Halfway through an otherwise strong article about Bill Gates’ renewed focus on education reform in Newsweek, Jonathan Alter writes with sublime confidence that ”the challenge is not to find what works for at-risk kids—we know that by now—but how to replicate it.”
In the time it took me to gather up my teeth, several of which were jarred loose when my jaw hit the floor, Mike Petrilli had already set Alter straight over at Flypaper.
Sure, this is true in the simplest sense. KIPP works. Achievement First works. Cristo Rey works. (Read all about it in David Whitman’s recent Fordham book on “paternalistic” schools.) But replicating these schools 1,000 or 10,000-fold is more than just a challenge. It might be impossible. Writing in the Gadfly a few weeks ago, Steven Wilson made the very good point that these “no excuses” schools tend to hire graduates from America’s top universities and work them to death. Neither part of that equation is “scalable.” What we need is a school model that gets great results with mere mortals. No one has cracked that nut yet.
True that.
Also, it’s not at all clear that the “no excuses” schools will work for ALL disadvantaged kids. The kids who do well at a KIPP or a Cristo Rey or MATCH Charter in Boston are those who are willing to put in the effort required. While I believe that many more kids will rise to the challenge of high expectations than the critics of these types of schools say, it’s almost certainly less than 100%.
So the real question is what (if anything) is going to work for the “stubborn cases”.
Comment by Crimson Wife — December 8, 2008 @ 8:17 pm
I agree with Crimson Wife. KIPP works well for many students, but attrition rates suggest that KIPP schools are not THE solution to the urban education challenge. To scale up such solutions, we have to address more than just the human capital problem.
Comment by Claus — December 9, 2008 @ 7:51 am
And let’s not forget that KIPP has a large selection bias problem so it’s premature to say that KIPP “works” at this point.
Comment by KDeRosa — December 9, 2008 @ 9:34 am