Tuesday, May 12, 2009

KIPP v. Promise Academy

OK, maybe I'm underplaying the difference between the Promise Academy and KIPP.

James Forman Jr.:

During Promise Academy’s darkest days, Canada’s board kept pressing him to turn the school over to an outside group—the Knowledge is Power Program, or KIPP. Canada did not relish the prospect. According to Tough, Canada saw KIPP as operating a “dueling model.” KIPP, Canada thought, did not seek out the most troubled students. Moreover, its goal was to take those kids who could survive its strict program and lift them out of a troubled community, whereas Canada saw the school as part of the larger community and wanted to transform them both.

The Forman piece as a whole is highly recommended.

2 comments:

Bill Kerr said...

Thank you for this link, the information and discussion about the problem of scaling is important too

I admire the work of Canada as described in this article

Tom Hoffman said...

I admire Canada's work too. It is just used rhetorically in some weird ways, and I don't like some of his friends.