Free Press –
Nicole Pappas & the Kaplan Organization
Dear Friends,
Good morning. A few weeks ago, I saw Nicole Pappas at her father’s restaurant in downtown Quakertown. Sunday’s is a fun eatery because it has good food, plus Sunday Pappas has lots of thoughts to share with his customers. Nicole was on Christmas break from St. Joseph University where she is a senior.
She told me that she had a part time job with the Kaplan organization. Kaplan prepares students for law school, medical school, the SATs and any test associated with education. The Kaplan organization pays her $17 per hour to teach a Philadelphia charter school’s students how to take the Pennsylvania Standardized State Assessment (PSSA) exam.
The Master Charter School advertises its mission: “Take charge of your education.” The school understands that its success is tied to how well its students fare on the PSSA’s. Its enrollment and state funding depend upon how well its students are ranked so it's happy to pay Kaplan’s $24,000 fee. The Kaplan method has put those students in the 92 percentile of proficiency.
“That’s a small price to pay,” Nicole began. She has 24 students and drills them twice each week for 90 minutes after school. The classes are mandatory. The students receive four manuals, each one- inch thick containing 193 pages. Two prepare them for the math exam, two for the verbal exam.
Kaplan pays for the rights to previous PSSA tests. Nicole told me that there are 12 units, which prepare the students for proficiency. She’s very critical of the emphasis placed on PSSA testing. “We’re teaching students how to take a test…not what an academic course is about,” Nicole continued. “Six months from now, those kids won’t remember anything.”
Nicole says that the children are given a diagnostic exam before the Kaplan course begins. “How do you get to the eleventh grade saying, ‘They is,’ ” she wonders? “The students scored in the 30 to 40 percent range before they began the Kaplan 12-week- program. Four weeks later, they’re in the 85 percent range in both math and verbal.”
To work for
the Kaplan organization, an instructor must be in the top 99th
percentile. When Nicole took her
Having Kaplan prepare the charter school kids to take the PSSA’s is a bad idea, Nicole says. “It makes a mockery of education,” she added. “You’re teaching to excel in taking a test. It’s not long-term learning.
“The band-aid approach is not the right way,” Nicole said. “You have to instill an understanding and a love for learning in the child.”
I asked her whether graduating students after the tenth grade would make more sense? I read an article recently about that concept. Proponents claim that separating academic skills after the tenth grade would better prepare students for college.
Nicole doesn’t like the idea.
“That’s a bad idea because it takes opportunities away from students who’ve been failed by the school system,” she said. “The average kid would be pigeon holed.” But she’s quick to criticize the “No Child Left Behind” program mandated by the federal government. “It holds everybody back to the level of the slowest learner,” Nicole said.
She gave me two opposing points of view when I told her that I was a proponent of two years of compulsory service for every young man and woman after high school…no exception. Kids could either choose military service or work in another branch of the federal government.
What’s right about this, I wondered?
“Students would have a transition period in which they are able to experience the real world and the responsibilities that will be expected of them,” Nicole answered. “On the other hand, compulsory service would force every child to take two years from the progress that they could be making in their personal goals.”
“What ideas do you have for the Pennsylvania Secretary of Education,” I asked?
“Public schools should have proficiency exams in every grade, every year,” she replied. “If you don’t pass, you don’t move on. And there needs to be standardization in education without making it something that you simply teach to the test. Every teacher has to learn to understand what produces long-term learning.
“In a perfect world, a teacher wouldn’t have to worry about paying $125,000 back for his college education. We could run it like physicians do their residencies. Student teachers would not be paid as much in the beginning but they’d have their education paid for.
“But no school can do its work unless there are parents who care about their children and the neighborhoods are safe,” she concluded.
Nicole Pappas is a very wise young woman. She’d make a fine teacher too.
Sincerely,
Charles Meredith