Economics & Policy February 4, 2010, 5:00PM EST

KIPP: Learning a Lesson from Big Business

The charter school powerhouse uses motivational techniques inspired by America's top corporations, to impressive effect

By Molly Peterson

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Touring a branch of the Knowledge Is Power Program in southwest Houston is like dropping into an underage executive boot camp. The building houses three KIPP charter schools spanning pre-kindergarten to 12th grade—each one a showcase for motivational tactics. The youngest kids wear shirts emblazoned with "Class of 2024," the year they plan to start college. Classrooms are named after Yale and other top colleges. Fifth graders chant their multiplication tables in unison. And the corridors of the middle school are lined with slogans such as "No Shortcuts."

The resemblance to executive training—an intense, communal focus on goals—is no coincidence. KIPP's two founders, Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin, drew lessons from some of America's top companies, including Gap (GPS), FedEx (FDX), and Southwest Airlines (LUV), as they built the program. Both men graduated from Ivy League colleges, and both are alumni of Teach for America, a New York nonprofit that funnels college grads into two-year teaching stints in poor neighborhoods. They and many of their principals have also taken business school classes. "KIPP school leaders are small business owners in many respects," says Elliott Witney, the chief academic officer of KIPP's Houston schools, who keeps a copy of Jim Collins' Good to Great in his office.

Started in 1994 as an experiment with 50 fifth graders in Houston's inner city, KIPP has blossomed into the biggest U.S. charter school operator, with 82 schools for poor and minority children in 19 states. The Obama Administration cites KIPP schools as models for some of the education reforms it hopes to spur with $100 billion in stimulus money. The program has gotten "remarkable results from students," Education Secretary Arne Duncan told Bloomberg. It helps kids "who didn't really have a good work ethic start to become extraordinarily successful."

Working overtime is central to KIPP's success, as it is at many corporations. Starting with the Houston experiment, Feinberg and Levin instituted nine-hour school days instead of the usual seven, held classes on some Saturdays, and ran summer sessions. Students often spent 60% more time in class than regular public schools require. After one year, the number of students performing at grade level in reading and math jumped to 90% from 50%.

Results kept improving over the next decade. In 2005, a study by the Educational Policy Institute in Virginia Beach, Va., found "large and significant gains" among fifth graders in KIPP schools nationwide on the Stanford Achievement Test Series, a standardized assessment used by school districts. On a scale of 0 to 99, the students scored an average of 9 to 17 points higher in reading, language, and math than they had the previous year elsewhere.

KIPP now has an 85% college matriculation rate, compared with 40% for low-income students nationwide, according to a 2008 report card KIPP prepared and posted on its Web site. About 90% of KIPP's 20,000 students are black or Hispanic; 80% qualify for subsidized meals.

Principals, teachers, students, and parents stay focused on preparing every child for college, says Feinberg, 41, a University of Pennsylvania graduate who heads up 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 says. "The middle school teachers and the elementary teachers that taught those kids walk as well."

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 says. They also continually assess whether students are likely to succeed in college. Schools that fall short can lose the right to the KIPP brand.