I was reading the Post for news about Johnnie Cochran when my eye caught the link to this article:
Assessing the KIPP Schools -- a New Perspective
When reading it, this paragraph caught my eye:
Some critics (although not Rothstein) have suggested that KIPP's scores have increased so much because they recruit students with the most motivated parents. This seems wrong to me. Those students had those same great parents when they were getting much lower scores back at their regular schools. Their progress would almost certainly deteriorate if all the KIPP schools closed tomorrow and they had to return to low standards and disorganized teaching at their neighborhood schools, no matter how conscientious their parents were.
For some time I have been saying that parents of kids who are under performing are being criticized for their children's performance and the children are also being cirticized for being "anti-intellectual". I thought that some of this criticism may be misplaced because when the children get into private schools, or other schools, many times their grades improve. But the parents are the same and the children are the same. The variable that changes is the school.
So, why is school performance being tied to "anti-intellectualism"?