Ivy Leaguers’ Class for Poor Becomes ‘Platinum’ Charter Schools

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Nuestro Miembro - Fundador el Sr. Rafael Rojas nos ha enviado este interesante articulo sobre  educacion  y posibilidades de alumnos con escasos recursos economicos, puedan continuar sus estudios. Un nuevo aporte de INDECAPI a la comunidad.


Ivy Leaguers’ Class for Poor Becomes ‘Platinum’ Charter Schools

In 1993, Mike Feinberg and Dave
Levin were recent Ivy League graduates teaching fifth graders in
Houston’s inner city. The students were as much as two academic
years behind their middle-class peers.
     A year later, Feinberg and Levin started a classroom that
operated nine hours a day instead of the normal seven, as well
as on some Saturdays and during the summer. Within a year, the
number of students performing at grade level in reading and math
jumped to 90 percent from 50 percent.
     Today the 50-pupil experiment has grown into the biggest
U.S. charter-school operator, with 82 schools for poor and
minority children in 19 states. The Obama administration cites
the Knowledge Is Power Program, as the nonprofit system is
known, as a model of the kind of education reform it hopes to
spawn with $100 billion in stimulus money.
     KIPP has gotten “remarkable results from students,”
Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in an interview. “The
program helps kids “who didn’t really have a good work ethic,
who didn’t have dreams, start to become extraordinarily
successful.”
     In addition to adopting working-world hours -- KIPP says
its students spend 60 percent more time in class than regular
public schools require -- the organization’s founders say they
have been inspired in part by Gap Inc., FedEx Corp. and
Southwest Airlines Co.

                        Commencement Walk

     Adopting Southwest’s emphasis on employee motivation helps
principals keep teachers, students and parents focused on
preparing every child for college, said Feinberg, 41, a
University of Pennsylvania graduate who is head of KIPP’s 15
Houston schools. Yale University alumnus Levin, 39, runs the
system’s six New York City schools.
     When KIPP students graduate, “it’s not just the high
school teachers that walk in the commencement,” Feinberg said.
“The middle-school teachers and the elementary teachers that
taught those kids walk in the commencement as well.”
     A 2005 study by the Educational Policy Institute in
Virginia Beach, Virginia, found “large and significant gains”
among fifth graders in KIPP schools nationwide on the Stanford
Achievement Test, a standardized assessment used by school
districts. The students scored an average of 9 to 17 points
higher in reading, language and math, on a scale of 99 points,
than they had the previous year elsewhere.
     KIPP has an 85 percent college matriculation rate, compared
with 40 percent for low-income students nationwide, according to
a 2008 report card on the organization’s Web site. About 90
percent of KIPP’s 20,000 students are black or Hispanic; 80
percent qualify for subsidized meals.

                        ‘Platinum Brand’

     KIPP’s charter schools are a “platinum brand,” said Dan
Katzir, managing director of the Los Angeles-based Eli and
Edythe Broad Foundation, which has donated $18 million to the
schools.
     For all its success, education scholars such as Jeffrey
Henig, a political science and education professor at Columbia
University in New York, question whether the KIPP experience can
be replicated on a large scale.
     The main reason is that KIPP is able to staff its
relatively small number of schools by recruiting from a limited
pool of top candidates, many of them from programs other than
traditional education colleges.
     About two-thirds of KIPP’s principals and a third of its
teachers are alumni of Teach for America, a New York-based
nonprofit that recruits graduates of Ivy League and other top
colleges to teach in high-poverty areas for two years. Feinberg
and Levin met when both joined Teach for America in 1992.
    “KIPP and Teach for America have shown that it is possible
to get good, bright, enthusiastic, energetic young people into
schools,” Henig said. “But we don’t know whether that’s
sustainable.”

                         Careful Growth

    “The KIPP school is not a transformative model,” said
Frederick Hess, director of education policy studies at the
American Enterprise Institute, a Washington research group.
“The KIPP school is a school that takes meat-and-potatoes
education and does it incredibly well,” Hess said.
     KIPP, which plans to have 110 schools by 2011, never
envisioned becoming ubiquitous, said John Fisher, chairman of
the KIPP Foundation, which supports the schools. “We will not
open another school if we don’t believe it’s going to be as good
as the last school we opened,” he said.
     KIPP’s New York chapter has expanded “in a way that
ensures quality control,” said New York Schools Chancellor Joel
Klein. “They have consistently opened up very good schools, and
we want to support that.”

                        Chosen by Lottery

     The nation’s 4,900 charter schools, including KIPP’s,
operate under contracts with school districts or states and
receive most of their operating funds from them. KIPP says most
of its schools get no tax dollars for capital needs such as
school buildings and relies on donations. Students attend for
free and are chosen by lottery.
     Partly to spur the growth of charter schools, President
Barack Obama said yesterday he wants to add $1.35 billion to the
$4.35 billion already in the government’s Race to the Top
education program, which rewards states whose innovations can
serve as models for others.
     While KIPP can’t compete directly for that money, it’s
“hopeful that there are real opportunities to help us be part
of the larger effort” to improve education, KIPP Foundation
Chief Executive Officer Richard Barth said in an interview.

                          Gap Founders

     John Fisher’s parents, Gap clothing chain founders Don and
Doris Fisher, were among KIPP’s major boosters, giving Feinberg
and Levin $15 million to start its foundation in 2000 and $64
million in all over the years.
     Philanthropies including the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation also have donated,
bringing total contributions to $130 million. Don Fisher was
chairman of the KIPP Foundation’s board until his death last
September at the age of 81. John succeeded him.
     The foundation funds a yearlong Fisher Fellowship for
prospective KIPP principals, whose coursework includes business
school classes that examine companies such as Southwest and
FedEx. KIPP’s founders say FedEx offers insights into competing
with a government monopoly.
     The classes are followed by “residencies” at KIPP schools
and six months developing a business plan in the communities
where the participants plan to open schools.


                      Students as Customers

     “KIPP school leaders are small business owners in many
respects,” said Elliott Witney, who completed the fellowship in
2002 and is chief academic officer of KIPP’s Houston schools.
“I’ve got friends in New York starting their own companies, and
the issues they deal with are identical to ours.”
     Witney, 34, says about half the books in his office are
business and management-related, including Jim Collins’ “Good
to Great” and Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point.”
     KIPP school leaders, who refer to students and parents as
“customers,” have more control than traditional public-school
principals over budgets, staffing and curriculum, Feinberg said.
They also continually assess whether students are likely to
succeed in college. Schools that fall short can lose the right
to the KIPP brand.
     The branding strategy came from Don Fisher as he helped
KIPP craft an expansion plan. Feinberg recalled showing Fisher
uniforms bearing the names of three KIPP schools opening in
2001. “Don was like, ‘These are great. Where’s KIPP?’”
Feinberg said. The KIPP name began appearing on T-shirts and
signs, and in the name of every school.
     KIPP Academy Middle School is the centerpiece of the
group’s Southwest Houston campus, which houses three schools for
students in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade. U.S. News and
World Report last month ranked KIPP’s Houston high school 16th
best of the U.S.’s 21,000 public secondary schools.

                         ‘No Shortcuts’

     At the middle school, motivational slogans such as “No
Shortcuts” line the corridor walls. Pre-kindergartners wear
shirts emblazoned with “Class of 2024,” the year they plan to
start college. Classrooms are named after universities,
including Yale and Penn.
     Fifth graders recite multiplication tables in unison
through rhyming chants, a mnemonic method known as rolling
numbers. First-grade spelling lessons make use of body language,
with students snapping their fingers for each vowel in a word,
and clapping for each consonant.

                        FedEx Effect

     Feinberg wants to expand in Houston from 15 to 42 KIPP
schools serving 10 percent of the city’s public-school students
by 2020. He says the competition might spur traditional public
schools to adopt KIPP methods, the way the U.S. Postal Service
began offering overnight mail nationally amid competition from
FedEx.
     That probably won’t happen, said Gayle Fallon, president of
the Houston Federation of Teachers. “Public schools don’t
always react that way,” Fallon said. “They’ll whine about
losing enrollment” to charter schools, “but whether they do
anything about it is another story.”
     KIPP provides “healthy competition” that “makes
everybody better,” said Houston Independent School District
spokesman Norm Uhl. Some other charter schools have followed
KIPP’s lead by increasing class time, and many regular public
schools have started effective after-school programs, Uhl said.
     Michelle Rhee, head of the Washington, D.C., public schools
since 2007, said she’s modeled some initiatives after KIPP,
including Saturday classes and more rigorous summer school. Rhee
has known KIPP-D.C. founder Susan Schaeffler since 1992, when
they too were in Teach for America.
     KIPP proves that “it is absolutely possible for poor
minority kids to achieve at the highest level,” Rhee said.
     She cited a KIPP school in Washington where, she said, 90
percent of students are performing on grade level, compared with
10 percent at a regular public school six blocks away.
     “Same neighborhood, same challenges, same kids with those
wildly different outcomes,” Rhee said.  

     AUTOR  : Molly Peterson
   FUENTE : BLOOMBERG
ENVIADO : RAFAEL ROJAS