The Knowledge Is Power Program

Read "High Scores Fail to Clear Obstacles to KIPP Growth: Program Has Struggled to Find Space for Expansion" by Jay Mathews in The Washington Post. (January 31, 2006)

The Knowledge Is Power Program provides a model for teaching fifth- through eighth-graders. Its schools have produced some of the best math and reading scores in low-income neighborhoods in the United States.

Students on average are at the 28th percentile in reading and math on national standardized tests when they enter KIPP. The first five KIPP schools in the country show students rising to the 74th percentile by the end of eighth grade, according to figures supplied by the San Francisco-based KIPP Foundation.

Graduating KIPP eighth-graders are placed in private schools or high-achieving public schools so they won't lose their academic edge.

(KIPP has) fashioned a system of nine-hour school days with extra pay for teachers, an emphasis on character, behavior and students' future in college, and Saturday classes. The program included teacher visits to student homes, mandatory summer school, a requirement for students to call teachers at night if they had homework questions and an elaborate system of student sanctions and rewards, including a year-end trip to some other part of the country.

More than 80 percent of the students in the 47 KIPP schools in 15 states and the District are from low-income families, and 95 percent are black or Hispanic. Almost all schools show significant gains in test scores, but there are some exceptions, such as drops last year in reading score percentiles for sixth-graders at schools in Los Angeles, Atlanta and Chicago.

It will be some time, experts say, before anyone can be sure that KIPP is as good as it seems. The original schools in Houston and New York City are doing well after more than 10 years, and KIPP founders Mike Feinberg, 37, and Dave Levin, 35, are supervising new schools in those cities with impressive initial results. But other highly praised education programs have lost steam over time, and some KIPP critics wonder whether the 320-student middle schools can influence the general low performance of big-city systems.

Looking at four KIPP schools, Columbia University Teachers College researchers Richard Rothstein and Rebecca Jacobsen concluded that students starting the program in fifth grade had more motivated parents and better test scores than their community averages. KIPP officials said their data showed no significant difference in academic skills between their entering students and other nearby children.

This is an impressive report! It seems likely that more time in class and greater availability of teachers would work almost anywhere. Young, enthusiastic principals can't hurt either. If you want teachers to work longer hours, you should expect to pay them more, and better education for the kids is worth that greater pay. As we move further and further into a knowledge society, it becomes more and more important that poor kids and kids from minority communities not be left behind. I hope the right lessons from the KIPP will be widely applied.