KIPP vs. Feinberg: Battle of the Moral Sewer Dwellers
In the early days of KIPP, Feinberg is remembered as the hothead without boundaries who threw a TV through a plate glass window at KIPP Houston--the same reckless wild man who would load KIPP students into an unventilated U-Haul trailer for a "field lesson" across town.
"Whatever it takes" was "Cage-Buster" Feinberg's mantra, and he and David Levin believed that, as KIPP's top leaders, they should model the aggressive, hyper-macho, and abusive "let the stallions run" style of leadership for their growing and clueless regiment of "school leaders." No holds barred, take no prisoners, let the rules be damned.
Who knows if their schooling "philosophy" of reckless abandon contributed to Feinberg's eventual bust for sexual harassment of two KIPP employees, sexual abuse of a middle school student, and another charge vaguely referred to as “repeatedly violat[ing] KIPP’s technology usage policies.”
Sexting? Porno? Who knows what the "cage-buster" was up to?
When it became obvious to KIPP in 2017 that Feinberg's behavior could be the source of a major scandal that could damage the brand and, thus, jeopardize the flow of hundreds of millions of federal and private dollars to KIPP, KIPP launched its own very hush-hush investigation into allegations that Feinberg had sexually assaulted a middle student some years before. That was in April 2017. See documents here.
On September 7, 2017, KIPP noticed Feinberg that he was off the hook, while entirely downplayed the CONTINUE READING: Schools Matter: KIPP vs. Feinberg: Battle of the Moral Sewer Dwellers
