Work Hard. Be Nice.: How Two Inspired Teachers Created the Most Promising Schools in America
by Jay Mathews
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jay MathewsEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-01-20
ISBN: 1565125169
Number of pages: 329
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Book Reviews of Work Hard. Be Nice.: How Two Inspired Teachers Created the Most Promising Schools in America
Book Review: Okay, but it could have been better
Summary: 3 Stars
I'm sad to say that it was somewhat frustrating to read Mr. Matthews's account of the start of KIPP, the Knowledge is Power Program. This is not only because KIPP is one of the most exciting and promising developments in urban education for the last few decades, but also because Mr. Matthews, an education reporter for the Washington Post, is one of the most experienced and highly regarded education writers in the nation. With such a combination of a great story and a talented education beat writer, what went wrong? For me, it is the choices Mr. Matthews makes or doesn't make. I don't think he knows what he wants the story to be about. He spends a lot of time writing about the founders of the program, two Teach for America and Ivy school alumni, Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin, who turn their ideas and experience on how to educate disadvantaged urban children into KIPP. One of the best things about the book is how these two education rebels created a school system that works by challenging nearly all the rules of districts, administrators and teachers about what "should" work but rarely does. But then Matthews spends time on the backgrounds and lives of teachers who influenced Feinberg and Levin, Harriet Ball and Rafe Esquith, two teachers who have done amazing things in the classroom and picked up awards and recognition for their innovative methods to reach struggling inner-city kids ("Work Hard Be Nice" is actually a motto from Esquith that he drills into the heads of his students along with goals such as graduating from college). While Ball and Esquith deserve recognition for their influence on Feinberg and Levin, so much time is devoted to both teachers, particularly Ball, that I wondered at times why so much of the book was about her. Equally difficult in reading this book, was how Mr. Matthews jumped around to tell the stories of the various children who were influenced by KIPP throughout the years, particularly the early years when Feinberg and Levin team taught at the first KIPP schools in Houston and New York City. Mr. Matthews makes poor choices, in my opinion, to focus on the social and romantic lives of students and teachers so that many times I was wondering why such information was included. It was distracting. I'm afraid there was so much jumping between this kid's story and that kid, that I never really got connected and absorbed in the stories. Sad to say, but the kids were interchangeable for me. I truly wish Mr. Matthews would have made a decision to focus on one aspect of KIPP instead of telling all the little bits and pieces of it. To me, it feels like he was so excited by the subject he "emptied" everything he gathered in his reporter's notebook through the years on KIPP into one story. It's too bad because I saw a talk by the author here in Kansas City and heard many speakers in addition to the author speak passionately about the success KIPP was having and how different KIPP schools are from the many failing inner-city schools. If you want insights and explanation of why KIPP works, this isn't the book for you. The author is more interested in telling an entertaining story than he is in documenting why KIPP works to readers who have not observed KIPP first-hand as he has. This book isn't bad or poorly written, but there is such a mishmash of information and stories presented here that, for me, it was difficult to understand the passion that drove Feinberg and Levin and the many others who have worked with the program. Finally, let me say a word about the lack of footnotes, citations and an explanation of reporting methods that is a glaring weakness of this book. The book reads as if it were a novel, and I suppose Mr. Matthews and his editors were going for this type of read. While it is entertaining and even breezy, I kept wondering if Mr. Matthews observed many of the things he wrote about in scene after scene, jumping from year to year and decade to deacde, or if it was told to him. Was he in the classroom when he was writing about a particular child or a teacher, or was he simply "recreating" a scene based on interviews? To many who read this book, the answer will be, "Who cares?" But I had a professor in journalism school who said the credibility of a nonfiction book is in question if the author is not straight with the reader about how he or she obtained the information. This book is supposedly a real story about true events and places that happened, but the author, who probably did not observe or witness directly most of the things he writes about here, tells the story as if he were there observing it all and telling us about it first hand. He also fails to provide any observances or insights as he writes, except toward the end of the book when he calls KIPP the most promising education initiative he's seen. Why not use more quotes from the interviews he did and attribute those "scenes" to the people who were actually there to observe what happened? Why not disclose to the reader when you, the reporter, were there to actually observe and write about something? Why does he wait until the end of the book to share some of his insights into what makes KIPP work? Well, then the book would read more like a nonfiction book instead of a novel, but I think Mr. Matthews is being somewhat dishonest in the way he tells the story of KIPP as if he were there to observe it all first hand. Mr. Matthews never tells us where his reporting ends and the observations and insights of others begins and that I believe is a major failure of the book, although Mr. Matthews does make a cursory note at the end of the book about all the time he spent observing KIPP and speaking with the people he writes about. But to me that is not enough when he has chosen to tell the story as if he observed it all himself. This book is 328 pages long, but it is not until page 285 that Mr. Matthews comments on a KIPP classroom that he observed directly. Why doesn't he explain his reporting methods and insights sooner? How many KIPP classes did he observe? Again, by writing this book as a novel, Mr. Matthews has disguised some of the messy details of his reporting, but I also believe in doing so he undercuts the effectiveness of the book. It is not until Chapter 25 on page 302 that Mr. Matthews takes us into a KIPP classroom where he shows us why Levin is such a good teacher and why perhaps KIPP can be so successful with disadvantaged kids. It's a good chapter, but why does it come so late in the book? There is so much time spent on the personal lives and romances and social details and family dramas of so many characters that I never get a good idea of what makes KIPP work until Chapter 25 deep into the book. It's a mystery to me why Mr. Matthews focused on so many little details that seemed trivial while he didn't devote more of his book to showing us what makes KIPP work. Finally, Mr. Matthews fails to discuss the hard data on why KIPP works. In one of the last chapters, he glosses over lots of hard data that boils down to "KIPP kids get higher test scores," and he does touch on some critics of KIPP, but he fails to provide any documentation or sourcing so that interested readers can see where he obtained his information or where to go for more information. I guess we are just supposed to google it or trust one of the most respected education reporters in America and leave it at that. Frankly, if I were teaching a sixth grade English class on term papers, I would make a student who turned in a report on KIPP without any source notes or citations of where he got his information go back and include the information before I gave a passing grade. I got the sense that KIPP was doing something great for urban education in America from reading this book, I just didn't get a real good understanding of how and why that is the case. Hopefully Mr. Matthews in a future edition or another writer will be able to tell the story KIPP deserves someday. In the meantime, if you really want to see what KIPP is doing, skip this book and volunteer at a KIPP school.
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Summary of Work Hard. Be Nice.: How Two Inspired Teachers Created the Most Promising Schools in America
When Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin signed up for Teach for America right after college and found themselves utter failures in the classroom, they vowed to remake themselves into superior educators. They did that?and more. In their early twenties, by sheer force of talent and determination never to take no for an answer, they created a wildly successful fifth-grade experience that would grow into the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), which today includes sixty-six schools in nineteen states and the District of Columbia.KIPP schools incorporate what Feinberg and Levin learned from America's best, most charismatic teachers: lessons need to be lively; school days need to be longer (the KIPP day is nine and a half hours); the completion of homework has to be sacrosanct (KIPP teachers are available by telephone day and night). Chants, songs, and slogans such as "Work hard, be nice" energize the program. Illuminating the ups and downs of the KIPP founders and their students, Mathews gives us something quite rare: a hopeful book about education.
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