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

KIPP: Learning a Lesson from Big Business

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WORTH EMULATING?

Some scholars, such as Jeffrey Henig, a political science and education professor at Columbia University, question whether the KIPP experience can be reproduced on a large scale. KIPP staffs its relatively small number of schools by recruiting from a limited pool of top candidates, he points out. About a third of KIPP's teachers and two-thirds of its principals are alumni of Teach for America, which draws heavily from the Ivy League and other highly ranked colleges. "KIPP and Teach for America have shown that it is possible to get bright, enthusiastic, energetic young people [teaching in] schools," Henig says. "But we don't know whether that's sustainable."

KIPP's defenders insist the model is worth emulating. The New York chapter has expanded "in a way that ensures quality control," says New York Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein. "They have consistently opened up very good schools, and we want to support that."

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 students attend for free and are chosen by lottery. Additional aid comes from organizations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation. Gap clothing chain founders Don and Doris Fisher were early donors, contributing $64 million of KIPP's $130 million tally from philanthropies.

Feinberg wants to expand in Houston from 15 to 42 KIPP schools, serving 10% of the city's public school students by 2020. He hopes his program will prod traditional public schools to adopt KIPP methods—just as competition from FedEx inspired the U.S. Postal Service to expand overnight mail. KIPP provides "healthy competition" that "makes everybody better," says Houston Independent School District spokesman Norm Uhl.

Like KIPP, some other charter schools have increased class time, and many regular public schools have started effective after-school programs, Uhl says. Michelle Rhee, head of Washington (D.C.) public schools, has modeled some initiatives after KIPP, including Saturday classes and more rigorous summer school.

Could KIPP, or any charter program, become a major catalyst for change in America's faltering public education system? It's not clear, says Gayle Fallon, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers. "Public schools don't always react" the ways companies do, Fallon says. "They'll whine about losing enrollment" to charter schools, "but whether they do anything about it is another story."

Yet KIPP proves that "it is absolutely possible for poor minority kids to achieve at the highest level," says Rhee. She cites a KIPP school in Washington where, she says, 90% of students are performing on grade level, compared with 10% at a regular public school six blocks away. "Same neighborhood, same challenges, same kids with those wildly different outcomes," says Rhee. That's a report card any school would be happy to receive.

Peterson is a reporter for Bloomberg News.

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