What Came First: The Chicken, the Egg or the Altruism of a Charter School CEO?
I only knew two Kip’s ever, one was the real hairy lead singer of Winger and the other was that strange kid in my 8th grade Algebra class. Now there is a new, well somewhat old KIPP in town. Just try and guess what KIPP actually stands for; give it a shot. My three personal favorite KIPP’s, by the way, are: Knee Injury Prevention Program (Sports Medicine), KomiteIndependen Pemantua Pemilu (The Indonesian Independent Committee for Election Monitoring), and lastly Kancelaria Inwestycyjna Property Project (The Polish Law Firm of Proerty Investment Projects in Warsaw). The real KIPP is a noble and damn fine non-profit corporation that wraps itself within a sheath of wholesome goodness. But alas, KIPP is just some cheesy acronym for another publicly supported leech of the charter school movement. KIPP, or Knowledge Is Power Program (see, if that ain’t a bite out of the ‘ole anti-climactic bucket, what is?) has managed to gain such a stronghold in the world of “public education” (get it, b/c they’re like private, but they get public funds – Diggin’ your tax dollars hard at work!?!) due to their very influential friends.
The charter school movement is the final straw, the last nail… No more clichés. Charter schools are the pathway to fully privatizing the public school system, and they have some seriously imperious peeps that fully support their agenda. Now, here’s where we find ourselves mired in one of them there philosophical D-Lemmas, as Hegel would say. Why are there charter schools? Did they arise to service the needs of the disenfranchised? Has the charter school frenzy become a gateway that allows for the corporate toehold into the vast billions of tax dollars used to run the public school system? Does the charter school