KIPP Blog- What are they saying?

When you visit the KIPP  Blog page, these are the categories of posts that you can choose from:

Developing Character

Leadership Development

Teacher Strategies and Innovations

Team and Family Stories

To and Through College

Updates and Events

In alphabetical order I don’t feel as though there is any kind of priority stated here but as an overall list, one can get a sense of the type of conversation they hope to generate through their blog.  After looking through the entire KIPP site one can see that the blog topics reflect many of the ideas presented in other areas.  The blogs are oriented to promote KIPP’s various philosophies, frameworks and policies although throughout the site and the blog, policies are never really referred to as this.  They have a “Commitment to Excellence” pledge, Frameworks for Excellent Teaching, Leadership programs and Character building initiatives but at least on the larger www.kipp.org website, there is no school “handbook” that outlines school rules or regulations or list of policies that serve as a guide for each of the individual schools. These may exist but they are not promoted on the website and are not discussed in the blogs as such.

The most recent blog posting from March 21, 2014 is called “Collaboration and the Common Core: How Two Teachers are Working Together to Raise the Bar for Kids”. http://blog.kipp.org/ It discusses a collaborative effort between two teachers in different KIPP schools across the country to develop a math curriculum that supports the new Common Core initiatives. The post has a positive, supportive tone that celebrates collaboration, promotes the KIPP Foundation’s network of resources and shows the public that they are offering teachers the support they need to innovate. This is an idea that is heavily employed as an incentive for recruiting new teachers. Theoretically, what they are showing us is that they are holding themselves accountable as an educational institution to the Common Core standards while allowing their teachers to design their own units and lesson plans that align but also serve the individual needs of the students.  Teachers share the plans through the online portal “KIPP Share Better Lesson” so that other KIPP Foundation math teachers across the country can access the plans and benefit from this work. 

The KIPP Foundation seems to have it all; sound philosophies and theories on developing engaged and motivated learners; frameworks for excellent teaching and leadership building models; an enormous network of schools and other teachers to share best practice skills and lesson plans with; data- lots of data to show as evidence of high student achievement and college entry rates. So why do I continue to feel skeptical?

Maybe it is because I know that while they promote “open enrollment” and are obligated to give preference to the students in their geographical school district, they only offer the limited open spots on a lottery basis. Can charter schools really claim to be "public" if they are exclusionary and limit access? Since when is a service that is only available to children who are lucky enough to have their number drawn out of a wire basket or generated by a computer program public?!  The existence of each KIPP school is probably making it more difficult to sustain the local public school whose enrollment declines as they fill up the new KIPP school population. The lottery system puts children’s education in the hands of luck. I see resources that could be going to bettering the education of all students in their community so that they are no longer ‘underserved’.  

According to the NEA, a charter school is a "publicly funded elementary or secondary schools that have been freed from some of the rules, regulations, and statutes that apply to other public schools, in exchange for some type of accountability for producing certain results, which are set forth in each charter school's charter. "  http://www.nea.org/charter

There is a lot of discrepancy in the claims about the percentage of state funding charter schools receive for their per pupil, enrollment based funding. I have seen numbers ranging from 61% to 100% of the amount received by public school counterparts.   The Center for Education Reform http://www.edreform.com offers a report that explores the impact of public funding on charter schools : http://wff.cotcdn.rockfishhosting.com/documents/65c49fec-da6b-4124-ac47-1f04186644e1.pdf

On the other hand, charter schools have the advantage of being able to accept donations and find financial support from private entities and grants that are not available to the public school community.  KIPP has an entire section of their website designated to "SUPPORT" and makes it easy for people to donate and shows us who is on their long list of financial partnerships. http://www.kipp.org/support

The US Department of Education also lists an entire page of entities funded by the Charter Schools Program (CSP) that support their needs. http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/oii/csp/resources.html

I am not sure what is stopping the same community from funneling their energy and financial resources into the existing public school? Is it a logistical issue that does not allow them to accept donations? Does KIPP as a network offer a more efficient economic model as a franchised organization? Are they showing us that the business model can get it done financially and yet, the very nature of a market based system will not and CANNOT provide for the common good- only those that are lucky enough to catch a break?  Why not open the portal for sharing Common Core lesson plans to general public? Why not build a school that has enough physical capacity and resources to serve EVERY child in that community so they ALL can attend?  Why not combine the human effort that is coming together to create a new KIPP school and funnel it into the existing public school? Are the local school boards and other bureaucracies that resistant to the potential for positive change?  What are the obstacles and how can we overcome them in order to provide the best education for all our children? This is what I hope the KIPP blog will post about next.