Tracking down updates on the Fresno KIPP brouhaha, and other items

 

Jay Mathews, Washington Post and Newsweek education columnist and unrestrained cheerleader for the KIPP nationwide school operation, posted this week on his Washington Post blog about   Turmoil at Two KIPP Schools.

Mathews addressed the controversy at the Fresno, Calif., KIPP schools, which involves a former principal accused of abusing students, outraged parents and students defending the principal against the charges, a school district investigation, KIPP’s default on the mortgage on their building, and more.  The second school he cites is a Brooklyn KIPP school where teachers have been trying to organize a union – and some are now changing their minds, according to Mathews.

The comments section after the post contains some updates on the Fresno situation, including a post by a Fresno district administrator (and one from me, correcting some inaccurate information given by Mathews). My previous examiner.com posts on the KIPP Fresno fracas are   here,   here   and  here.   

Another public comment on the Mathews blog item points to   an additional KIPP school under fire   for alleged overly harsh discipline – KIPPSouthFultonAcademy near Atlanta, Ga. It’s creepy that reports from both KIPP South Fulton in Georgia and KIPP Fresno in California include charges that students were denied requests to use the rest room, and as a result, urinated and/or vomited on themselves. That’s a rather questionable disciplinary tactic in terms of pure humanity.

 

Yes, the schools are still high-performing and are vigorously defended by parents and students. I’m not forgetting to mention that.  

 

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New York City Education Examiner Lorri Giovinco-Harte posts a   week’s roundup of edublogs,   focusing on the increasing outcry about the influence of billionaires’ contributions on public schools and policy, citing this examiner and an array of other commentators.

There seems to be a great deal of backlash lately against what one blogger refers to as the "Billionaire Boys Club's" push towards the dismantling of public education. 

Actually, the backlash has been occurring for some time, but the degree to which it is happening as well as the diversity of people who are reacting to it seems to have increased as of late.

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On change.org,   Education Editor Clay Burell posts   about President Obama’s view of charter schools, which is wholeheartedly enthusiastic. But Burell responds:

[Charter schools] can expel students who don't excel or cause problems. And they can also say "no" when their enrollment caps are met. Public schools can't. Traditional public schools also have far more special needs and non-native English language learners than charters. And public schools also can't set parental involvement conditions. And public schools don't get the supplemental funds from the billionaires, so they spend less per student than charters.

Given all of that, still, if we're going to say charters should still be supported in order to serve as those "laboratories," the missing link in all of this talk centers on this question: "What's the mechanism that will allow for that 'duplication of success' in traditional public schools?"

And how will traditional public schools ever have the opportunity to duplicate charter successes when traditional public schools, as Obama acknowledges, are given neither the "flexibility" nor the extra funding enjoyed by charter schools? One dangerous answer to this is: Traditional public schools will have that "flexibility" when they are able to break union-negotiated teacher protections - to be union-free - and when they submit to the meddling of Gates, Broad, and the other billionaires at the Business Roundtable when they dangle their strings-attached money.