Three over coffee.
Chicago got hit by its first big snow storm this week. Three inches on the ground. Today started out sunny and cold. I started with a latte and a bagel at Peets.
The news of the split in Washington between the generals and the intelligence community on the one side who are not anxious for a war with Iran, and the Cheney-cons on the other, who are itching for WW3, dominates the morning’s political talk.
- The KIPP apologists start lining up.
When the story broke in the NY Post about KIPP charter schools sending their staff people to (air quote) staff development in the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic, I just figured it was a bad PR mistake and they would back off of it quickly. And they have.
Eduwonkette makes a similar point.
But the KIPP apologists have decided this practice is actually worth defending. For example Joanne Jacobs:
I agree with Alexander Russo and Inside Schools: KIPP teachers work very long hours during the school year. If the school chooses to reward them with a trip to the Bahamas or the Dominican Republic, what’s the harm? It probably creates more teacher bonding than handing them a bonus check at the end of the year.
Work long hours (who doesn’t?). Rewards (you mean material rewards?). Bonus checks at the end of the year (you’ve got to be kidding!)? When was the last time you people were in a regular public school?
UPDATE: The claim by these apologists that the trips were paid for by private donations is challenged by a state audit that could find no documentation for where the money came from.
According to NYC Educator (although I wish he would have used a different graphic. The one of the Mexican from Treasure of Sierra Madre is offensive, at least to me):
KIPPsters claim donated private funds were used for the overseas staff development trips but according to the report “auditors could not determine if this was the case because donated funds were not accounted for separately from state aid.”
UPDATE: KIPP-Gate. The blog San Francisco Schools reports that the boozing staff development trips to exotic foreign locations are not isolated to NY. In SF, they went to Cancun. Ah yes. And all they wanted was to start some charter schools that will help make a better world.
My butt.
- DFER brings back E.D. Hirsch. Why?
E.D. Hirsch is the man who in the 80’s popularized the dead, white, male canon. He provided us with what every so-called educated person needed to know in his massively publicized books. Now he has been brought back by your friends atDFER.
- The storm ain’t over.
A NY Times article this week provides one more story about how Katrina still destroys lives on the Gulf Coast.
At least 46,600 children along the Gulf Coast are still struggling with mental health problems and other serious aftereffects of 2005 hurricanes, according to a new study by the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and the Children’s Health Fund.Many of these children are performing poorly in school and have limited access to medical care, according to the study, which combines government statistics with data collected by a group of researchers that has been closely following about 1,250 families displaced by the storm.
