Post by Moses on Mar 15, 2005 18:37:40 GMT -5
washingtonpost.com
School of Hard Choices
In the KIPP Academy Program, It's Motivation That's Fundamental
By Jay Mathews
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 24, 2004; Page C01
NEW YORK
When Mike Feinberg, then a recent University of Pennsylvania graduate, and Dave Levin, just out of Yale, met at a 1992 summer teacher training institute in Los Angeles, they were typical of young people signing up for the Teach for America program -- smart, idealistic, confident. That summer they spent as much time playing basketball as they did learning how to handle a classroom. Yet when they got into Levin's rotting gray Taurus, loaded with soft drinks and Doritos, and headed for their new jobs in Houston, they thought they had all the solutions to the problems of educating low-income kids, and even outlined a grand strategy while they drove through the Mojave Desert.
Then they started to teach, and realized they had no idea what they were doing.
Levin's class was in chaos. His tires were slashed in the teachers' parking lot. A student sent to the office for throwing a book at Levin's head returned smiling with a Tootsie Pop. Feinberg, recruited as a bilingual teacher at another elementary school, spoke Spanish so poorly he had to keep asking his students what they were saying, especially one word he kept hearing.
"What does chupa mean?" he finally asked.
"Mr. Feinberg, it means 'suck.' "
"Oh. Thank you."
Most such stories in America end right there. Young educators intending to be classroom heroes discover that they lack the skills and energy and patience. Then they do what their mothers always wanted and apply to grad school.
But this story is different. Levin and Feinberg, more than a decade later, have invented something very rare in American education: a way of teaching low-income children that actually works in 36 public middle schools, producing the largest and fastest learning gains around the country. Even in the District, where most of the educational news has been very bad, the school they established three years ago in Southeast is beating schools in middle-class neighborhoods, and is about to expand as a model for what the poorest Washington schools could do if they paid closer attention to each child's habits of living and learning.
Their method becomes clear during a visit to the KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) Academy New York, where Levin spends most of his time. One day during the most recent school year, he was standing in the aqua-green hallway of the academy's quarters on the fourth floor of a public school in a grimy, unreconstructed corner of the South Bronx, along with five frowning eighth-graders. While their classmates headed out for a day at Central Park, they had to stay behind because they lost points for misbehavior, missed homework and other failings in the incentive system that rules their days.
Levin is 34, tall and curly-haired. He leaned close to whisper words of encouragement into the ear of each disgruntled 13-year-old. He told them, as he had many times before, that they were smart and capable, but they had to focus on what is important. The school motto is "Be nice, work hard." Those who did that not only went on outings to Central Park but had other good things waiting for them.
That old-fashioned motivational blend of the bitter and the sweet has come from nowhere with no establishment support -- barely escaping strangulation at birth -- to capture the attention of school superintendents, policymakers, scholars and the president of the United States.
It is becoming the model that all other attempts to close the achievement gap between rich and poor students must measure themselves against. It is so successful that even affluent Montgomery County, which usually resists departures from its highly rated public school programs, is trying to get KIPP to put a school in one of its low-income neighborhoods.
And in the District, under the direction of Susan Schaeffler, a Feinberg and Levin protege, the public charter KIPP DC: KEY Academy has produced the highest math scores and nearly the highest reading scores in the city. Washington education leaders, such as D.C. Council member Kevin Chavous, embrace KIPP, although school system administrators have not been able so far to find the organization more space.
Schaeffler wants to open two more KIPP middle schools and a KIPP high school in the District in the next three years, in every case with low-income students just like those in the lowest-scoring schools. "I am getting a head start on college," said Shakiera Mosby, an eighth-grader -- or what the school calls a senior -- at the KEY Academy. Evoking the dream of higher education is a KIPP hallmark.
Feinberg, 35, and Levin say they might have given up on teaching that first year in Houston if their egos had not gotten in the way. They were so annoyed by their inability to make headway in their classrooms that they began to devote every waking hour to turning themselves into at least passable teachers. They started visiting students' homes in crowded apartments and little houses, in hopes the parents could help them with discipline.
And right across the hall, they met their savior: a classroom magician named Harriett Ball.
The Teacher
Ball's classes often exploded in songs and chants, and then just as quickly, when she said the word, were silent. Her test scores were very good. Levin spent every spare moment watching her work. After school, he would join Ball for happy hour drinks -- beer for Levin, soda for Ball -- at a little club near the school called King Leo's. They would also get together on weekends at her house or Levin's apartment, with Feinberg joining them. Ball, now a popular consultant to school districts, said they were "very, very hungry" for something that would make them good teachers.
They began to borrow her chants -- such as "Rolling the Sixes" -- using a rhythm irresistible to 10-year-olds:
"Six, 12, 18, 24, 30, 36. And the spider says, 42, 48, 54, 60, 42, 48, 54, 60, 66, 72. How do you do? How do you do?"
The two neophyte teachers kept visiting the homes of their mostly Hispanic and African American students. A child would open the door and then slam it in shock at seeing a teacher. After much whispering and laughter, the door would open again and parents would invite them in.
They would get home about 6 p.m. and religiously watch "Star Trek: The Next Generation" "because in the 25th century, everyone was literate," Feinberg said. "Everyone walked around with this little tricorder, and the 15-year-old was doing nuclear fusion. That was always our escape. Then we would eat dinner."
They would be up until 11 p.m. comparing notes and preparing lessons for the next morning. Gradually, they improved. Each is 6 feet 3, already hard to miss, and they became classroom dynamos, full of games and demands and rules and standards, sweetened with pizza parties, dramatic productions and a year-end trip to the AstroWorld theme park.
Levin became so confident of his progress at Bastian Elementary School that he defied a principal's order to exempt several of his low-scoring Hispanic students from state tests, a popular technique for getting the school's average scores up. Passing the test was the children's only chance to get into a good middle school, and he thought they could do it. When school administrators told the parents to sign a form exempting their children from the test anyway, they declined on instructions from that nice Mr. Levin, which got him on the principal's troublemaker list.
Levin was voted teacher of the year by his school's faculty. Ninety-six percent of his students passed either the math or reading test, and 70 percent passed both. But at the end of the 1993-94 school year he was fired for what his principal called insubordination. It was a bad omen because he and Feinberg were starting the Knowledge Is Power Program that summer for 50 fifth-graders stuffed into one classroom in Feinberg's school, Garcia Elementary.
From the very beginning, homework was crucial. They gave each student the telephone number of their apartment, and told them to call if they had any homework questions. Feinberg said to a student he dropped off at home: "I don't want to hear tomorrow that you didn't understand it. I want to hear from you tonight." They only had one phone line, so they took turns fielding calls, as many as 20 a night. There was no more time for "Star Trek."
They jumped on misbehavior immediately. "We are not drill sergeants, we are not babysitters and we are not behavior correctors," Levin shouted after an early hallway scuffle. "We are teachers, and we're busting our butts to prepare you for Miss Such-and-Such's class in that middle school so that when all hell is breaking loose, you'll be the one who's still learning."
And it worked. At the end of the first year of KIPP, a class in which about 53 percent of the students passed the state fourth-grade tests suddenly had a 96 percent passing rate in fifth-grade math and a 93 percent passing rate in fifth-grade English.
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