When a “Visit” Trumps Expertise and Experience: A New Deal | the becoming radical

When a “Visit” Trumps Expertise and Experience: A New Deal | the becoming radical:

WHEN A “VISIT” TRUMPS EXPERTISE AND EXPERIENCE: A NEW DEAL

I have already addressed the distortions and outright misinformation in a new piece on Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) charter schools. But a few issues raised in this claim of a “softer” side to “no excuses” practices need to be addressed more fully.

I have discovered that “no excuses” advocates now routinely push any critic about whether or not the critic has visited a KIPP school; note this paragraph early in the Education Next piece:

Also not surprisingly, KIPP and other No Excuses schools have no shortage of critics. Furman University education professor P. L. Thomas, who admitted in a recent speech at the University of Arkansas to never having been in a No Excuses charter school, complains in a widely referenced 2012 Daily Kos post that in such schools, “Students are required to use complete sentences at all times, and call female teachers ‘Miss’—with the threat of disciplinary action taken if students fail to comply.” Regarding KIPP in particular, Cambridge College professor and blogger Jim Horn, who