 1 pm to 5 pm. It's killer. But it's totally worth it when I imagine the alternative work environment...public schools seem even crazier since I got to KIPP.

Still, they look pretty good to me right now. I teach 5 45-minute classes daily (and walk the halls a bit). She appears to teach 9, or at least do something for 9 (What on earth do they do in two 45 minute homerooms?). I'll bet dimes to dollars I get paid more than she does. Let's say I'm wrong, though. Does anyone really think it's worth 20% more pay (if indeed they get that much) to do almost twice as much work, have far less prep time, and then spend your evenings waiting by the phone for parents to call?

If you do, I have good news. KIPP is hiring.

Simplicity Itself

Jim Horn at Schools Matter tells how KIPP charter schools keep their scores up. First, they dump the students who don't like them. When that doesn't work out, they just take their name off the door and leave town.

Now couldn't the city learn from this? Isn't it a whole lot easier than changing the name of the building, breaking it up into a dozen "academies" that don't serve their communities, and scattering thousands of hapless kids all over the city?