School system tries to send charter kids back to old schools
Fifth-graders are a little young to read the absurdist tales of Franz Kafka. But the students of KIPP Academy Nashville are well on their way to learning the meaning of "Kafkaesque."
Like Josef K in the Central European author's novel The Trial, some of the KIPP kids are watching as powerful figures control their fates in a mysterious manner that the authorities don't feel compelled to explain.
The Metro school system has ordered several pupils at KIPP -- set up in 2005 to bring the academically rigorous Knowledge Is Power Program to children from disadvantaged communities -- to return to the regular public school system immediately, reporting to new schools on Monday, September 25.
System officials have told KIPP and parents that the kids must go to the three schools to which they would normally be assigned because those schools -- Bailey Middle, Gra-Mar Middle and John F. Kennedy Middle -- are no longer "failing" on the basis of their latest standardized test scores. Charter schools are supposed to serve only those children whose assigned schools are "failing."
posted by Whitney Tilson at 5:59 PM
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