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Monday, July 18, 2016

Schools Matter: Understanding KIPP Model Charter Schools, Part 1

Schools Matter: Understanding KIPP Model Charter Schools, Part 1:

Understanding KIPP Model Charter Schools, Part 1


In March I posted some disturbing new research findings on the caustic disciplining of students within corporate charter schools. With that new information, I also posted the Preface of my book, Work Hard, Be Hard..., which provides an insider's perspective and accompanying analysis of the KIPP Model charter school phenomenon that has been responsible for the most profitable educational eugenics program in American history.

In the coming weeks I will be posting chapters from the book.  Today I offer the Introduction and Chapter 1. 

If you are considering a job in a charter school, or if you know someone who is considering working in a charter school, or if you are thinking about enrolling a child in a charter school, please read and share before making that decision.

Introduction: “Negro Problems” and Philanthropic Solutions

The past is never dead.  It’s not even past.  –William Faulkner (1951)

Shortly after the end the Civil War, a decommissioned Yankee general who was also the son of a former missionary superintendent for the Hawaiian plantation schools, opened the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Hampton, Virginia.  When named as Hampton's first superintendent in 1868, Samuel Chapman Armstrong’s mission was to rigorously indoctrinate young freedmen to become workers and teachers who would fan out across the South to teach basic literacy to black children and to instill a lifelong devotion to the “dignity of labor” (Anderson, 1988, p. 34).
Armstrong, along with a couple of male assistant administrators and a faculty comprised of white Schools Matter: Understanding KIPP Model Charter Schools, Part 1: