Nice to have money to spend.

A teacher in a neighboring district tells of a contracted consultant. She will come in 16 days, spend a time watching each math teacher, then will return on later days to tell them how to teach. The teachers who are being taught to teach will be given "release time" to meet with the consultant, meaning their classes will have a substitute.

This is not where the teacher needs help
and standing there with her is counter-productive.
You could hire her for 30 days for the salary that teacher's getting.

Why? Because they didn't meet their AYP quota ...not enough students were "proficient".

Which sounds like a system in need of some help until you realize what's going on. Over the five states that are part of this consortium, only 33% of the high school students are proficient. I find it hard to believe that all of those teachers across New England are all crappy teachers. Only 33% of 11th grade students, year after year, are able to reach proficiency while the same students as 8th graders ... somehow 75% or more scored proficient.

Did they suddenly get stupid? Maybe ... but doubtful that this would be a region-wide trend. Are the teachers lousy at this school or that one? Again, it's a region-wide trend. Also, the same students are doing much better on the reading and grammar tests.


If I gave a test that, year after year, only 30% could pass, what would your response be?

Could it be that the math tests are testing material the kids haven't taken yet? Welcome to the Common Core. Welcome to Pearson.

Get ready to fight for your public school, since the unspoken goal of all this testing is to find an excuse to shut down public schools and allow all that public money to shore up for-profit charters and to go to the very greedy pockets of the education industry's dank side: consultants.

And that consultant I told you about at the beginning? She's getting nearly $20,000.00 to come in 16 days and to tell experienced faculty how to teach.

Lots of Money != Knowledge of Education

Your savior is a high-school dropout
funded by a bunch of companies
wanting to make a buck or billion.
Makes you feel good, doesn't it?.

Rick Hess:

Andre Agassi, the former tennis champ and high school dropout, and Canyon Capital Realty Advisors, recently announced the creation of a real estate fund that will spend $500 million to capitalize on and promote the movement for U.S. charter schools. The Canyon-Agassi Charter School Facilities Fund plans to develop more than 75 urban campuses with space for about 40,000 students over three to four years, according to a statement from Canyon Capital and Agassi Ventures LLC. The partners already have drawn investments from Citigroup, Intel, and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

So we have Agassi's money being dumped into charters. Impressive on first glance, but you have to wonder at the motives. Real estate companies don't usually give away things for free. Read a little closer and you find that the beneficiaries begin with KIPP, showing once again that KIPP can't operate like any public or private school in that it needs to have "a state‐of‐the‐art facility at an affordable lease rate." So he'll get his money back and he'll be happy to "help charter school operators obtain permanent financing to purchase their properties using New Market Tax Credits, tax‐exempt bond offerings or funding from the U.S. Treasury’s Community Development Financial Institutions Fund." Gotta love the sanctimonious charters playing high and holy, "We don't siphon off the public like those evil public schools do."

So Agassi's in it for the money, not altruism. Fair enough. KIPP gets cheap, brand-new buildings. Okay. At least they're not parasites on the public school system, taking half a current school building for nothing.

But then I laughed.

I had the opportunity to meet Agassi a few months back in Vegas and was terrifically impressed. I found him smart, thoughtful, humble, and interested in listening; in truth, I found him a whole lot more impressive than any number of education officials, experts, consultants, and professors that I've encountered. Having a smart, wildly successful, internationally regarded tennis champ pouring his passion into launching great schools would seem a terrific thing--and a uniquely American way to tap our strengths and resources.

Impressive is good.  Andre is a great player, married to a great player. Has he ever taught anyone other than his own kid?  Most experts have never been in a classroom.  That's why they have the time to talk to Rick.

Anyway, Let's play Mad Libs ... "Having a smart, wildly successful, internationally regarded ___________ pouring his passion into launching great schools ...."

• would "real estate agent" fit? 
• "high school dropout" ?
• "carpet-bagger" ?
• "profiteer" ?
• "porno actor" (pouring his passion into education ... Sorry, couldn't help it.)  
•  I know! I know! I've got it ... "internationally regarded software company founder" !

Here we go again, me repeating myself. Just because you made a lot of money doesn't mean you know what's good for education. Especially if, like Agassi and Gates, you never completed your own.

Just sayin'.

Selection Bias at KIPP again

It's getting rather repetitive. Lots of people have said it, Jim Horn, for one. It seems as though the journalists aren't listening, or at least are swallowing the bait hook, line and sinker when it comes to the press releases from that grandfather of charter schools, KIPP.

Education News put out this blurb committing that journalistic sin: copy without critical thinking.

As of Fall 2010, 33 percent of students who completed 8th grade at a KIPP middle school ten or more years ago have graduated from a four-year-college. This rate is above the national average (30.6%) and four times the rate for students from low-income families.

It's never been about the money and it certainly isn't about the KIPP program. Socio-economic status is an indicator of educational success not because money is the key factor but because selection is.

What kids are likely to apply to KIPP, suffer through the selection process, stay in KIPP throughout the 8th grade, have the ability to maintain focus under pressure, put up with the incredible stresses and challenges demanded of them, and attend the mandatory summer and Saturday classes? These same traits are a damn good indicator of college success, too.

KIPP isn't the key to their success - it's merely the spotlight that shines on them, taking all the credit for their success while ruthlessly weeding out any child who isn't up to the standard, in much the same way that the average height would increase if you shot all the short people.

Education through academic eugenics.

Academic Xenophobia.

NPR is reporting on school districts who are cracking down on residency issues.

Why?

1. Those parents who are going to go out of their way to "work" the system and exert extra effort to get their kids into your school are statistically more likely to have better motivated students.That's the KIPP difference, the charter difference.  Why not use it? Helping your AYP is nice.
2. It's not like the kid is free-loading. You get the money for every kid who attends regularly and these kids are already going out of their way to get there, so they'll probably have better attendance.
3. The kids are more likely to behave because calling the parents would expose the scam. 
4. District lines are very often arbitrary at best. Gerrymandering the lines doesn't make the bus ride shorter, the school better or the environment safer.

In my mind, I think the best thing would be to make noise publicly. "We're cracking down in the best interests of our community" while making sure that only the troublemakers who try this get caught at it.

Besides, I never quite figured out why it was so important.  We have to educate every kid somewhere and isn't it a compliment that family after family wants to be at YOUR school? I'd be rolling out the red carpet for kids who wanted to come and bragging about it if I could, but maybe that's the private school experience coming out of me.

How do I square this with my stand against vouchers? Because it is a switch between public schools. Most often, vouchers are touted as a transfer of funds from the public school system to a private school and that's the part I don't like.

I can be a member of the local school board (actually have been). I can pick up the phone and directly effect what is going on at the public school in my town. Even as a private citizen, I can walk into the principal's office and ask a question directly - and get an answer (okay, yes, make an appointment and wait a little but you get what I mean). If I am calm, dispassionate, and right, the school will make a change to its policy because I am a taxpaying member of the town and the school is being run by the town for the benefit of any citizen who wishes to take advantage of it.

The Catholic Schools and the private schools won't do that. Why should they?

I do not have a problem with the public - public voucher system. It works well here in Vermont.  I really have a problem when money goes to private institutions which don't follow the same testing and accountability requirements that the rest of the schools do.

Thanks for the Help

Gee, thanks Bill.

Joanne Barkan, writing in Dissent, argues that three big nonprofit foundations (the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation), working together, exert a “decisive influence” on public-school education. ”Whatever nuances differentiate the motivations of the Big Three, their market-based goals for overhauling public education coincide: choice, competition, deregulation, accountability, and data-based decision-making,” she writes.(h/t to the Freakonomics blog, Dubner and Leavitt.)

Unfortunately, this is not just about Bill, Eli and Sam wasting their own money.  It's about three foundations that are pushing an anti-public school agenda that aims to destroy the teachers' union and reduce the educational possibilities for the public. It's about the capitalization of an "industry" at all costs, using tactics that sound good on the face, but are mainly aimed at money.

But, Barkan warns, these market-based reforms are hardly a panacea: “[E]vidence is mounting that the reforms are not working. Stanford University’s 2009 study of charter schools—the most comprehensive ever done—concluded that 83 percent of them perform either worse or no better than traditional public schools; a 2010 Vanderbilt University study showed definitively that merit pay for teachers does not produce higher test scores for students; a National Research Council report confirmed multiple studies that show standardized test scores do not measure student learning adequately. Gates and Broad helped to shape and fund two of the nation’s most extensive and aggressive school reform programs—in Chicago and New York City—but neither has produced credible improvement in student performance after years of experimentation.”

Misguided reform coupled with tragically misguided legislation has left us with the same problems we had before coupled with many new ones.

• We have public schools in which the teachers at the top of their payscale (e.g., here in Vermont) with all the bells and whistles, degrees and seniority, still are earning less than the state median wage. 
• You have charter schools opening up on the cheap, closing down significant public options, simply so that Green Dot and other groups can make a profit. The principal of such can look super while pulling in $200k to $500k but apparently a teacher making more than $30k is the AntiChrist.
• You have organizations like Teach for America, set up solely to destroy teachers who want to make a career of teaching. How? By making it harder for serious candidates to get into places to establish themselves.  Why would a school want a career teacher when it can hire a fancy thoroughbred that will seem flashy and pretty and fast, but ultimately flame out in two years? Instant gratification writ cynical.
• You have reforms that are directly counter-productive, that "everyone knew were going to revolutionize education" but that really wound up wasting a significant portion of that budget that the pro-voucher, pro-private school advocates were pointing to as a problem in the public schools.
• Think: Small Schools Initiative. (Break big schools into smaller ones and then bitch that the smaller ones don't have economy of scale.)
• Think: Technology Uber Alles. Microsoft is the Education King! Every kid should have a laptop! Every kid should have a smartphone! iPod! iPad! Netbook!
• Think: Parochial, Private, Charter, KIPP! Profit is better.
• Think: Merit Pay!
• Testing, testing, testing. Test them in October, release the scores in May. And I'm supposed to do what in the last six weeks of school to change my curriculum to help this kid?

Like I said, Thanks. Now would you all please go somewhere and stop helping?

Chinese Mothers and KIPP

The other day, I posted an article by a Chinese-American Yale Professor describing the way she brought up her kids. In it, she speaks of no play dates, hours of practice at the piano and the violin, drills and drills on homework, an endless desire to get As and harsh language when the lone B arrives on a report card.

The commenters on the WSJ site were, as might be imagined, SHOCKED that such behavior wasn't considered child abuse, that the woman was mistreating her children and that there was something terribly wrong with her parenting skills. All of those commenters would be SHOCKED if their little darlings were subject to that regimen.

It occurred to me that this is pretty much what KIPP does. Drill, drill, and more drill, extremely high demands on time, teachers driven nearly crazy in their enthusiasm for success and the need to produce, more drill, Saturday classes, no sports, summer school, more drill, and lots of test preparation.

All of those commenters would be THRILLED if there were more KIPP schools.
All of those commenters would be SHOCKED if their little darlings were subject to that regimen.

Charter Bashing ... by mentioning the truth?

hmmmm.

The whole idea of a charter school is that you take off the blinders and the restrictions and let them thrive.  Giving them freedom from "Big Government" and all those repressive regulations, as the thinking goes, means that they can succeed in educating all students much better than the public schools.  The proof usually includes whichever KIPP school is doing well that year (ignoring those that are embroiled in a lawsuit, not making sufficient progress, etc.) and, of course, New Orleans which was liberated by Katrina. (or something like that.)

Then you read:

One of the most exhaustive studies of charter performance, from Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes, found 37 percent of charter schools “deliver learning results that are significantly worse than their students would have realized had they remained in traditional public schools.” About half produced similar outcomes to public schools, with just 17 percent outperforming public schools (Extra!, 8/09).

If all charter schools have the advantage of running free, why aren't all of them out-performing public schools? If they can choose their students, skim off and keep the best performers and eliminate the troublemakers, teach in any way they choose, shouldn't the standard be "If a charter school doesn't beat the public school, it will be immediately closed?" 

The Charter Pendulum does a double-take.

One way from Pittsburgh, via Schools Matter:

Among charter school students, about 20 percent didn't meet basic academic standards in reading and math, compared with about 12 percent of district students, according to 2009 Pennsylvania System of Student Assessment test results ....
About 75 percent of Pennsylvania public school students scored advanced or proficient in reading and math, compared with about 59 percent of charter school students ...

and then back the other way from Reason TV, via Joanne Jacobs, :

Hurricane Katrina destroyed one of the worst public school systems in the U.S., says Reason TV. New Orleans started fresh with a system based on choice. Now, “60% of New Orleans students currently attend charter schools, test scores are up, and talented and passionate educators from around the country are flocking to New Orleans to be a part of the education revolution.”

all in the same day.

Makes you wonder how long it will take for them to notice that the gains by KIPP and other charters have more to do with selected students than with superior funding methods? That charter schools don't have the same SpecEd requirements? That charter and private schools are relieved of many regulations and have the flexibility of getting rid of problem students? (defined as students who cause trouble, or in the case of KIPP, don't want to work too hard or for 60 hours a week.)

And yes, it is still despicable to say that Katrina had a silver lining in that it "improved the public school system." Even if that caveat were true, and it's not, the statement assumes that death and massive destruction has a good side.

Success is in the Eye of the Beholder.

Through test scores, Arizona rates about 24 percent of charter schools as "excelling" or "highly performing." About 37 percent of regular public schools win those marks.

Thanks to George Orwell, you can define anything to fit your opinion. Long live Charter Schools.

Musings on the Charter Conversation

In this entry, practical theory asks,

How different would the current educational conversation be if the KIPP folks said, "Yes... in some of our schools, 25-40% of the families choose to leave KIPP, but KIPP isn't for everyone, and for the students who stay, we do right by them?" What if these schools admitted that it would be much harder to have the success they have if they didn't have the traditional schools to send kids back to when it didn't work out? What if these schools admitted they didn't have all the answers, and instead had to admit that, yes, they do amazing things for many students, but they haven't figured out how to get to a significant percentage of their population, despite Herculean efforts?

Go Read.

NBCNews slurps at the KIPP Koolaid.

Pretty silly display at the end of Nightly News... KIPP is wonderful, kids spend 10 hours a day drilling and practicing and singing songs from 7:30 to 5:30 plus weekends and lots of summer days.

Didn't mention that perhaps the same could have been had for a lot less time and effort. Didn't mention the drop-outs and push-outs and those who didn't apply. Sure didn't note the 12 hour days that the teachers put in -- don't any of these people have a life? In the clip I noticed them counting on their fingers and one of the songs had them practicing to count to one hundred. This is what, fifth or sixth grade?

Hope it's worth it.

KIPP Schools: Where Bulls--t is an Art-Form

How to lie with statistics, as explained by Jim Horn

... in five Bay Area KIPP schools, researchers found that 40 to 60 percent of KIPPsters in the five schools "chose" to leave KIPP between grades 5 and 8, and that most of the students who were ridden out were the low scorers who could have damaged the KIPP brand if they had stayed.

Our Scores went up!

It's the same old refrain - you can't improve schools without improving the students in them and one of the best ways to improve your averages is to eliminate the bottom half.

If you need quality wood, you go to the lumber yard and sift through the construction quality 2x4s, tossing aside any split or knotted wood. The average quality of the pile was low and priced accordingly, but your minimal time and effort in selection raises the average quality of the wood in your cart.

The analogy is quite strong to education. The ethics part of this "weeding" can only be justified in a private school setting.

KIPP Schools: Where Bulls--t is an Art-Form

They are talking about unionizing the NY KIPP schools ...

For KIPP, the fundamental question is one at the heart of much modern education reform: do schools operate for the kids who attend them or the adults who staff them?

Basing the schools solely on what teachers want is not effective. Ignoring the reasonable desires of those teachers to have a life outside the school is a recipe for disaster, too. I can't imagine why anyone over 26, or who had a significant other or a family, who would want to be in that situation. It's not education, it's a concentration camp with a new interpretation of the word "concentration."

I'm pretty sure that schools that are based on what the students want and need will do well. I don't think KIPP is that answer. Students should not be in school from 7 to 5. The uniform is cute but it isn't necessary. I don't think that what students want and need includes teachers who work 9-10 hours a day, plus some weekends, plus homework help in the evenings and then their grading, for a longer school year and extra summer time. Quality and quantity, you know.

It has been shown that KIPP does well with students who start below the baseline but this is a meaningless statistic. KIPP has none of the restrictions that the public schools have and can and will do things the rest of us can't.

Things like:
demand that students be active and involved or be dumped.
demand parents be active and involved or the kid gets dumped.
demand the students toe a very stringent line or be dumped.
demand hours of repetitive drills or be dumped.
demand twice the time and effort from a kid or be dumped.
demand the students test well and often or be dumped.

I won't even get into the California abuse problems.

The bottom line is that KIPP, while pretending to have an open admission, has some of the most selective policies in the country. This "dump everyone who brings down your score or who might display the 'wrong' behavior" policy quite naturally leads to good scores from those left behind.

DUH.

It does not mean, however, that any other students would do well if forced into this type of regime.
e.g.
Those who can learn in a 6 hour school day.
Those who got it the first time without endless drills.
Those who like to dress in camoflage or fashionable clothes.
Those who appreciate teachers who don't run around like over-caffeinated chihuahuas.

Those others are still getting a decent education in the mainstream schools. The testing doesn't show it because the testing has no teeth and isn't measuring much of importance. The fact that KIPP caters to it shows a lot about the mentality of the place.

Our testing is a cooperative thing between us, Vermont, and Rhode Island. 70% failed the math in each of the last three years. Go ahead, tell me this is a good test. You get the same results with private schools who take it. Tell me I should change my curriculum to suit this thing, just like the previous math teacher changed the curriculum to suit the last type of testing that came through.

One of our students wrote a three page essay on the evils of state testing instead of the prompt - who cares? She passed the essay anyway. Tell me this is a good test.

Meh.

"The fundamental question is: do schools operate for the kids who attend them or the adults who staff them?" Both, but not like that.

KIPP meme

Deja vu -- Article on KIPP Schools! Slate.com echoes much of what I, NYCEducator, Jim Horn, Transform Education and many others have said.

Push the meme - pass around the links, add your thoughts. We need to keep this "data" real. KIPP is effective with a small fraction of the student population IFF everything goes exactly to the master plan. Its methods will not work anywhere else, so ...

Please please please Mr. Administrator. Don't get all googly over these results and think you can replicate them. You can't.

I'm not against it for what it is and for whom it is designed to work. I'm against Principal PJs' idea of replicating it for everyone.

I've gotta get back to work.

TED: Bill Gates has a Great Idea

TED Talk: Bill Gates on how he is trying to change the world.
It's malaria first, education at the 8:12 mark
"How do you make a teacher great?"

Some things that I heard:

If you're low income, you have a better chance of going to jail than getting a four-year college degree.

Gee, Bill. If you're low income, you'll be spending your money on living rather than a college. There's probably a better chance of pretty much anything for these folks, compared to college. How about %Married by 25 vs % who got a four-year degree by 25? How about the percentage of low income people with 4 years of work experience at age 22 vs percentage of high income people with a 4-year degree by 22? But that wouldn't be as sensational, would it?

Top quartile teachers will increase performance of their class by 10% per year. If all teachers were top quartile teachers, the difference between US and Asia would be gone.

Interesting idea. Makes you wonder why we don't do it? Is it innate ability and thus unsolvable or is it the students?

Percentage gain compared to the average teacher, indicator
9%, Past performance; After 3 years teaching quality stagnates
2%, Teacher having a math major
1%, Teach For America Grad
0%, Master's Degree.

I have to think that last is because so many get a M.Ed, which is worthless.

On average, slightly better teachers leave. High turnover is a problem.

Yep. Partly because we're tired of having well-meaning dilettantes convincing our principals to change the way everything is taught. More importantly, statistically speaking, which type of teacher is more likely to leave? The better and smarter one with more experience and more ability to land a better job than teaching, or the loser who can't even figure out how to run a SmartBoard and isn't quite sure how to add without a calculator? Meaningless statistic, Bill.

Charter schools - KIPP are where the great teachers are being made. and 96% of graduates go to colleges.

Bill, Bill, Bill.
This statistic is just plain silly. You are comparing a selected and filtered group with a random group. Read here for more. Your results are meaningless. Undaunted, Bill starts a paeon to KIPP:

Constantly improving - test scores - deeply engaged. Bill is impressed by teacher running around the room (as if athleticism and the habits of a small neurotic dog are what makes a good teacher). Constantly scanning. Rapid, dynamic environment. Keeping people engaged.

And then, the key line, but Bill doesn't recognize it: "Nobody is the kid who doesn't want to be there." Because THEY'VE TOSSED OUT THE BAD APPLES AND THE UNDER-PERFORMING, Bill. When you do that, of course the school looks better.

I'll give him his next points on data: In a normal school, no data gathered. No teacher observation or once a year and has to be forewarned. Nobody can be evaluated, even if they want, on test scores. It isn't a valid point. Just because you don't explicitly measure something doesn't mean it's substandard.

Then I had to laugh.

Bill wants teachers to be recorded every period/every day. Then teachers sit down and discuss their performances. ( Forget the Orwellian nature of this - constant supervision is no path to improvement. Besides, I've got enough to do - I don't have the time to be "improving" my fellow teachers. )

So here's the best part: Bill wants to take the very best teachers and make the video available as free courses for students and parents and everybody. The excuse is for makeup work and missed classes, but that's not where is would end - gradually it would become the course itself.

So the guy who developed a complete corporate entity (SBA) to combat piracy, who wants to be paid for every copy of his software, whose license agreements include the idea that you don't own software you paid for and who wants to put limitations on how many of your own computers you can install Office on. And then screws around with the file formats to force you to re-purchase every 2-3 years ...

This guy wants to record and publish what I do, for free. For use in perpetuity.

Seriously.

National Standards

A Great Pontificator was Emitting Fumes Yesterday:

"National standards is the same thing as requiring every state to grow orange trees. We don't need national standards. What we can have is a national curriculum that schools can use, partially use or ignore, depending on what makes sense locally."

That's just silly – not every state can grow orange trees because of climate. Are we seriously suggesting that all states couldn't adhere to a national curriculum?

Local control is not a panacea. The kids aren't going to stay local, for one thing. Second, the people making decisions are variable in their abilities to make those decisions and their reasons for doing so.

First, I can't expect my students to stay in the area after HS. I can't expect them to only need to know what my local school board has determined to be important, whether it's evolution or pi=3. When my kids go to RPI or RISD, they need to be on par with the kids from Boston Latin and from East Podunk HS in terms of what they know and have taken. They need to have a consistent definition of what "Biology" and "Algebra II" are and what they encompass.

Similarly, we need to develop consistent definitions of what "success" means. Is it a good score on a state-wide assessment or a couple 60s on the teacher's quizzes?

Does success only include math, science, English, history? Or do languages, art and music count? How about wood-working, cooking, needle-work? When Johnny gets a diploma, what does it mean? Can he be a good math and science student but a lousy writer and still be considered a success? Without National Standards, we are all casting about and going our own way. I'm not sure that's the best or most efficient.

I'd always been a big fan of the Regents exams and the Regents diploma until recently. This was the closest Americans had gotten to a national curriculum. Criticisms such as "You're teaching to the tests" don't matter to me because those exams were always a minimum, but a really good one. If you passed it, you knew your stuff. I'm in favor of the SAT for the same reason. I don't care if you can study for it and take prep classes and raise your score; it's still a good test. Besides, the "improvements" are really just eliminating common mistakes. SAT test prep won't teach you anything you didn't already know, only remind you.

What about Local Control?

I understand that many people have their pet peeves; this is one of mine. I dislike local control of curriculum as it's practiced in my state - it means that one or two teachers in a math department can radically change what and how the district teaches.

Some times this works out beautifully - witness the success Escalante had in reforming his program; after five years he was able to make a difference. Some times, the changes do not affect things positively or negatively. Some times, they are terrible. Witness the changes to Escalante's program after he was pushed out - the local control managed to "reform" everything back to the way it was, forgetting all of the lessons learned over those years.

In my school, a couple of people changed the school's math curriculum – 3 of 4 were non-teachers, none of the four ever looked to see if the hoped-for improvement ever happened at any other school. They had anecdotal "evidence" but nothing that would count as proof. They made the change but never set into place any way of determining whether the change had improved anything at our school either. How crazy is that?

At another time, the entire middle-school curriculum rested on the shoulders of one teacher. "They chose the books seven years ago. Now it's my turn." He then chose the one with the niftiest graphics. (Actually, I don't really know his criteria. I'm in the high-school, you understand. I guess it doesn't matter to me?)

The positive aspect of a national curriculum is that the country acts as one in what it expects as minimums, and the system changes slowly. Any changes are made only after deliberation and much discussion. That is, of course, its greatest weakness as well, if all one is concerned with is immediate flexibility. I'm not.

Education, unfortunately, is one of the few areas where changes are based on shoddy, biased or non-existent research. "Studies" are performed on a select group and results are extrapolated far beyond the scope of the study. For example, KIPP schools have success in a specific testing regimen with a biased and selected sample; suddenly every public school administrator is talking about imitating small portions of their program but not necessarily the part that made KIPP successful. Computer-based learning works for a few kids in a small number of courses and people want to expand that to all students in all situations.

Some years ago, I asked our State Education Commissioner for help. We were considering a change from Block scheduling back to 7*45 and I asked what data the state had kept. "We don't do anything like that."

If I could wish for anything, it would be for someone to settle some questions with some real research, double-blind, controlled and all that: What was the effect of Block Scheduling? Reform Math? Schools within a School? Open Classrooms? Everyday Math? Connected Math? Singapore Math? Step Up and 8th Grade Algebra? The True Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds? (Just checking to see if you were paying attention.)

How about it? Let's make changes AFTER we figure out what success is and whether what we're doing is wrong. Then let's make changes AFTER we figure if they're improvements.

Fantasy Reform from Jay Matthews that actually makes some sense

I'm often amused and nearly always irritated at Jay Matthews - from his claim for KIPP being the Deus Ex Machina of the Educational world to his quaint ideas on time management for teachers. I was surprised that I actually agreed with him on a couple things. I know, it's crazy but there it is.

I've posted a copy of his latest attempt at reasonable reform. Read that for context, as I plan on fairly heavy-handed snipping.

1. Replace elementary school homework with free reading. Throw away the expensive take-home textbooks, the boring worksheets ....

Just as long as you drill them for hours like KIPP does daily?

One of the clearest (and most ignored) findings of educational research is that elementary students who do lots of homework don't learn more than students who do none.

Hasn't stopped KIPP yet. Jay, you're contradicting yourself again. This time, though, you might be onto something. More-targeted homework rather than simply more homework is a good idea. Reinforce the day's work with a few minutes of practice that can be done with the parents -- just what the elementary student needs. High school is another matter, of course.

5. Have every high school student read at least one nonfiction book before graduation. I am not talking about textbooks.

Here's Three: "The Killer Angels" by Sharra, "A Brief History of Time" by Hawking and "The Big Splat" by Mackenzie. Yeah, I'm all for this.

Update: let's add "Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World" by Weatherford, "Purple Cow" by Godin, "Just and Unjust Wars" by Walzer, "Innumeracy" by Paulos, "Ruby on Rails" by Tate and Hibbs, "Cultural Literacy" by Hirsch, "Punished by Rewards" by Kohn, "How the Other Half Thinks" by Stein. Crap, I almost forgot "Flatland" by Abbott, though that is fiction - not for this list.

How to massage data. ( KIPPing it real. )

Let me say at the start that I don't disagree with the KIPP schools. I believe they think they are doing the right thing with their students. I am not criticizing their methods or policies. I am focusing here on a statistic and the misuse of that statistic in making public school policy and curriculum decisions.

There's an interesting article in Newsweek, by John Alter, in which he says

"The irony is, we know what works to close the achievement gap. At the 60 KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) schools, more than 80 percent of 16,000 randomly selected low-income students go to college, four times the national average for poor kids."

That's an impressive statistic until you look around. "80%" applies only to the original couple hundred students, not the current population of 16,000, and even then the sample is skewed.

Even KIPP agrees ... from their website, "This national college matriculation percentage only includes students who attended the original two KIPP schools in Houston and New York. At this time, those are the only KIPP schools that have been in operation long enough for alumni to progress from eighth grade to college freshmen."

I get annoyed when facts like these are thrown into the public view where "education experts" (i.e. big mouth, no current teaching experience) and administrators (i.e., big mouth, no teaching experience) take them and make really bad decisions.

That line "We know what works to close the achievement gap" is very powerful to these people. I have had a principal say, "Longer school days work for KIPP and we should have that here." His proof was an Internet article similar to this one; it was enough for him.

This is not a double-blind study with treatment & control groups. No one is controlling for confounding factors. There is no analysis of correlation / causation. The sample size is small and biased, applying to the "randomly selected" (from out of KIPP schools, not the city as a whole) from a selective group (those who made it through 4 years +) chosen from yet another sub-group (those admitted to KIPP schools).

So, specific issues ...

(1) The students are not chosen randomly from the city population: they are screened by an application process. Before the program even has a chance to work or not, this weeds out many who won't succeed -- in KIPP or in college.

(2) It ignores those who might have attended successfully but didn't for other reasons -- such as an unwillingness to spend 10 hours a day doing heavy-duty drill and practice for standardized tests. "KIPP schools relentlessly focus on high student performance on standardized tests and other objective measures. " Again, I don't have a problem with KIPP here, just Alter's assumption that this is the gloriously perfect solution.

(3) It ignores all those who do not stay in college after the freshman orientation.

(4) The students have completed 5th through 8th in a KIPP program AND four years of high school. From KIPP "As for how we track students, we do this through the KIPP to College alumni program at both schools. The KIPP to College program aims to empower each middle school graduate to continue using the scholarly habits, knowledge, and skills learned at KIPP schools as they continue on the path to college (and beyond.)"

How about that? Anyone who isn't part of the "KIPP to College alumni program", isn't included in the statistic!

• Can you imagine anyone going through eight years of this (see below for some more details of the program) while not having the proper attitude for college?

• Can you imagine continuing KIPP to College program in high school if you have no intention of going to college all along?

Frankly, I'm amazed that number isn't closer to 95% if they're going to calculate it that way.

Remember how scientists get temperatures close to absolute zero? Conventional methods get you close but one of the final steps is this: you have a pool of atoms, some hot and some cold. Hot ones bounce higher and are shot off with a laser, leaving a cooler overall substance. After a while, it's not surprising that you can take averages of the remaining ones and claim a good success rate.


There are so many places and ways to leave that attrition is more common than graduation. There is no way to know whether KIPP is teaching particularly well, but it sure can winnow them out. The fact that a student has the parents, patience, willingness and dedication to tolerate the work and the schedule may be the reason that he or she goes to college. I would certainly think so. Whether the KIPP style of teaching is effective has not been introduced, studied or discussed.

Please don't assume that it will work for the rest of the educational system based on this data.



Some other information from the KIPP site ...

Time in school is 60% greater than that of a normal PHS and is a big factor: 7:25 a.m. til 5:00 p.m. (4:00 p.m. on Friday.) Saturdays 9:15 a.m. til 1:05 p.m. Summer school.

The student contract ...
"I will always work, think, and behave in the best way I know how, and I will do whatever it takes for me and my fellow students to learn. This also means that I will complete all my homework every night, I will call my teachers if I have a problem with the homework or a problem with coming to school, and I will raise my hand and ask questions in class if I do not understand something.
"I will always make myself available to parents and teachers, and address any concerns they might have. If I make a mistake, this means I will tell the truth to my teachers and accept responsibility for my actions.
"I will always behave so as to protect the safety, interests, and rights of all individuals in the classroom. This also means that I will always listen to all my KIPP teammates and give everyone my respect.
"I will follow the KIPP dress code.
"I am responsible for my own behavior, and I will follow the teachers' directions.