KIPP Scores Tumble, kipp gets $50 million, President Demands More Charter Schools

[Hannah Bell]

When you live by the scores, you die by the scores. Except, here's the thing--KIPP schools are the darlings of Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Jay Matthews, and Wal-Mart. Therefore, they've just won 50 million bucks. Odd this revelation occurred only days after the award, ain't it?

<<Schaeffler said her staff was working to determine what the problem in fifth grade might be. "We're looking at everything from teacher turnover to a change in the incoming students."<<

They have to look at that darn teacher turnover, because few can maintain the grueling pace demanded of KIPP teachers, the six-day weeks, the long hours, the cell phone at home to answer the demands of parents. Some teachers, in fact, persist in wanting a personal life, out of the question for those in the super charters. However, such charters are paving the way for the vision of the American President--an America where all are peasants, working round the clock, never getting ahead, an America in which no one has a pesky union and everyone works for whatever the bosses feel like paying.

It doesn't matter that charters don't do better than public schools, despite enormous advantages in selection. Make no mistake--with 100% proactive parents, the only miracle about charters is that they don't outperform public schools everywhere, all the time. It doesn't matter if they fail. It doesn't matter if all the methods the "reformers" use fail, or if both Texas and Chicago, the audition grounds for the programs in place now were failures too. In fact, they don't even care if their arguments are transparent nonsense. The editorial boards from the New York Times on down are asleep at the wheel and can't be bothered with the most perfunctory research.

http://nyceducator.com/2010/08/kipp-scores-tumble-president-demands.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/06/AR2010080606206.html?wprss=rss_education

[aquart]

1. Bush family gets rich on charter schools. I loathe them.

Both the Bush family and the charter schools.

[Starry Messenger]

2. The fix is in.

Hope all the DFER dollars are worth it, White House. http://www.dfer.org/list/about/board/

[Hannah Bell]

3. The DFER Board

Kevin Chavous (chair) - Former Washington, DC, City Council member and chair of the Education Committee.

Tony Davis - Anchorage Capital, board chair for Achievement First East New York, in Brooklyn.

Charles Ledley - Highfields Capital Management, board member of the Tobin Project

Rafael Mayer - Co-founder and managing partner, Khronos LLC, board member for Planned Parenthood of NYC, KIPP AMP, and The Dalton School.

Sara Mead - New America Foundation, former analyst for Education Sector and the Progressive Policy Institute, Washington, D.C.

John Petry - Gotham Capital, co-founder of Harlem Success Academy Charter School, NYC.

Andrew Rotherham - Co-Founder and Publisher, Education Sector, former White House education advisor to President Clinton, author of the blog, Eduwonk.com.

Whitney Tilson - T2 Partners and Tilson Funds, vice chairman of KIPP Academy Charter Schools in NYC, co-founder of the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City.

(Note - Organizations listed here are for identification purposes only and do not imply an endorsement or affiliation.)


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The DFER Board of Advisors

William Ackman - Founder, Pershing Square Capital.

Steve Barr - Founder and CEO, Green Dot Public Schools.

Cory Booker - Mayor of Newark, N.J.

David Einhorn - Founder of Greenlight Capital, LLC.

Joel Greenblatt - Founder and Managing Partner of Gotham Capital.

Vincent Mai - Chairman of AEA Investors, LP.

Michael Novogratz - President of Fortress Investment Group.

Tom Vander Ark - Partner, Revolution Learning.


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[Starry Messenger]

5. Yep, Whitney Tilson VC of KIPP

The plan was started in 2007 and executed like clockwork.

http://edreform.blogspot.com/2007_05_01_archive.html

How New Generation of Reformers Targets Democrats on Education



BY ELIZABETH GREEN - Staff Reporter of the Sun

May 31, 2007

URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/55537


A money manager recently sent an e-mail to some partners, congratulating them on an investment of $1 million that yielded an estimated $400 million. The reasoning was that $1 million spent on trying to lift a cap on the number of charter schools in New York State yielded a change in the law that will bring $400 million a year in funding to new charter schools.



The money managers who were among the main investors in this law — three Harvard MBAs and a Wharton graduate named Whitney Tilson, Ravenel Boykin Curry IV, Charles Ledley, and John Petry — are moving education-oriented volunteerism beyond championing a single school. They want to shift the political debate by getting the Democratic Party to back innovations such as merit pay for teachers, a longer school day, and charter schools.

The organization from which they hope to launch their revolution, Democrats for Education Reform, does some of its work at cocktail parties hosted in Mr. Curry's Trump Plaza penthouse. The group — actually two separate political action committees — has raised money for senators Obama, Clinton, and Lieberman; Governor Spitzer; Rep. George Miller; state senators Malcolm Smith and Antoine Thompson; assemblymen Sam Hoyt, Hakeem Jeffries, and Jonathan Bing, and City Council Member Vito Lopez. They count the charter cap lift, signed by Mr. Spitzer in April, as their first major victory.


<snip>

Teachers' unions may give a big boost to the Democratic Party, but so do those working in finance. If Democrats for Education Reform can convince them to press issues like length of the school day and merit-based teacher pay, it could force a dramatic swing in the party itself.

As investors, the group's leaders spend their days searching for hidden diamonds in the rough: businesses the market has left for dead, but a savvy investor could turn for a profit. A big inner-city school system, Mr. Tilson explained, is kind of like that — the General Motors of the education world. "I see very, very similar dynamics: very large bureaucratic organizations that have become increasingly disconnected from their customers; that are producing an inferior product and losing customers; that are heavily unionized," he said. A successful charter school, on the other hand, is like "Toyota 20 years ago."

Move over teachers and teacher's unions, we aren't needed anymore. The Democratic party have found a new and cushier swain. The hedge fund managers have sold their super plan to the politicians.

[Hannah Bell]

7. boy, that tells you something. passing out the bribes years ago.

[Starry Messenger]

8. And still at it.

You'll love this:

http://dferwatch.wordpress.com/2010/07/16/dfer-ny-2010-spending-donations/

So the next time someone (maybe on this very forum) says that all one has to do is get out and sell the public on one's ideals and build a coalition that will vote for it? Stuff it. Shoe leather is at a distinct disadvantage in the face of billionaires. These guys are pretty much buying elections. They have heavy marketing and PR propaganda campaigns. They are the "New Democrats".

[maryf]

16. great source, thanks! nt

[TheMadMonk]

11. Doesn't that comparison to Toyota now seems deliciously apposite? /nt

[JDPriestly]

13. How many of these people are experienced classroom teachers?

[Hannah Bell]

15. uhhhhh - none? they're experienced robbers, though.

[dkf]

4. My potential Gov says no high stakes testing. No testing standards. Take decisions down to

The school level and this will fix our school system. Seriously is this a good plan? Right now our kids test pretty low...48th in the nation I think. This was the guy I was thinking of voting for but I think he is a little deluded on this.

[johnaries]

6. From the WaPo article you linked to:

KIPP and other public charter middle schools still outperform most of the traditional public middle schools in the District.

As far as the awards program:

The $650 million was given out in awards of three levels. The four largest awards of nearly $50 million each went to groups proposing to greatly expand programs, like Teach for America and the KIPP charters, that the department viewed has having been proved successful.

Fifteen second-tier awards of up to $30 million each went to groups with somewhat less-established programs, hoping to solidify their track record and expand. The winners of these so-called validation awards included the Smithsonian Institution, which won about $26 million for a proposal to advance “inquiry oriented” science education in hundreds of school districts, and Johns Hopkins University, which was given $30 million to advance its work in overhauling high schools with such dismal graduation rates that the university has identified them as dropout factories.

The smallest awards went to organizations proposing what were basically brainstorms: 30 groups that put forward reasonable ideas that sounded intriguing, however untested, won grants of up to $5 million. Winners included the Jefferson County Schools in Louisville, which proposed increasing the instruction time devoted to students in six low-performing high schools by 30 percent, and the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Milwaukee, for a plan to provide extra literacy tutoring and after-school help to hundreds of struggling young readers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/education/05grants.html?src=me

[Hannah Bell]

10. wapo *owns* an ed deform corp. they're not a reliable source of data.

naep tests, gold standard (administered by outsiders):

The NAEP/Tuda also shows that in 2009 DCPS surpassed charter school performance in math. Two years ago we were 14 scale score points behind charter schools in eighth grade math, and this year we have a higher proficiency rate than charter schools at both the fourth and eighth grade levels.

http://dc.gov/DCPS/About+DCPS/Strategic+Documents/Plan+for+Stimulus+Funding

[jeanpalmer]

14. If these schools are such successes

and they have found the holy grail, why are 30 groups still being paid big bucks for "intruiging sounding" ideas? It sounds like money is just being thrown around at a fad. These big institutions like the Smithsonian and John Hopkins have merely found another trough to feed at. And they're milking it for all it's worth.

[madfloridian]

9. Well, get this. TFA gets 50 million also. Its head Wendy Kopp married to KIPP founder.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/6032

Keeping it in the family so to speak.

[Hannah Bell]

12. wow. i think there's more to this than meets the eye. those two sure had some quick success,

didn't they?

[maryf]

17. K&R

This makes me want to kick and wreck in a totally different way...