Comments on: Could There Really Be a Green Dot America?

By: Robert D. Skeels

Robert D. Skeels — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 04:30:58 +0000

@reg I’ve got some pretty good peer reviewed reports referenced in this essay about your beloved KIPP.

http://rdsathene.blogspot.com/2011/06/opineregress-matthew-yglesias.html

I’m sure that anything that runs counter to your corporate narrative will earn me the some potty mouthed comments you aimed at Caroline. Best of luck serving your corporate overlords.

By: reg

reg — Mon, 11 May 2009 02:53:55 +0000

I got it. You used that same line about KIPP- out of any context of the original article and without any reference – to promote some inferences about Green Dot’s security guards. The full article’s conclusions are quite different than the inference drawn from your lifting a single sentence out of the article – a sentence that wasn’t very good journalistically as originally written.

By: CarolineSF

CarolineSF — Sun, 10 May 2009 23:10:11 +0000

Reg, you’re not getting it. My comment is exactly the same as the quote from an article that KIPP HAS POSTED ON ITS OWN WEBSITE, just in slightly fewer words:

“The tough-love discipline has led some to call KIPP the â€œKids in Prison Program.â€ “

By: reg

reg — Sun, 10 May 2009 22:59:52 +0000

Bullshit – you said “critics call KIPP the ‘Kids In Prison Program’” What does that suggest other than what I assumed, i.e. “prison-like”, because I was…uh…reading carefully the words you used ? The article you linked uses the “some say” locution that I find so irritating and so often in lazy journalism and commentary, but at least in the same paragraph it gives two examples of what “some” might consider over-the-top public shaming – along with the apparent fact that a lot of bad behaviour common in public schools is controlled effectively in KIPP. The conclusion I draw is that KIPP isn’t run like Summerhill, but that it’s offering an effective alternative for lots of kids whose only other choice was truly awful public schools. Oddly enough, I don’t find this disturbing.

By: CarolineSF

CarolineSF — Sun, 10 May 2009 22:04:07 +0000

Please read more carefully, because you waste everyone’s time when you miss so many points.

I didn’t say KIPP schools are run like prisons. I said in passing that some critics refer to KIPP as the “Kids in Prison Program.”

Here’s a quote from an article in the very same San Jose Mercury News and posted on KIPP’s own website:

The tough-love discipline has led some to call KIPP the â€œKids in Prison Program.â€

http://www.kipp.org/08/pressdetail.cfm?a=259

By: reg

reg — Sun, 10 May 2009 20:40:49 +0000

Since you worked as an editor for the SJMN and present yourself as an education activist, I’d like some more substantial reference than “critics say” as evidence that KIPP schools are run like prisons. Or even “kinda, sorta” like prisons. I would hope that as an editor you didn’t let reporters get away with that kind of lame, sock-puppet commentary.

By: CarolineSF

CarolineSF — Sat, 09 May 2009 23:49:37 +0000

SF does mean San Francisco.

My blog post (which is commentary and labeled as such) is based on the info in the New Yorker article, so my conclusions are based on what I read there — except my speculation that the number of tear-gassing incidents has been understated.

By: Celeste Fremon

Celeste Fremon — Sat, 09 May 2009 21:25:00 +0000

Reg, I really enjoyed your detailed responses to the New Yorker story. And, yes, after reading Alexander’s stuff, it seems like exactly the right person is doing a book on Green Dot and the Locke takeover.

Caroline, if you life in Southern California (Or does SF mean San Francisco?), or get down here from time to time, in that you’re clearly someone interested in education policy, I would respectfully suggest that you pay a visit to Locke and take a look around for yourself. Talk to kids. Ask them about the security guards—or whatever. Ask them about the difference with the school then and now.

I think you would find that, based on some of the verbiage in the article, you are drawing conclusions that are not accurate.

Green Dot is not perfect. No system is. But there’s so much about what Steve Barr is doing that is stupendously sane and genuinely effective for the kids Green Dot serves. You’re quite right; the original Green Dot charters are boutique schools. That’s why so many of us have been watching the Locke conversion with such intense interest. Locke, one of the four worst high school’s in the district, is a different animal, a hard core test of Green Dot’s methodology for many reasons, but high among them is the fact that, with Locke, there was no self-selecting into it. Locke had to take every kid.

It is still early days, but so far Green Dot is passing the “test” in a most heartening fashion.

By: reg

reg — Sat, 09 May 2009 20:48:47 +0000

I also have to say that the article linked was not reporting or analysis but surmise, “some say” and snark.

By: reg

reg — Sat, 09 May 2009 20:43:36 +0000

So having gangs run amok was better for the students ? Give me a break…