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Wednesday, October 28, 2015

KIPP Forces 5th Graders to 'Earn' Desks By Sitting On the Floor For a Week

One hundred 10-year-olds spent the first week of school sitting on the floor. What was it they were supposed to have learned?...
KIPP spends a great deal of money promoting its brand of total compliance, segregated charter schools as the “tough love, no excuses” solution for schooling in urban communities disabled by poverty and lack of hope. KIPP and its billionaire supporters contend that we cannot wait for an end to poverty to properly educate the children of the poor. No one I know would disagree with this premise, but everyone I know disagrees with KIPP's conception of what "properly educate" means.
KIPP requires the poorest urban children, those who have received the least in life, to earn everything at KIPP, from paychecks for good behavior and working hard to the very shirts they wear. At some KIPPs, children must even earn their right to sit at a desk (rather than on the floor) for 8 to 10 hours a day.
......... Jim Horn, Schools Matter and Alternet
There were some people on Facebook skeptical of this report.

Watch these videos of Achievement First parents talk about their children sitting on the floor. May not be KIPP but might as well be: https://vimeo.com/30227766, https://vimeo.com/30238788, https://vimeo.com/30266020.

We did these riveting interviews for our movie,

The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman

   due to Leonie Haimson organizing the interview and doing the questioning. I just turned on my camera. I thought we would be there for a few minutes instead of over 2 hours. We were able to use just a bit of the footage in the movie but for me it turned into one of the most powerful statements we made. People in Providence used the footage to help fight  Achievement First.
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2 comments:

  1. AnonymousWednesday, October 28, 2015 at 6:58:00 PM EDT

    All the horrible things you read about KIPP are true. My wife used to work in a KIPP school. Misbehaving kids were put "on bench" which meant that they had to wear their uniform shirts inside out. Kids who were "on bench" were not allowed to talk to anyone and no one was allowed to talk to them. This was just one way that the students were mistreated. This kind of punishment would never fly in a regular district school.

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  2. AnonymousThursday, November 19, 2015 at 8:51:00 PM EST

    I am in the eighth grade and I go to Kipp Gaston College Preparatory. We sit in the cafeteria instead of floors there. We also changed bench from flipping our shirts to just wearing a plain white sweatshirt or shirt. We still are not supposed to talk and do other things but we do because honestly no matter what they say we run the teachers down there. I am currently on bench.

    ReplyDelete

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