Slave Tactics Instituted by Charter School: 100 Fifth Graders in Single Classroom Forced To Sit On Floor For Week To 'Earn' Their Desks

Slavery 3. (Illustration by Cliff James)

You may ask yourself what your reaction would be if your fifth-grader came home every day for the first four days of school to tell you that she sat on the floor without a desk.

The Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) is the largest corporate charter school chain in the U. S, with 141 schools and 50,000 students in 20 states. KIPP was launched in 1994 by David Levin and Michael Feinberg, two former Ivy-Leaguers and Teach for America (TFA) corps members assigned to teach in Houston, where the first KIPP school was created. Since 2000 when KIPP students performed a skit at the Republican National Convention, KIPP has become the poster school model for "no excuses" education, and today it receives hundreds of millions in donations from corporations, corporate foundations, and venture philanthro-capitalists...

Apparently, KIPP sees no irony in requiring the poorest urban children who have received the least in life to earn everything at KIPP, from paychecks for good behavior and working hard, to the KIPP shirt, and, at some KIPPs, even the desks that children must earn their right to sit in for 8 to 10 hours a day.

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