3 posts tagged “kipp”

When teaching in the districts that MTC places us in, tangible success is often hard to come by. Failure seems to be what is constantly in our face as we think of all the things that our students are doing besides learning, all the places that our students will likely end up besides college, and all the classroom management issues we face that make us want to roll over and call out sick. Every. Single. Day. Still, it's in the little things that teachers anywhere but especially in "critical needs" districts must focus on to maintain drive and focus and continue doing what too many others have deemed highly improbable or flatly impossible for centuries: educating poor Blacks.

In many of these districts MTC teachers teach in standardized tests are seen as foreboding signs of eminent doom and embarrassment. In these places, teaching "to the test" is often resorted to as the means through which educational salvation is reached. Teaching to the test is one thing but when you're in a school environment where, from day one, what's communicated to teachers is that teaching to the test is the ONLY thing, well then you're at KIPP. On some level this is understandable as testing determines so much at charter schools like KIPP from our enrollment to our ability to woo private funders to the very renewal of our charter with the state of Arkansas. However, I cannot help but shake my philosophical belief that I have more important life skills to teach my students than finding equivalent fractions and answering multiple choice items using process of elimination.

In any event, our big state test in Arkansas is called the ACTAAP or the Benchmark Exam. KIPP Delta in Helena has some of the highest test scores in the state at the middle school and high school levels. Last year, 94% of our 7th graders at KIPP Delta scored proficient or advanced on the mathematics Benchmark Exam compared to 66% of 7th graders statewide and only 33% of students in Helena-West Helena's regular public school system. What makes this even more remarkable to many is that our school is 99% Black, 99% free/reduced lunch, and in the heart of dilapidated downtown Helena close by local housing projects, gang territory, drugs, and prostitution. Last year's 7th grade math teacher who got these results was so successful that she has been given the green light to found her own school which will be opening in Blytheville, Arkansas in the fall of 2010 as a new KIPP middle school. She's only a year older than me. The venerable 7th grade math slot was thus available when I applied to KIPP this past spring and who teaches this course with the districtwide spotlight on it now?: me. The Black, hood guy from Harvard with two years of (social studies) teaching experience who's a few credits away from a master's degree in education.

Anyway, to my success story. In preparation for the end-of-the-year Benchmark Exam we take practice Benchmark Exams every month. We chart the progress of our students and use the practice Benchmark Exams to target particular students and skills for remediation and re-teaching. Results are scrutinized for hours on end at the individual, school, and district levels. It is highly nerve-wrecking to see where your students are at month-by-month and to know that the results will be known almost immediately by your peers and superiors and reflect your quality as a teacher. Lovely. In any event, the first practice Benchmark Exam we took was in late September. We took a second one two weeks ago in late October and although the success or failure of my students on the September exam could largely be attributed to what my students came into 7th grade knowing, my school director was clear in communicating that the October exam's results would be all my own.

Much to my surprise and the surprise of many a colleague, I'm sure, not only did my students' scores increase from the first to the second practice Benchmark Exam but these were the only scores that increased in any grade level, in any subject area at the entire school. Fifth, sixth, and eighth grade math scores went down. Fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grade literacy scores went down. Fifth, sixth, seventh, and eight grade reading scores went down. Fifth and seventh grade science scores went down (we don't do sixth and eighth grade science testing). ONLY 7TH GRADE MATH SCORES WENT UP!!! I was elated when I saw the numbers displayed on the dry erase board at our faculty meeting the night we stayed at school until 10 p.m. grading exams and inputting results on our district network for more scrutiny. When looking at the individual students and their performances from the first to the second practice Benchmark Exam, I also noticed that most of the students whose scores increased were taught by me and not by the more experienced and better respected 8th grade math teacher who takes 15 of my 7th graders into his algebra class each day.

That's wassup. Right? 

Next school year (2009-2010) I'll be teaching at the KIPP Delta College Preparatory School based in Helena, Arkansas. After two years of teaching at Humphreys County High School I decided that I needed a change. I fully think that KIPP will be a good fit for me since in Humphreys County I often felt like like the outcast OCD teacher working 12-hour days, actually analyzing test data (or even grading tests...I've been laughed at by colleagues for even grading tests or classwork on a number of occassions) and targeting special skills for improvement, and trying unconvential things in the classroom beyond the standard worksheet/comprehension questions classwork and homework model. At KIPP Delta, everybody's like that. At least seemingly.

I'll be teaching two sections of 7th grade social studies in addition to one section of high school journalism. I'll be based at KIPP's middle school under a school director (principal, essentially) who definitely seems like someone who has a potent mixture respect and reverence amongst teachers, staff, and students alike as well as a heartfelt connection to his job coupled with know-how of what everyone under his leadership should be doing to give students the best education posssible. I'll be sending off my signed offer letter today or tomorrow and one part of it that made me a little nervous reads:

                                     "...KIPP Delta may terminate your employment at any time, without
                                      notice, and...you may similarly terminate your employment with KIPP
                                      Delta at any time."

Not that I plan on getting fired from KIPP or that I plan to quit mid-year but since all KIPP schools operate as charter schools seeing the often talked about flexibility that charter school leaders enjoy in black-and-white on something I'm signing is a little scary. When I visited KIPP Delta last Thursday all of the teachers seemed to be enjoying their job, all of the students seemed to want to be there, and academic activities were going on in every classroom I entered. Mind you, it was the LAST DAY. I thought about the differences between the last day there and the last days of school at my alma mater, Trenton High, and how essentially the last three weeks of school attendance would drop below 25% and the last few days of school easily less than 100 students (out of nearly 3,000) would be in attendance. Even at Humphreys County High most students essentially had a free day the last day as most teachers shunned the school's exam schedule and had already given their exams earlier in the week or prior as oppose to on the last two days of school as directed. These were only a few of the differences I noticed.

Another differences I noticed on my visit included how respectful students seemed towards adults and each other. The KIPP motto of "work hard, be nice" seemed in effect all around. Additionally, every student was in uniform (including shirts tucked in and nothing on their body or head that shouldn't be). I can't tell you how much of a problems our uniform policy (more like "suggestions") are at Humphreys County High and how so many of our faculty meetings turn into griping sessions about something needing to be done about students coming to school out of uniform. It may seem minor but students coming to school out of uniform (very often purposely to dress similar to a friend, family member, or signficant other...or just to see what a teacher or administrator will do on THAT day) undermines the concept of having standards, whether behavioral or academic, at school. When this dies down we are on the road to destruction as students know what they can get away with an develop precedents to cite in the old "well, last week ____ didn't wear his or her uniform" that teachers and administrators rarely prevail against.

I'm sure that for now I'm in my honeymoon phase with KIPP and that in time I will develop a more holistic and, potentially (at least in part), critical perspective on the school but I'm happy where I'm at now. Further evidence that KIPP Delta is a real school was revealed when I called my school director yesterday to accept his offer of employment and he started listing things that I should do, documents that I should expect through postal mail, and other things that I should be mindful of immediately. He also told me that he'd need to have weekly, half-hour long phone meetings with me even though I was at home in New Jersey and the first one is today in about...nine minutes. Thus, I will have to cut this post off here and edit it/spice it up later. 'Til then, comrades!

Today, I attended my younger brother David's graduation from The Lawrenceville School. I haven't been to a high school graduation in quite some time. Both of my years at Humphreys County High School I have not attended the graduation ceremony due to my ardent belief that the majority of students who were to have diplomas conferred on them were undeserving. In part through fault of their own, though more egregiously through the fault of the adults around them charged with their educational nurturing and intellectual development. Myself included, at times. Regrettably.

The Lawrenceville School is quite the educational institution. An elite, northeastern U.S. boarding school where my little brother's schoolmates include the family members of royalty, comedic icons, corporate titans, and others. The campus is laid out over 800 acres of prime suburban real estate in beautiful Mercer County (my county!) and Lawrenceville is one of the top feeder schools for the venerable Princeton University just a 10 minute drive up Route 206 past the governor's mansion, Drumthwacket. Students at Lawrenceville enjoy the benefits of a first-rate education fed from an endowment of over $200 million. I can recall conversations with my little brother where I remarked with awe that he should appreciate going to a school such as Lawrenceville where students who are barely teenagers can choose from a wide swath of courses in departments ranging from the staples of History and Mathematics to the specialties of Visual Arts and Religion & Philosophy. It is to be enjoyed, definitely.

The Lawrenceville School

Whenever I visit a school such as Lawrenceville I get reminded of the benefits that accrue from exposure to such a cast of schoolmates, instructors, and administrators who are in touch with the very levers of power of our world. I get reminded that many of the students David went to school with these past years were very different than students I attended high school with less than 10 miles away in inner-city Trenton at Trenton Central High School. For instance, the first student who was honored had a good five minutes of verbal praise heaped on her academic performance, community leadership, and relentless selflessness by the school's headmaster before receiving the first graduation prize of the morning. Another young lady who was honored established an award for a faculty member on campus, led three Hurricane Katrina relief trips, and had over 600 hours of community service under her belt in addition to being in the running for the school's valedictorian. Finally, the valedictorian at The Lawrenceville School was a remarkable young man who amassed 24 A+'s while at Lawrenceville along with several A's and one, lone, embarrassing A-. Similar to what I was inculcated with after I escaped my desperation in Trenton to the luxuries of Harvard, students here are told from Day 1 that they will one day run the world. Surely, this is a scary prospect for students at 13 and 14 just as it was for me at 18. However, tis true.

In thinking of what students at The Lawrenceville School are being set up for I cannot escape looking at students on the other side of the meritocratic coin. Students who are not receiving first-rate educations that carry a price tag of over $120,000 over four years. Students who do not attend schools with students of diverse racial, socioeconomic, and geographic backgrounds. Students whose campus is full of cracking concrete, cramped classrooms, and misfunded (not underfunded, mind you) facilities in the middle of "nowhere." These students are those who I teach with the Mississippi Teacher Corps. At best, a chunk of the students I teach will get local service industry jobs at small restaurants, catfish plants, or the supermarket. A few will become the top dogs in Humphreys County as teachers or will conjure up the money and determination to leave Humphreys County as so many of them seem to want so badly. Most, however, will join the ranks of the baby mama's and deadbeat dads who drink alcohol more than water and party more than they read changing little of their educational level, socioeconomic status, or weekly habits from the time they're 15 until they're 50.

I am a firm believer that there has to be some way to reconcile these two dichotomies. I'm not sure if I've found the remedy exactly but there is an interesting prospect on deck. More on Tuesday....