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Saturday, May 9, 2015

Jersey Jazzman: The KIPP Propaganda Machine and Its Willing Saps In the Media

Jersey Jazzman: The KIPP Propaganda Machine and Its Willing Saps In the Media:

The KIPP Propaganda Machine and Its Willing Saps In the Media


UPDATE: Bruce was writing about this exchange as I was. Go read what he says, then come back. Much more to come.


Tomorrow morning, if you pick up a copy of the Star-Ledger (chances are, you won't), you will see a big, fat, wet kiss to the KIPP/TEAM charter schools in Newark, right on the front of the "Perspective" section. The piece went on-line a few hours ago; you can comment if you would like...

But listen to this story before you do:

Over a month ago, I got an email from Diane Ravitch, the country's best known advocate for public education and most prominent critic of corporate-style education "reform." Diane cc'd it to me and Bruce Baker, a professor of education policy at Rutgers and my advisor in the PhD program there.

It seems that Julie O'Connor, the author of the Star-Ledger's piece, was looking for comments about KIPP/TEAM. Given Diane's stature and her well-known skepticism about charter schools, it's clear that O'Connor was looking for a contrary point of view.

Diane added a few remarks, but she also referred O'Connor to Bruce and me, knowing we've done scads of work on Newark's charters: see herehereherehereherehereherehereherehereherehereherehere, and here (and that's just for starters).

Bruce and I then began an exchange with O'Connor, which I have reposted, in its entirety, below. Bruce did the reconstruction, and I added my original graphs.

Understand that Bruce is one of the busiest people I know, and I teach full-time while working on my doctorate. Nonetheless, we took a considerable amount of our time to explain, in great detail, why a simple "doing more with less" framework (yes, that is an exact quote from the piece) is far too simplistic and misleading when it comes to evaluating KIPP/TEAM.

You are welcome to come to your own conclusions based on this exchange. Here are mine:

- It's clear O'Connor was in the tank for KIPP/TEAM from the start. Several times, especially in response to Bruce, she either doesn't understand -- or chooses not to understand -- what we are saying. Several times, Bruce refers O'Connor to his blog posts; they are quite clear in their methodologies and sources, but it's as if O'Connor never even read them.

- KIPP/TEAM is feeding O'Connor talking points. She keeps returning to the same arguments in her exchange with us -- and these are the arguments that make it into the article. Over and over, she asks Bruce or me to rebut claims KIPP/TEAM is making, rather
- See more at: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-kipp-propaganda-machine-and-its.html