Are Education Charities and Donors Doing Enough to Improve Schools?

Jim Horn, an education expert, is taking a shot at Teach for America and KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) — and the donors that support them.

In a series on Change.org, Mr. Horn questions these well-known organizations and their approach to helping American public schools.

In part one, he writes that Teach for America, which recruits college graduates and others to work as teachers in inner-city schools, does not train its recruits well enough for the difficult situations they will face. What’s more, he writes it fails to attack the real cause of failing schools: poverty.

“First and foremost, TFA leaves unchallenged the urban reality of schools that are largely or entirely segregated by income and race, preferring instead to focus on interventions that do not challenge the poverty that is the root of test score gaps to begin with,” he writes.

In part two, he writes that the model promoted by Teach for America and KIPP, a network of charter schools, is growing in influence thanks in part to Eli Broad and other wealthy donors.

“The TFA/KIPP phenomenon, of course, would not be possible without the deep pockets of corporate contributors, such as the Broad Foundation, that pump billions into a number of ventures aimed at replacing urban public education with a corporate welfare model,” he writes.

Mr. Horn, who writes his own blog, School Matters, is an associate professor of education at Cambridge College, in Massachusetts. (Readers interested in this topic may also want to read an opinion article in The Chronicle by Marc Tucker, president of the National Center on Education and the Economy, in Washington.)

To be sure, other education experts differ with Mr. Horn’s views.

For example, Jay Mathews, the education writer for The Washington Post, has written extensively on KIPP’s accomplishments and about how Teach for America prepared Michelle A. Rhee for her job as chancellor of the Washington, D.C., public-school system.

What do you think of Mr. Horn’s ideas? Click on the comment button below to share your views.