KIPP Plans To Keep Padded Cell To Punish Students

Yesterday the Daily News reported a KIPP school in NYC uses a padded cell for "time outs" for children who act out in school.

One child was so distraught by the experience that an ambulance was called.

There has been much outrage about the KIPP padded cell story, but the DN reports today that KIPP plans to keep the practice going:

The tot cell stays.

Officials at an uptown New York charter school on Wednesday refused to back down from their controversial use of a padded cell to confine problem students after a Daily News investigation exposed the practice Tuesday.

Two young boys, 5 and 7, were repeatedly detained in the tiny, so-called “calm-down room” at KIPP Star Washington Heights Elementary School for acting up. The parents of both kids recently removed their boys from the school, saying they suffered panic attacks from the experience.

Despite opposition from angry parents, charter school officials said Wednesday they would still put uncontrollable students into the converted closet.

“We will review all situations on a case-by-case basis and continue to obtain prior parental approval if the use of the calm-down room becomes necessary to protect the safety of a child,” KIPP NYC Superintendent Josh Zoia told the Daily News.
In an open letter to parents posted on the school’s website, Zoia said “only a small handful of students have used the calm-down room and only in emergency situations.”

But the parents of the two boys placed there say the practice should end.

“It’s not working,” said Teneka Hall, 28, a full-time Washington Heights mom whose son, Xavier, was rushed to the hospital after he had a panic attack and wet himself while in the room. “It’s hurting the kids.”

Hurting the kids has always been the point at a "No Excuses!" charter school like KIPP where the entire structure of the school is built around breaking the will of the children, beating them into submission with rules, regulations and punishment, and finally remaking them into the compliant little "scholars" the KIPPsters want.

The padded cell for time outs fits right in with the KIPP philosophy of beat 'em til they're compliant.

No wonder they refuse to get rid of it.

How Success Academy Fared Against Other Renowned Charter Networks

I posted earlier today about the miraculous statistics Eva Moskowitz's Success Academy Schools garnered on the new Common Core tests.

Scores across the state plummeted on the 3rd-8th grade ELA and math exams, but Eva Moskowitz's Success Academy schools bucked that trend with some amazing scores:

There were some charter networks that boasted victory — like the aptly named Success Academy Charter Schools.

At one Bronx school, a whopping 97% of students were proficient in math, and 77% passed English. Overall, the 14-school charter network saw 82% of students meet standards in math and 58% meet standards in English.

Success Academy students outperformed traditional public schools students on math exams by 52% and ELA exams by 32%.  

 

Success Academy students outperformed charter school students on math exams by 47% and ELA exams by 33%.

 

And one Success Academy school was head and shoulders above all the other Success Academy schools.

 

At Bronx Success Academy, students outperformed traditional public school students on the math exams by 67%, charter school students by 62%.

 

On the ELA exams, Bronx Success Academy students outperformed charter school students by 52%, traditional public schools by 51%.

 

Those are truly, truly awe-inspiring statistics.

 

At Politico, Stephanie Simon took a closer look at how some of Eva Moskowitz's famous compatriots in the charter world did on the new Common Core tests and found them dragging well behind Eva's schools:

 

The Democracy Prep chain posted uneven results, with particularly poor scores in sixth grade. In its Harlem charter, fewer than 4 percent of sixth graders passed the language arts exam, and fewer than 12 percent passed math. Its best results came at the eighth grade level, but even then the pass rate on both tests was under 33 percent — better than the citywide average of about 26 percent, but not a quantum leap above other public schools.

Democracy Prep officials didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The highly touted KIPP network also stumbled, with proficiency rates well below the city average for several grades and subjects. At KIPP Star College Prep, just 11 percent of fifth graders were proficient in math and just 16 percent passed the reading test.

Seventh grade was another weak point, with 11 percent proficient in language arts and 14 percent in math. KIPP also did not respond to a request for comment.

The poor results for KIPP, Democracy Prep and other renowned charters suggest that “we have to be more careful about claims of miracle schools,” said Michael Petrilli, an education analyst at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

Michael Petrilli seems to forget that Success Academy charter schools did post miraculous results on the state tests - especially at Bronx Success Academy, where 97% of students were proficient in math.

It seems to me achieving a 97% proficiency rate on the state math exam when so many other schools, including schools in fellow charter networks like Democracy Prep and KIPP, saw their scores plunge rates Bronx Success Academy as a "miracle school."

Eva Moskowitz and the crew at the Success Academies, especially at the Bronx Success Academy, deserve "Huzzahs!" for their amazing achievements on these state exams.

And after those "Huzzahs!", maybe somebody ought to take a closer look at those statistics to see just how Eva Moskowitz and her crew got those awe-inspiring scores - especially at Bronx Success Academy.

Clearly Eva Moskowitz and the Success Academy crew have something to teach the rest of us - including the KIPPsters and Democracy Prep people - about how to run schools.

I do hope some independent entity does a study of the Success Academy test score results so that we can all learn just how they got such awe-inspiring scores.

Missing The Forest For The Trees

From Andrew Hartmann:

TFA exists for nothing if not for adjusting poor children to the regime otherwise known as the American meritocracy. Kopp’s model for how teachers should help poor students acclimate to the American meritocracy is the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), a nationwide network of charter schools. Founded by TFA alums Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin, and currently lead by CEO Richard Barth, a former TFA staff member who also happens to be Kopp’s husband, KIPP now runs over 100 schools, typically in cities that staff a multitude of TFA corps members, such as Houston, New Orleans, and New York City. Many KIPP teachers began their careers in education as TFA corps members, and an even higher percentage of KIPP administrators are TFA alums. KIPP schools are in such high demand that students must win lotteries for the opportunity to attend. The pièce de résistance of Waiting for Superman chronicles one such dramatic lottery drawing.

Slots in KIPP schools are in short supply because, unlike most charter schools, they have a track record of actually improving student performance and of helping poor children gain acceptance into college. Their methodology consists of nothing novel: teachers and students work very hard. But more than that, KIPP students and their families must sign contracts committing to a rigorous program of surveillance—the only way to ensure that underprivileged students overcome lives that otherwise drag them down. As one KIPP administrator described the philosophy: “At every moment, we asked ourselves, what about this moment of the day is or is not fostering college readiness in our students?” While visiting a KIPP school in New York City early one morning, where fifth graders were busy with drills at 7:00 a.m., Kopp quietly lamented, without a touch of irony, that her own child of the same age was still in bed. Thus, in the KIPP model, we are presented with the solution to the nation’s educational inequalities: for poor children to succeed, they must willingly submit to Taylorist institutionalization. This is made starkly evident in the concluding scene of Waiting for Superman, when young “Anthony,” one of the lucky few, arrives at his charter school with suitcase in hand, since his particular school boards its students. Anthony is rightly ambivalent about giving up his life with his grandparents and friends in order to attend a SEED Foundation school—the prototype in education reform—where 24-hour supervision is the only way to ensure that poor children have a chance at success.

In working to perfect their approach to education, TFA insurgents miss the forest for the trees. They fail to ask big-picture questions. Will their pedagogy of surveillance make for a more humane society? Having spent their formative years in a classroom learning test-taking skills, will their students become good people? Will they know more history? Will they be more empathetic? Will they be better citizens? Will they be more inclined to challenge the meritocracy? Or, as its newest converts, will they be its most fervent disciples? What does it mean that for children born in the Bronx to go to college they must give up their childhoods, however bleak?

What kind of psycho looks at test prep drilling kids at 7 AM and says "Gee, I wish my kid was doing this..."?

Seriously.

The Good-Grade Pills Fit Right In With The No Excuses Education Reform Philosophy

I remember seeing some fluff piece in the Times a while back about KIPP founder David Levin and how he works 75-90 hour weeks and only sees his own child on Sundays.

There's no time Monday to Saturday to see his kid, you see, because KIPP keeps him that busy and he just can't break away from his 12.5 to 15 hour work days to spend time with the family.

Nowhere in the fluff piece from the Times does anybody say "Uh, maybe you've got a problem, David. You'd rather work 90 hours a week rather than spend time with your family. Are you familiar with this condition called workaholism? It's similar to alcoholism and drug addiction, in that it allows sufferers to numb out from feelings and escape from anxiety and low self-esteem, only workaholism is a more socially respectable form of addiction and avoidance from uncomfortable emotions."

But no, the word "workaholism" never comes up in the Times piece. Instead David Levin and his 75-90 hour work weeks are fetishized as some grand thing.

I was thinking about that story when I saw this NY Times story about teens so obsessed with grades and achievements that they're loading up on stimulants and ADHD drugs to work longer and harder:

At high schools across the United States, pressure over grades and competition for college admissions are encouraging students to abuse prescription stimulants, according to interviews with students, parents and doctors. Pills that have been a staple in some college and graduate school circles are going from rare to routine in many academically competitive high schools, where teenagers say they get them from friends, buy them from student dealers or fake symptoms to their parents and doctors to get prescriptions.

...

The D.E.A. lists prescription stimulants like Adderall and Vyvanse (amphetamines) and Ritalin and Focalin (methylphenidates) as Class 2 controlled substances — the same as cocaine and morphine — because they rank among the most addictive substances that have a medical use. (By comparison, the long-abused anti-anxiety drug Valium is in the lower Class 4.) So they carry high legal risks, too, as few teenagers appreciate that merely giving a friend an Adderall or Vyvanse pill is the same as selling it and can be prosecuted as a felony.

While these medicines tend to calm people with A.D.H.D., those without the disorder find that just one pill can jolt them with the energy and focus to push through all-night homework binges and stay awake during exams afterward. “It’s like it does your work for you,” said William, a recent graduate of the Birch Wathen Lenox School on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

But abuse of prescription stimulants can lead to depression and mood swings (from sleep deprivation), heart irregularities and acute exhaustion or psychosis during withdrawal, doctors say. Little is known about the long-term effects of abuse of stimulants among the young. Drug counselors say that for some teenagers, the pills eventually become an entry to the abuse of painkillers and sleep aids.

“Once you break the seal on using pills, or any of that stuff, it’s not scary anymore — especially when you’re getting A’s,” said the boy who snorted Adderall in the parking lot. He spoke from the couch of his drug counselor, detailing how he later became addicted to the painkiller Percocet and eventually heroin.

...

The number of prescriptions for A.D.H.D. medications dispensed for young people ages 10 to 19 has risen 26 percent since 2007, to almost 21 million yearly, according to IMS Health, a health care information company — a number that experts estimate corresponds to more than two million individuals. But there is no reliable research on how many high school students take stimulants as a study aid. Doctors and teenagers from more than 15 schools across the nation with high academic standards estimated that the portion of students who do so ranges from 15 percent to 40 percent.

“They’re the A students, sometimes the B students, who are trying to get good grades,” said one senior at Lower Merion High School in Ardmore, a Philadelphia suburb, who said he makes hundreds of dollars a week selling prescription drugs, usually priced at $5 to $20 per pill, to classmates as young as freshmen. “They’re the quote-unquote good kids, basically.”

The trend was driven home last month to Nan Radulovic, a psychotherapist in Santa Monica, Calif. Within a few days, she said, an 11th grader, a ninth grader and an eighth grader asked for prescriptions for Adderall solely for better grades. From one girl, she recalled, it was not quite a request.

“If you don’t give me the prescription,” Dr. Radulovic said the girl told her, “I’ll just get it from kids at school.”

Read the rest of that story and tell me that you don't see a connection between these kids taking drugs to achieve higher grades and the founder of the KIPP schools who works 75-90 hours a week, sleeps just a few hours a night and brags about his addictive lifestyle like it's a badge of honor rather than an illness.

And tell me this isn't EXACTLY the kind of lifestyle the charter industry, especially KIPP, and the education reformers champion.

Work 75-90 hours a week, do whatever you have to do to overachieve and out-compete the competition - including putting your health at risk - these are the lessons so many in the charters and education reform movement try and teach kids.

And why not?

This is the lesson our corporate overlords want the kids to be taught - that in our neo-feudal future, everybody is going to have to work a lot longer and a lot harder to out-compete the competition and bring home an ever-diminishing paycheck.

It's survival of the fittest in a world where resources are decreasing because our corporate overlords are stealing them.

And it's our corporate overlords who fund the education reformers and their charter schools with the 75-90 hour work weeks.

Which brings me back to David Levin, our intrepid KIPP founder (corporate-sponsored, of course.)

If he's doing his 75-90 hour work week sans stimulants, more power to him.

But either way, the lifestyle he is leading isn't healthy for him, it isn't healthy for his kids or his marriage, and it definitely sends the wrong message to his son - you are what you work at and how long you work at it.

Nothing else in life matters - not children, not your spouse, not your other relationships, not hobbies, not time for reflection or meditation.

Nope - the only thing that matters is how well you do on your tests so you can get into a good college and get a good job and out-compete the crowd in our neo-feudal, survival of the fittest world.

Now go work 75-90 hours a week.

Bloomberg Attacks Teachers In State Of The City Speech While NYPD Arrests Protesters Outside

The Mayor of the 1% continued his attacks on teachers in his State of the City speech today and his NYPD army continued their attacks on the First Amendment and the Constitution outside the venue where he gave that speech:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg put a strong focus on education Thursday in his 11th State of the City address.

Speaking at Gouverneur Morris High School in the Bronx, the mayor touted his administration's accomplishments in improving graduation rates and reducing crime in city schools.

But he says much more needs to be done, especially when it comes to attracting, rewarding and retaining top-notch educators.

"The education reforms we’ve pioneered over the past decade – no matter what the naysayers say – have been widely adopted by school systems across the nation, but this year we’ll be putting our foot on the gas and picking up the pace," said the mayor.

Bloomberg said he wants to retain the best educators by giving a $20,000 raise to those who are rated highly effective for two consecutive years.

As for teachers who don't make the grade at 33 struggling schools, the mayor wants to create "school-based committees'' to evaluate teachers.

It's a measure that would sidestep a dispute with the teachers union that is preventing the city from receiving $60 million in federal grants.

The mayor said he also wants to give parents more top-quality choices by opening 100 new schools over the next two years, including 50 charters.

...

While Bloomberg was largely met with applause Thursday, a group of protesters outside the auditorium were less thrilled.

The New York City Police Department says a total of 32 people were arrested.

All were charged with disorderly conduct.

There you have it.

Oppose Mayor 1% and his oligarchy and you'll end up in jail for disorderly conduct.

And there's a lot to oppose in this speech.

Bloomberg and his education reform backers know that there are only two more years left to finish the job of destroying the public education system in New York completely, so they've got to work overtime.

Close 25 schools.

Open 100 new ones.

Make 50 of those charter schools.

Give Eva Moskowitz and KIPP a bunch of new charters.

Place those charters in existing schools where they can act like a cancer and kill off the traditional public schools in those buildings.

Close more schools.

Open more charters.

Repeat.

Keep repeating.

And of course the one thing that stands in the way of this Education Reform Endgame is the teachers union contract.

So he's going to no longer abide by either that or state law.

He's just going to "turnaround" the SIG schools, fire half the staff and and bring in newbies to replace them.

Everybody gets evaluated by test scores and if you're found to be highly effective on that measure, you get $20,000 (no word on where that money comes from exactly - from the school itself where the teacher works? From the city? From Bloomberg himself?)

But if you're found ineffective, you're fired.

How like a Mamet play.

Only this is real life, these are real people and this evaluation system Bloomberg vows to use has real flaws.

Like a large margin of error.

Like huge swings in findings from year to year.

Nonetheless, Bloomberg is going to go through with this stuff and it is up to the UFT leadership and teachers and parents groups and community groups to push back on this charterizing and privatizing of the school system.

That's where the NYPD comes into the equation.

It's not a mistake that Bloomberg and Walcott are using riot police to quell protest of the mayor's school policies.

You can bet that as Bloomberg and Walcott put these policies in place and protest grows, they will use more and more police to quell dissent.

They want us to get the message - OBEY.

They've got lots of orange netting, pepper spray, police batons, horses and riot gear ready for the Shock and Awe Endgame coming in the next two years.

And they're going to use it.

All of it.

Get ready.

KIPP Achievement Not All That Impressive Given The Data

They don't take students with disabilities.

They take very few English language learners.

They dump their behavior problems into the traditional public school system.

They lose 15% of their students every year - 40% of their black male students between the 6th and 8th grades.

They have $6500 more per student to spend on education.

And they have to spend much less on special services since they have few students in need of such services.

Then upshot of all this?

Luis A. Huerta, an associate professor of public policy and education at Teachers College, praised the study for exploring indicators of KIPP’s operations other than student achievement, which, while important, doesn’t tell the whole story, he said.

“If we can start speaking about these more nuanced layers, and move beyond this discussion of student achievement, we tend to get a real picture,” he said. “Here we have schools receiving upwards to $6,000 or more than traditional schools, and that’s not even accounting for the fact they have fewer services than traditional schools, yet the gains they’ve shown in student achievement are quite modest.” Mr. Huerta is a faculty associate of the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education at Teachers College, which had a hand in distributing the study but did not take part in the research.

The KIPPsters like to push the achievement factor, but given the attrition rate, the additional funding they receive per student, and the make-up of their student body, KIPP surely isn't a model for national education reform.

When the KIPPsters own their students the way traditional public schools do, when they don't lose 15% of their students to attrition or 40% of their black male students between the 6th and 8th grades, when they take a demographic percentage of ELL's and special service students and THEN outscore traditional public schools, when they lose 35% of their money to budget cuts over three years, give me a call.

Until then, I maintain that KIPP is an overhyped, limited charter school for a very few, very motivated children with very motivated parents.

And even then, I think those same students would receive a better education if they weren't subjected to the fascism of the KIPP model.

Study Finds KIPP Schools Lose 15% of Students To Attrition EVERY YEAR

Well, this one way to keep the test scores up:

The Knowledge Is Power Program, a charter school network known for lifting the achievements of poor children through high standards and long hours of work, benefits from significant private funding and student attrition, a new study contends.

The study from researchers at Western Michigan University, to be released Thursday, estimated that KIPP schools receive more than $5,000 a year per pupil through private donations in addition to regular sources of public funding. It also found that about 15 percent of KIPP students leave the schools each year as they progress from sixth to eighth grades — and that those students often are not replaced.

Gary Miron, the study’s author, said KIPP schools in Washington and elsewhere often outperform regular public schools. “But they’re not doing it with the same students, and they’re not doing it with the same dollars,” he said.

Whether it's the KIPPsters, For Profit Geoffrey Canada's Harlem Children's Zone, Mistress Eva's Hedge Fund Charter School network or any of the other various charters around the country, the truth is that these schools are often NOT educating the same kinds of students with the same dollar amounts and whenever kids are problems either statistically or behaviorally, they are counseled out or just dumped.

This is NOT a strategy to improve public education across the nation.

Now if only the putz in the White House would realize this.

NY Times: Private Schools Dump Problem Students

I am shocked, shocked to find out that the NY Times is reporting that private schools throw problem children out of school rather than find ways to help them:

Thousands of parents trying to get their children into private schools are now busy mailing thank-you cards to admissions offices and biting their nails while waiting for word back.

But for a small number of parents who prevailed through this gantlet in the past, this time of year brings another kind of notice — that their child is on thin ice — as an even more painful process begins: the “counseling out” of students who are not succeeding.

Not discussed on schools’ tours or in their glossy pamphlets, counseling out is nonetheless a matter of practice at many private schools. Unlike the public school system, private schools are not obligated, and often not set up, to handle children having trouble keeping up.

“There are some kids that we’re not going to renew,” said Pamela J. Clarke, the head of the Trevor Day School in Manhattan, “either because they can’t do the work and we’re not serving them, or generally, that might be combined with behavior issues we can’t win.”

“That means he or she needs a different school,” Ms. Clarke said.

Schools do not publicize how many students they remove this way, but the number is generally a small portion of the enrollment. But some Web sites for parents have offered the suspicion that schools remove lagging students to protect another statistic that schools do publicize: their students’ admissions rates to top colleges.

Gee - massaging stats by getting rid of the "laggards" who will hurt the overall numbers.

That's just what the charter schools do!

Traditional public schools, on the other hand, actually try and help students even when they may be harming the overall stats of the schools:

Bennett Allen, now 28, said he was asked to leave the Dalton School a month before the end of eighth grade for disciplinary problems like buying and sharing cigarettes and for falling behind in some classes.

“I was very young, and I was testing the limits,” Mr. Allen said. At the Beacon School, the public school he ended up in, teachers took him more firmly under their wing, he said, and helped him channel his rambunctiousness. “Dalton was kind of like that parent who rather than play with their kid and encourage and grow their curiosity, brings it to the doctor and gets them Adderall instead,” he said.

Dalton, asked about its counseling-out practices, said only: “Together with families, Dalton works to serve the students’ best interests, so they may thrive and be successful.”

Mr. Allen acknowledged that he was better off having transferred to a school that met his needs, albeit in a less prestigious setting. “It was the biggest favor they ever did for me,” he said of Dalton’s move. He went on to Columbia University and is now an investigator for the United States Labor Department.

He says he bears no grudges toward the school. Well, maybe one. “I still get their letters asking for donations,” he said. “I’m not giving them a cent.”

The dishonesty of so many in the charter industry and the private school industry over "student dumping" and "counseling out" bothers me to no end.

That the media doesn't call them on the hypocrisy is the bigger problem, however.

Kudos to the Times for calling some private schools on this.

Now the Times should take a VERY close look at the Harlem Children's Zone, Harlem Village Academies, KIPP and others and expose how they massage their stats by dumping all the problems into traditional public schools (usually right around test time.)

DOE Hires Turnaround School Official Who Resigned From Last Job "In Disgrace"

Gotta love that the guy Bloomberg hires to be the school accountability guy wasn't so good at holding employees accountable back in his old job at a charter school and left the school "financially...in shambles" :

A top city educational official in charge of turning around failing schools resigned in disgrace from his last job, the Daily News has learned.

John Alford, the $130,000-a-year director of turnaround, was hired in October, a year after leaving his post as CEO of a New Orleans charter school because his business manager was charged with embezzlement.

The staffer was ultimately sent to jail for taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from the school over multiple years. Alford was not suspected of any wrongdoing.

"At the end of the day, I take responsibility for allowing this to happen," Alford told The Times-Picayune after he resigned from his position at the Langston Hughes Academy.

City education officials said they were aware of the problems in Alford's past.

Alford, a Harvard Business School graduate and a former national director for the KIPP charter schools, declined to comment yesterday.

Deputy Chancellor Marc Sternberg, however, defended his decision to hire Alford. "This is a person of real integrity who cares deeply about student outcomes," said Sternberg in a statement.

"He'll be an important part of our team as we continue the crucial work of fixing our struggling schools."

Can you imagine how this story would be framed by the papers if the union hired an accountability guy who couldn't keep employees accountable at his last job?

Can you imagine how Bloomberg would frame it on his Friday radio show?

And yet, at the NYCDOE, they hire this guy because he has the pedigree they want - KIPP experience, ed deform ideology, charter school proponent.

Oh, and he made it into a Michelle Obama speech about "role models."

According to Michelle Obama, Alford is a role model because he has helped create a turnaround school where students "spend 50% more time in their classrooms."

He has also helped spur other "reforms."

These days, that's all that matters.

Still, for a Harvard Business School graduate, this guy doesn't sound too swift.

The employee he supervised at the Langston Hughes Charter School, Kelly A. Thompson, stole $675,000 in a little more than a year.

And she was pretty blatant about the thefts:

Several times a month, Thompson allegedly withdrew cash or made a check out to herself. The amounts range from $100 to nearly $9,000, but usually fell in the $1,000 to $5,000 range. A few times, Thompson made several cash withdrawals in a single day.

Financially "the place was left in shambles," said Mickey Allweiss, the chair of the school's board of directors. "We're working very hard to figure everything out."

Should the DOE really have hired a guy whose management skills are so in question that he left his previous employer "financially...in shambles..."?

I'd have to say on the face of it, no.

Perhaps they've hired all the really good KIPPsters and TFA'ers and other ed deform shills already and now they're down to hiring people like Alford?

Or perhaps they really didn't look into his background.

They say they did, but you know, they also say they did a nationwide search for a replacement for Klein.

Or perhaps they hired him because they want him to do for NYC schools what he envisioned for New Orleans schools when he first got started at Langston Hughes.

Here is how he framed that vision in an article about how great the new charter schools were in NOLA and how they were replacing the old corrupt public school system:

And what happens with the public school system, long blamed as the root cause of New Orleans' entrenched poverty, will also shape the city's future.

Katrina accelerated a process of replacing the corrupt, underperforming system with reformed traditional schools and charter schools. Recently released test results show higher scores among the charter students. But the system is having trouble attracting teachers.

The clean slate attracted John Alford, a Harvard Business School graduate who moved from Baltimore to run the Langston Hughes Academy Charter School. By the storm's tenth anniversary, he expects 90 percent of the city's schools to be independently run charters.

"If we do what we're supposed to do," he says, "it can be a glorious city."

Oh, it's going to be a glorious city all right, now that charter operators like John Alford have eliminated all the corruption from the old system and brought about accountability and high standards.

You know, like having an employee making several thousand dollar cash withdrawals from the school fund each day for personal expenses and walking around cash.

D.C. Considers Adding Time To School Day

So much for the days of Rheeform going out the door with Rhee:

The two Southeast Washington middle schools are less than a mile apart. The real distance that separates them is the number of hours their students spend in class each week.

At Johnson Middle School, the day is 61/2 hours, 8:45 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. Students at AIM Academy, a KIPP charter school, stay for nine hours, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and 71/2 hours on Friday. That doesn't count the mandatory 15 days of summer school and numerous four-hour Saturday sessions. In all, AIM kids spend 40 percent more time in class than their D.C. public school peers.

Longer school days are expensive and complicated to execute, requiring buy-in from teachers, parents, after-school programs and child-care providers. And the evidence that extended schedules actually improve academic performance is mixed at best.

But new support for a school calendar that breaks the traditional 61/2-hour, 180-day mold may force the District to give the idea more serious consideration. President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan have called for longer days and shorter summer breaks. And school districts across the country are experimenting with extended days, especially as a way to help low-income students. Last month, D.C. Council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3) introduced legislation that would add 30 minutes to the public school schedule.

...

One unanswered question is whether a longer day leads to more learning. The most extensive ongoing experiment has yielded mixed results. Creators of the Massachusetts Expanded Learning Time Initiative, which involves 22 public schools across the state, say the additional 300 hours a year have given students a richer academic experience and provided more time for teachers to plan and collaborate. They report that the schools are in higher demand among parents.

But an independent evaluation found that, with the exception of higher science scores for fifth-graders, there were no statistically significant differences between schools on expanded schedules and those with conventional days.

"ELT seems to have had no significant effect on a whole range of student outcomes, including [standardized test] scores, attendance, participation in out-of-school activities . . . or level of engagement in school," said Elena Silva, a senior policy analyst at Education Sector, a Washington think tank.

They keep using KIPP schools, which have 9 hour days and a few Saturdays a month on the school schedule, as a model for Rheeform.

And the KIPP people say they are "passionate" about the longer school days.

Yet there is NO evidence that longer school days do what Rheeformers claim they are doing.

So why add extra time to the day and year?

Might the added time and days not be about academic outcomes at all?

Might they be a social control mechanism?

I have said for a long time now that the Rheeformers - all funded by corporate sources - are looking to socialize students to grow up to be compliant corporate employees willing to work longer and harder for less money than their parents.

That's one of the primary motivations of the Rheeform movement.

Given the evidence that extended time and days does not have any significant effect on academic outcomes, what other reason can the Rheeformers have than wanting to get people used to a 60 hour/6 day work week?

"Mommy, When's Daddy Coming Home?"

If daddy is David Levin, founder of the KIPP program, not for a long, long time.

An exercise in fellatio masquerading as a human interest story/personality profile in today's NY Times explains how the KIPP founder works 75-90 hours/6 days a week "training teachers, raising money and shuttling among six schools."

Levin is married to a marketing consultant and has a 15 month old child.

Sundays are reserved for spending time with wife and son.

Monday through Saturday there is no time for family concerns - just time to work, work, work.

And of course this is the lifestyle model that we see promoted in journalism and by politicians as the best way to go about life and the way we ought to be teaching our children to go about it.

This is what Mistress Eva and For-Profit Geoffrey and Sex Scandal Rhee and the rest of the education deformers push in their schools as the way to raise living standards for lower income children.

It is also what Barack Obama and Arne Duncan are promoting in their Race to the Top casino scheme and the re-authorization of No Child Left Behind.

Additional school hours, additional school days, fewer days off.

Excuse me for asking, but how is bringing back the 90 hour/6 day work week/no vacation time raising the standards of living of people?

Perhaps Levin and Obama and Duncan don't give a shit about their own families and kids and like spending 90 hours a week working.

But many humans actually have interests outside of work and reasons for living outside of making money.

Hell, some of us actually like spending time with people outside of the work sphere.

Some of us like spending time with our families.

Some of like spending time outside work to rest, relax, rejuvenate, ruminate, contemplate, reflect, meditate and grow emotionally, intellectually and spiritually.

Clearly David Levin, founder of KIPP schools and proud worker of 90 hour work weeks, is not one of those people.

One wonders what emotional damage was done to young David to have him grow up to be such a fucked up person that he'd rather spend 90 hours a week with fundraisers and training teachers than raising his young son grow and watching him grow and learn about life.