KIPP SoCal Public Schools reviews

I am a seasoned and effective educator who believes all kids can learn and be effective leaders in their community. First, the extended school day doesn’t seem to be helping to achieve the goals - all the schools that I researched are either achieving the same or BELOW what their neighborhood schools are able to do in 3 less hours. At the base, KIPP is creating a culture of unsafe students by not holding them to true life consequences. At the worst, they are establishing a school to prison pipeline for black and brown kids where there are no expectations or consequences. The admin consistently put blame on teachers, who, without support, are failing to establish safe environments for students. I watched teachers yell at the top of their lungs (so uncomfortable!) to get students to quiet down, and still students didn’t do anything to stop because the consequence doesn’t balance the action. I previously worked in a lockdown school, but at this school I had students throw chairs, hit others, engage in fights, threaten teachers and more, all without even a call home to parents. On top of all that, staff (who are generally very new teachers, working on intern credentials or TFAs without credentials) know that the workplace is unsafe and ineffective saying repeatedly, Welcome to KIPP.

All the responsibility of student behavior is placed on teachers with little to no admin support. The way they see it is teacher's are responsible for class culture so if students are continuously violent and/or misbehave with a sub then the teacher's culture is "just not strong enough". The amount of paperwork placed on teachers is unrealistic especially given we are in front of children 8 hours a day when most schools alot 6. There's an "inclusion model" so students who truly need one-on one support are left behind because they are placed in class with everyone else. Lastly, procedures and expectations change almost weekly and it's impossible to keep up or feel like you've succeeded.