KIPP began in 1994 after co-founders Dave Levin and Mike Feinberg completed their two-year commitment to Teach For America. A year later, they launched a program for fifth graders in a public school in inner-city Houston, Texas. Feinberg developed KIPP Academy Houston into a charter school, while Levin went on to establish KIPP Academy New York in the South Bronx.[7]
KIPP Foundation
Doris and Donald Fisher, co-founders of Gap Inc., formed a partnership with Feinberg and Levin to replicate KIPP's operations nationwide.[8]
If there are more applicants than seats available, KIPP students are admitted through a lottery system.[9] After a student is selected from the lottery and the student decides that he or she would like to attend a KIPP school, a home visit is set up with a teacher or the principal of the school, who meets with the family and students to discuss expectations of all students, teachers and the parents in KIPP. Students, parents, and teachers are then all required to sign a KIPP commitment of excellence, agreeing to fulfill specific responsibilities, promising that they will do everything in their power to help the student succeed and go to college.[10]
School structure
KIPP has extended school days to offer extra-curricular activities, and some schools add three extra weeks of school in July. Most KIPP schools run from 7:30a.m. to 4:00p.m.[11] Students spend that time in the classroom—up to 50 percent more time than in traditional public schools, depending on the region—and doing activities like sports, performing arts, and visual arts. Many of the activities KIPP offers might otherwise be inaccessible to students because of cost or scheduling issues. Because of this, the extended day offers students and families opportunities they might not get elsewhere.
Labor
In 2011, KIPP made a 10 year agreement with Baltimore Teachers Union following contentious negotiations around teacher work hours. Prior to reaching a contract, the charter network had advanced legislation to bypass collective bargaining and had threatened to close two schools in the city.[12]
In February 2018, Feinberg was removed from his position at KIPP due to sexual misconduct allegations involving a KIPP middle school student in the late 1990s and two KIPP employees in the early 2000s.[16] Feinberg denied the accusation by the middle school student, and reached a financial settlement with one of the two KIPP employees.
In 2022, it was revealed the KIPP's director of technology had embezzled $2.2 million which he spent on cars and sports memorabilia which was intended for laptops and other equipment. The official killed himself as the investigation was underway.[17] KIPP claimed that the fraud was an isolated incident.[17]
At a KIPP middle school in New York, a teacher was arrested after accusations of grooming and sexually abusing a student for years starting when she was in fourth grade. According to the complaint, the teacher had also made other students uncomfortable with inappropriate touching.[18]
KIPP's Houston charter schools were found to have charged parents unallowable and impermissible fees. Parents said they felt they were duped into what they understood would be a free education. [19] KIPP claimed that the fraud was an isolated incident.[19]
Peer group
KIPP and similar operators of multiple charter schools are known as charter management organizations (CMOs). KIPP is the largest, with 270 schools.[20]
Some for-profit rivals have shied away from managing any brick-and-mortar schools and offer online curricula and other services. These companies, including Stride, Inc. and EdisonLearning, are known as education management organizations (EMOs). Stride was the largest in the US in 2011–2012.[21]
Outside comments
In June 2010, Mathematica Inc. produced the first findings[22] from a multi-year evaluation of KIPP: "Using a matched comparison group design, results show that for the vast majority of KIPP schools in the evaluation, impacts on students' state assessment scores in math and reading are positive, statistically significant, and educationally substantial."
At the vanguard of experimentation with educational methods and techniques are charter schools: public schools that operate outside the normal governance structure of the public school system. In recent years, charter schools such as the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) and Achievement First have upended the way Americans think about educating disadvantaged children, eliminating the sense of impossibility and hopelessness and suggesting a set of highly promising methods.
A research report published in March 2005 by the Economic Policy Institute in book form as The Charter School Dust-Up: Examining the Evidence on Enrollment and Achievement,[24] however, described the degree to which KIPP's admission process selects for likely high achievers:
KIPP students, as a group, enter KIPP with substantially higher achievement than the typical achievement of schools from which they came. ... [T]eachers told us either that they referred students who were more able than their peers, or that the most motivated and educationally sophisticated parents were those likely to take the initiative to pull children out of the public school and enroll in KIPP at the end of fourth grade. Today, KIPP Schools have added Pre-K through 12th grade schools. A clear pattern to emerge from these interviews was that almost always it was students with unusually supportive parents or intact families who were referred to KIPP and completed the enrollment process.
The authors of The Charter School Dust-Up said that KIPP's admission process self-screens for students who are motivated, compliant, and come from similarly motivated, compliant and supportive families. The 2010 Mathematica Policy Research study found that KIPP schools had a "lower concentration of special education and limited English proficiency students than the public schools from which they draw".[25]
Some KIPP schools show high rates of attrition, especially for those students entering the schools with the lowest test scores. A 2008 study by SRI International found that while KIPP fifth-grade students who enter with below-average scores significantly outperform peers in public schools by the end of year one, "60 percent of students who entered fifth grade at four Bay Area KIPP schools in 2003–04 left before completing eighth grade",[26] although research on attrition at one KIPP school in Massachusetts differs.[27] The SRI report also discusses student mobility due to changing economic situations for student's families, but does not directly link this factor into student attrition. Figures for schools in all states are not readily available.
While KIPP's goal is that 75% of KIPP students graduate from college, a report they released in April 2011 stated that the college graduation rate for students who completed the first middle school program in 1999 and 2000 was about 33%.[28][29][30] The report states that 95% of the students completed high school, 89% of the students went to college, and 33% of the students earned a degree. For comparison, for students in a similar economic background to that which KIPP draws from. only 70% complete high school, 41% go to college, and 8% earn a four-year degree.[31] Overall in the United States 83% of students complete high school, 62% enroll in college, and 31% complete a four-year degree.[31]
For the overall graduation rate for students entering college in the United States one study found a 56% result (Pathways to Prosperity Study),[32] and another study found 54% graduated (American Dream 2.0 Report).[33]
KIPP's goal of a 75% college graduation rate is close to the 82% college graduation rate for students coming from the highest income quartile.[34]
Jay Mathews, writing for The Washington Post, was encouraged by the results from the KIPP report, although he pointed out that the sample size was only 200 students, and that after graduating from the KIPP middle school the students were no longer attending a KIPP school.[28] Both Matthews and Kay S. Hymowitz writing for City Journal found the 75% goal to be ambitious.
Secondary education is the last six or seven years of statutory formal education in the United States. It culminates with twelfth grade. Whether it begins with sixth grade or seventh grade varies by state and sometimes by school district.
Teach For America (TFA) is a nonprofit organization whose stated mission is to "enlist, develop, and mobilize as many as possible of our nation's most promising future leaders to grow and strengthen the movement for educational equity and excellence."
Chicago Public Schools (CPS), officially classified as City of Chicago School District #299 for funding and districting reasons, in Chicago, Illinois, is the fourth-largest school district in the United States, after New York, Los Angeles, and Miami-Dade County. For the 2020–21 school year, CPS reported overseeing 638 schools, including 476 elementary schools and 162 high schools; of which 513 were district-run, 115 were charter schools, 9 were contract schools and 1 was a SAFE school. The district serves 340,658 students. Chicago Public School students attend a particular school based on their area of residence, except for charter, magnet, and selective enrollment schools.
Galveston Independent School District is a school district headquartered in Galveston, Texas, United States.
The District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) is the local public school system for Washington, D.C. It is distinct from the District of Columbia Public Charter Schools (DCPCS), which governs public charter schools in the city.
This article is intended to give an overview of the education in Houston.
YES Prep Public Schools, Inc. is a network of public, open-enrollment charter schools located in Greater Houston. Its headquarters are located at its Southside campus. The YES program is a university-preparatory program for grades K-12.
Uncommon Schools (Uncommon) is a non-profit charter public school managed and operated in the United States that starts and manages urban schools for low-income students. Uncommon Schools starts and manages 53 urban charter public schools. Uncommon Schools are in five regions: Boston MA, Camden NJ, Newark NJ, New York City, and Rochester NY.
Avoyelles Public Charter School is a K-12 charter school in Mansura, Louisiana, United States.
Jonathan Levin High School for Media and Communications was a public high school located in The Bronx, New York City. It was one of six smaller specialty high schools located on the campus of the former William H. Taft High School, which was closed in 2008 and divided into separate collocated specialty schools. It closed in June 2016.
American Indian Model Schools is a charter school system based in Oakland, California. Started with the American Indian Public Charter School (AIPCS), a middle school in the late 1990s to serve Native American students, in 2007 it expanded to include another middle school and a high school. The main campus is in the Laurel area and includes AIPCS, a middle school for grades 5–8, and American Indian Public High School (AIPHS), a high school (9–12). AIPHS students can also take select classes at Merritt College. American Indian Public Charter School II has grades K–8 at a second campus located in Oakland's Chinatown. By 2012 the student population of the AIM schools had become 90% Asian American.
Newark Collegiate Academy (NCA) is a four-year charter public high school located in Newark in Essex County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, operating as part of the TEAM Academy Charter School network of charter schools in Newark run by the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) which serves students in kindergarten through twelfth grade. NCA opened in August 2007 with plans to ultimately serve over 570 students, mostly matriculating from TEAM's middle schools, Rise and TEAM Academies.
Yellowstone Schools is a school organization based in the Third Ward, Houston, Texas.
Mike Feinberg is a co-founder of the KIPP Foundation.
KIPP: Delta Public Schools is a charter school operator supported by the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) based in Helena–West Helena, Arkansas, USA. The system consists of three schools in Phillips County and one facility in Mississippi County.
Southern Columbia Area High School is a small, rural public high school located in Catawissa, Pennsylvania. It is the sole high school operated by Southern Columbia Area School District. In 2013, Southern Columbia Area High School reported an enrollment of 437 pupils in grades 9th through 12th. The school employed 33 teachers. Southern Columbia Area High School students may choose to attend Columbia-Montour Area Vocational-Technical School for training. The Central Susquehanna Intermediate Unit IU16 provides the school with a wide variety of services like specialized education for disabled students and hearing, speech and visual disability services and professional development for staff and faculty.
Harriett Jane Hill Ball was an American educator who inspired the KIPP program.
KIPP SoCal is a charter school operator associated with KIPP. KIPP LA, serving the Los Angeles metropolitan area, was founded in 2003 with two middle schools and now consists of 15 schools.
KIPP Texas Public Schools, is the branch of the KIPP charter school network in the U.S. state of Texas.
↑ "KIPP Foundation Offices." KIPP Foundation. Retrieved on July 17, 2011. "San Francisco, CA (Head office) KIPP Foundation 135 Main Street, Suite 1700 San Francisco, CA 94105"
↑ "College Completion Report". KIPP Public Charter Schools | Knowledge Is Power Program. KIPP: Knowledge is Power Program. Retrieved March 18, 2013. April 2011
1 2 "College Completion Report". KIPP Public Charter Schools | Knowledge fIs Power Program. KIPP: Knowledge is Power Program. Retrieved March 18, 2013. April 2011, (see page 9 of the report (page 11 of the issued document))
↑ "College Completion Report". KIPP Public Charter Schools | Knowledge Is Power Program. KIPP: Knowledge is Power Program. Retrieved March 19, 2013. April 2011, (see page 7 of the report (page 9 of the issuu document))
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