Sunday, October 21, 2012

The "Hidden" Cost of Innovation: Buras, Lack, and Winerip

     The Buras, Lack, and Winerip pieces raise very similar issues in regards to school choice and the allure of educational innovation. In today's competitive society parents have been led to believe that in order to provide their children with the most successful and profitable education (i.e. high graduation and college acceptance rates) they must become consumers in the dog-eat-dog educational market. When Katherine Sprowal placed her son Matthew in the lottery to attend the Harlem Success Academy 3 charter school she believed he would be provided with an innovative educational opportunity that would surely foster success. Instead what she found was that her son Matthew was a troubled student, and would need to be transferred to an alternative form of public schooling. At the time she thanked the charter school principal for her help in finding Matthew a new school, proclaiming that she would take the required steps to "correct" his poor behavior, in hopes that he would someday be able to return to this magnificent institution. Three years later she came to understand that perhaps her intelligent son was not the problem, and realized that the charter school should be held accountable.
     For parents like Ms. Sprowal the innovative educational reforms of the charter school movement often convinces them that this education is best for their child. However, the Lack article provides an in depth analysis of the rigorous standards these institutions are held to, standards which often make or break a child's chance for success. This piece critiques the Knowledge is Power program, otherwise referred to as KIPP, which is promoted for its promise of educational success through a "no excuses" policy. These students experience a rigorous almost nine and a half hour school day, are required to attend classes every other Saturday, and receive a work load of approximately 2-3 hours every night (Lack 129). For students like Matthew Sprowal who experience attention disorders or other extra-educational needs, it is no wonder that this demanding environment creates a culture of "thrive or transfer" (Winerip). These Kipp programs provide statistics which show that they serve high needs, racial minority students, but many of these students get funneled out of the system before they get a chance to succeed. On top of that, Lack goes on to explain how many KIPP programs throughout the country are not doing to their job of out performing public institutions in their immediate areas. The allure of innovation has shielded the fact that these institutions are not producing the results they proclaim, and are also failing the very students it attempts to empower.
     We have come to realize throughout the course of this semester that the high-stakes testing and charter school movement, while trying to compensate for the downfalls of public education, has in turn created a culture in which institutions of education leave more children left behind than ever before. The neo-liberal influence on education has begun to change the pedagogy of the field. While charter schools proclaim their interests in helping all children to succeed, they are quick to funnel children out of their system, providing this dream to those who already possessed the means to achieve it.

9 comments:

  1. Ah yes. Charter Schools meets Social Darwinism. As soon as I got there in the KIPP article, I made a displeased face. Natalie summed up this idea nicely when she wrote, "The allure of innovation has shielded the fact that these institutions are not producing the results they proclaim, and are also failing the very students it attempts to empower." Charter schools, like our sense of identity and the conceived meaning of happiness in the neoliberal hyper-capitalist system we inhabitat, is currently a really well-funded marketing campaign. Its advertising is fabulous. It's moved beyond old, white politicians in Congress; it's movies, Twitter accounts, and Facebook pages funded by billionaires posing as philanthropists. The Winerip article reveals the conspiracy within the charter schools to counsel students out, thereby raising overall test scores. After being suspended for behavior problems, "the next week, the school counselor evaluated Matthew and concluded he would be better suited elsewhere," (1). It is interesting to note that Matthew did not suffer from behavioral problems in his new public school. The whole incident reeks of ulterior motive. Yet in a system obsessed with test scores, children who do not fit into the mold are increasingly cast aside. Capitalism will always exist with a certain degree of unemployment. It seems as those students may be destined to fill those quotas in society, or merely occupy prison beds.

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  2. Almost all education reforms focus, at least on the surface, around including all children and making the entire system equal. After reading the articles for today’s class, I realized that charter schools really isolate, not only children, but teachers, parents, and members of the community as well. Buras discusses how charter schools have the ability to exclude unwanted children. This can be seen in the case that Winerip discusses when Matthew was forced to change schools because of his ADHD. In New Orleans, after hurricane Katrina, the number of veteran teachers was cut in half. Buras said “operators dump students after acquiring state funds to serve them.” (173) It comes down to money, ignoring what, or more important who, the money is supposed to serve. In addition, parents and community members of the poor or working class are often excluded from the board meetings. These are the families that charter schools are supposedly trying to help, and yet they are not given a voice. Teachers, who have been working in schools for over twenty years, are fired and replaced with newer and less experienced teachers. The idea here is that you can pay newer teachers less, keep teacher turn over high, and perpetuate the hiring of less expensive teachers. Finally, the idea of pushing parents away and high turnover rate creates “too much instability among teachers, which also leads to instability for our students, and instability that goes into the community” (178) The instability that is occurring is not only affecting those within the school system but the community outside as well. This demonstrates the argument that charter schools are not only keeping inequality but also producing it. Overall, more people are being excluded instead of included, and people are regarded in terms of test scores and cost.

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    1. Eliza mentions many great points from Buras' article but I will extrapolate on one in particular. She highlights threats to veteran teachers driven by alternative teaching methods and this made me think of a conversation I had with a good friend last week about her upcoming interview with Teach For America. Knowing that I am taking a class about politics and education, she asked my honest opinion about the program. I tried to be both a supportive but candid friend and explained the problematic nature of TFA. Although she appreciated my insights, she kept returning to the assertion that they needed good teachers like her. It’s undeniably fulfilling to be told you would be an asset to a struggling community, however, Buras clearly shows how programs like this completely devalue experienced teachers and essentially outsource for the cheapest teacher-labor possible. These communities don’t (as my friend thought) need imported highly-educated and -privileged, yet under-experienced 22 year-olds. They already had teachers in NOLA and many of these teachers had years of experience and offered necessary stability to students. But when ‘qualification’ was reframed as young, energetic, and privileged, the veteran teachers quickly became devalued as a good in this free-market model. A very thought-provoking quote from Paul Vallas (superintendent of NOLA schools): “I don’t want the majority of my teaching staff teaching for more than 10 years. The cost of sustaining those individuals becomes so enormous.” (Burbas 177) It’s plainly clear that ultimately Vallas is concerned with the district’s finances, not the quality of education his schools provide. This is a perfect example that sheds light on the fallacies of the perfect ‘invisible hand.’ If free markets enforce situations where the high-quality (a stable teacher) is sacrificed for the efficient (alternative teacher programs), what does value even mean?

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  3. What I found most interesting was the fact that while KIPP schools were supposed to be the answer to our country’s failing public school system, they have not showed significant increases in test scores, or any significant progress for that matter. As we have discussed throughout the year, investors and private institutions are attempting to provide an alternative to public schooling, but failing to show much progress, and instead create negative impacts, like in the example of Matthew Sprowal. Through attempting to outdo their public school counterparts, charter schools are apparently weeding out the low-performing children so as to increase their scores (Winerip 2). This is reminiscent of the cheating scandals that many public schools were involved in in order to increase test scores and reputations.
    As always, it seems as though the standards set by NCLB continue to be detrimental to children and their education. The issue is clearly not the method of education, or the amount of education- the 62% increase in time that children spend in school in KIPP schools can attest to that. Instead, the issue is, as lack points out, “the unequal distribution of resources in schools and society” (Lack 127). If administrators and politicians continue to ignore the actual problems causing the failing school system, more and more children are going to be left with a poor education, and more public tax money will be spent attempting to radically change this system, without results.

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  4. What I found most interesting in our reading was the "no excuses" approach to schooling through the KIPP program. The KIPP program could not be any more indicative to the conservative neoliberal culture woven in American society. The no excuse approach does not account for those students who actually have excuses. And instead helping those students who cannot keep up with this demanding course load, the KIPP program filters them out. This speaks loudly to the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" ideology many Americans maintain. The lost sense in community in America is one of its biggest downfalls. All students, along with undergraduates, are overwhelmed with course loads that do not allow for children to just be kids. An evolution in the demands of education have made students more busy at younger ages. Busier schedules are not the solution to the failing American school system. The fact still remains that students struggle not because of the curriculum but because of their surroundings. Rigorous course loads will only polarize our students more if America's policy does not solve its social inequalities.

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  5. I think Pat perfectly described how the "no excuses" mentality plays into the American dream ideology, ignoring social, cultural, and historical contexts that have engendered class- and race-based stratification. In conjunction with an obsessive concern with results, this mid set emphasizes the ends over means mentality that predominates education reform. A number of articles we have read thus far indicate that, even so, the end results are not the promising improvements that effective marketing would lead us to believe. Importantly, such an approach also belittles the means through which schools are attempting to achieve results. Consequentially, as Lack explains, we have come to accept behavioral control practices in schools that “have been thoroughly shunned by prominent developmental psychologists” (139). As Buras elaborates, these tactics can be read, on a larger scale, as a form of social control organized along lines of race and class and rooted in the needs of the economy. Educational policies that prioritize results and economic incentives exclude students who don’t adhere to a normative mold of a successful student, as explicitly stated in the KIPP contract and epitomized by Matthew Sprowal’s story. A school atmosphere that only accommodates “academically privileged or motivated students” (135) is hardly a replicable model. The discourses used to promote the charter school movement ignore these fundamental faults, as exemplified by Feinberg’s assertion that kids need not be artificially “pumped up with self-esteem” and that, instead, it is the role of the school to prepare students “to get a job out there in the real world” (140). The current iteration of education reform obsesses over enabling a minority of students to “beat the odds” and succeed in an inequitable system instead of challenging that system and imagining an educational environment that meets the needs of diverse learners.

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  6. KIPP schools are everywhere in California, and I have friends who attend KIPP schools. It was quite interesting noting the similarities between their problems with KIPP schools and Lack’s critique of the schools. My friends back home always complain about the various activities they have them do, the longer school years, quick lunch break, and the longer school days. These comments are all things that Lack noted in his article and despite showing some improvement; the KIPP schools are no different than those of charter schools. The militaristic and capitalistic environments in these schools serve the purpose of the rising neo-liberalistic ideals in our nation. Lack notes that KIPP schools emphasize the ideals of meritocracy, in which the creators of the KIPP schools see more time spent in school as a way to put more work and become great but at the same time sees that people who are struggling and suffering are the effects of being lazy and poor work ethic. The militaristic environment is also apparent with the excused students who are put aside at the schools desire. Lack notes that the schools are blunt about kicking students out who do not adhere to the contract but. The schools treat students as products, since they can dispose any student at any time. The last aspect of KIPP schools lie with the aspect of choice and consumerism. Students are drilled that hard work is reflected on what they can afford; That by working hard to purchase “more is a sure-fire route to goodness and happiness” (142). Lack notes that students in these schools are surely made into consumers and that choice is reflected, not on what they have the option to receive but on what they can afford.

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    1. Matthew reminds me a lot of myself. Growing up in the public school system I always got in trouble for my behavior. Numerous times administrators and teachers would try to convince my mom to get me tested for ADHD but she refused. I still wonder to this day if I have ADHD. I learned differently than my fellow classmates. As I got older my teachers allowed me to do my work standing up or allowed me to walk around the classroom as long as I didn't distract my classmates. These different teaching methods benefited me the same way they benefited Matthew.
      This story frustrates me because as Lack stated "Critics of KIPP are hard to find." Sometimes I feel like we are the only people who understand the flaws in our education system. Not that we are less worthy but in the minds of many Americans we can be seen as "radical" in our viewpoints. It is frustrating because in these KIPP schools the myth of meritocracy is present. I would argue that a majority of the kids that get weeded out of these schools are fully capable. If a kid is having difficulty they label the kid as a problem and force them to transfer. They don't take into consideration other aspects of the child's life. For example, their home environment, what neighborhood they live in, so on and so forth. There are more factors to performance than just "hard-work". These readings left me frustrated and also feeling radical because I don't think the majority of Americans feel the same way that I do about our education system. This is a result of the Neo-Liberalist design

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  7. As noted by previous blog posts, charter schools attempt to single out the best and the brightest students in order to raise test however, in doing so, they are leaving out those that may need the most help or, in the case of the Winerip article, don’t really need that much help at all, but rather just a bit more of a flexible system. The types of children who might need such help are also going to be the ones who come from more difficult or troubled backgrounds; poorer black students. The continued removal of such “troubled” students from charter schools will only perpetuate racial segregation within the school system and if anything, widen the already growing achievement gap. As noted by Lack (and in Javier’s blog post), KIPP thrives on the idea of meritocracy and if you work hard enough, you can succeed. However, this idea becomes a falsehood and creates a veil that hides the truth; only the people who have access to resources and can thrive in the strict, demanding, and unrealistic structure of our KIPP schools can succeed. In reality, only some students will actually be able to succeed under such strict guidelines and those who don’t will be the ones who need the help most. This all leads back to the same theme that seems to keep popping up, “an education like the one KIPP claims to offer is becoming increasingly more of a private good,” (Lack 135) and is only available to those who can adhere to it and afford it.

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