KENNETH MCGREGOR, AT his previous school, had been like many bright children. He had been considered a problem, not an asset. He sensed the fear and hostility and reacted negatively, exacerbating the cycle of bad behavior. Teachers at his old school had not given him anything very difficult to do, for fear of inciting a bad mood. He got by on little work, which led him to lose respect for the routine of going to school each day, which made him misbehave even more.
It took Kenneth some time to grow accustomed to his change of circumstances at KIPP. Eventually he realized that the hard work he was getting at KIPP was not another annoying school chore but a sign of respect. These people, as irksome as they were with their demands and tough talk, cared about him, just as his mother did when she tied him up with all her rules.
He still got into trouble. For instance, he was denied the trip to Utah at the end of sixth grade.
Feinberg and the other teachers, inspired by the Roald Dahl book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, introduced the concept of the Golden Ticket. Each April they announced who was going to go on the trip to D.C., or Utah, or New York, whatever the field lesson destination was for that class. Feinberg presented each lucky student a Golden Ticket, just like the children in the book who got to visit the chocolate factory. At KIPP Houston, the ticket was a yellow sheet of paper with the trip details and a permission slip printed on it.
At the ceremony, Feinberg enumerated the responsibilities that came with a Golden Ticket. There was, for instance, the rule named after a student in the first year of KIPP at Askew: Luis had received his Golden Ticket but lost his chance to go to Washington, D.C., when he stole candy from the backpack of one of his classmates. He was barred from the trip only twelve hours before the plane took off. Acts had consequences, Feinberg said, different consequences depending on the circumstances. If you did something bad in September, you would probably go on the Porch, and your parents would be called to the school. But after a few weeks, you could earn back the lost trust and return to the team. Life would again be full of possibilities.
“But remember Luis,” Feinberg said, raising his voice. “He got a Golden Ticket and he decided to do a crazy screwup. No one is perfect, but there is no time to make up for it and re-earn our trust if you do something like that this close to the trip. So I am not saying you have to be a perfect human being, but I am saying that for the next month before the trip, on the majority of things, you do have to be perfect. And if you’re not perfect, you could still lose this Golden Ticket. Capisce?”
Nonetheless, the Luis rule did in Kenneth McGregor. In 1998, he was among ten members of the sixth grade who met unsupervised in one of the back rooms at Wesleyan and played a kissing game. It was G-rated, but it was still a gross violation of the rules. Feinberg met with the group in a classroom and delivered the bad news. He was depressed that he had to say this to children he loved, especially Kenneth. “You are not going to be able to re-earn our trust by May sixteenth to go to Utah, so you have lost the Utah trip. It is not necessarily because of the kissing game, but because of when you did it. There is just no time left to re-earn our trust.”
Kenneth bounced back. He made both the seventh- and eighth-grade trips. He continued to excel as a student and a person. His seventh-grade basketball team won nearly every game. He received a full scholarship to Strake Jesuit College Preparatory in Houston.
At graduation, Feinberg made him and his mother a promise. Feinberg still remembered how he’d felt when Kenneth missed the Utahtrip. He said he would make sure, given the record that Kenneth compiled at KIPP, that he would get a free trip to Utah someday. “Don’t worry,” Feinberg said. “Sometime in high school or college you are going to come back and you are going to chaperone a group with me and go to Utah.”