Visit
to
December 7, 2006
Comments and photos by Whitney Tilson (WTilson@tilsonfunds.com)
I recently visited
(To see web pages with photos and comments from my visits to other charter schools, see www.tilsonfunds.com/Personal/KIPPAMP and www.tilsonfunds.com/Personal/Newarkcharters)
Joining me on this visit were four friends and fellow education reformers, Bill Ackman, Kian Ghazi, Sidney Hawkins Gargiulo and Carol Kellerman (from left to right, below, with David Levin on the far right).
This school, founded by David Levin in 1995, has in many ways inspired the
entire charter school movement (along with the original KIPP in
The school educates 250 students in grades 5-8. All students are minority
(53% Hispanic/Latino; 44% African American and 3% Asian/Pacific Islander) and
95% are low income. The school spends approximately $10,000 per student, less than
the middle school average for
The school’s mission since inception has been: “To teach our students to develop the academic and character skills needed to enter and succeed in top-quality high schools and colleges, to be self-sufficient in the competitive world beyond and to build a better tomorrow for themselves and us all.”
Results
The school is knocking the cover off the ball. From KIPP’s web site at www.kippny.org:
“The 2005-2006 school year marks the ninth consecutive year that the KIPP Academy
has been the highest performing public middle school in the entire Bronx in
terms of reading scores, math scores, and attendance (97%). Over 91% of KIPPsters
are now performing at or above the state average in math, and, over 77% are
doing the same in reading. For the fourth consecutive year,
On average, KIPP students enter 5th grade 1-3 years behind grade level and, as you can see from the data below, the great majority are at or above grade level within one year. By 8th grade, over 80% of KIPPsters pass the New York State Math A Regents exam, a high school graduation requirement exam. These students will enroll in 10th grade level math courses as 9th graders.
More than 80% of KIPP alumni are entering college within four years after graduating from 8th grade, compared with approximately 10-15% among NYC students with similar demographics.
All KIPP students learn how to play an instrument and read music. The 180-piece KIPP String and Rhythm Orchestra is widely considered to be among the finest middle school orchestras in the country and has performed nationwide.
Here’s KIPP’s data in ELA (English Language Arts) on state tests (Level 1 is below basic; Level 2 is basic, Level 3 is proficient/grade level and Level 4 is advanced):
Here are the scores in math:
Here are KIPP’s ELA and math scores compared to other public schools in its district and NY City overall:
Background on the School and the Neighborhood
KIPP is located in one of the poorest neighborhoods in
Since inception, KIPP (the top-performing middle school in the Bronx) has shared
a floor with one of the lowest-performing middle schools in the
KIPP Commitment to Excellence Form
KIPP requires all teachers, parents/guardians and students to sign the form below. It’s not enforceable in many ways, but it sets clear expectations and, psychologically, signing this is an important commitment. I’ve heard some naysayers claim that regular public schools can’t do this, but I don’t see why not (other than the part about long hours – the teachers’ contract won’t allow that).
Observations of the School
Entering KIPP, one is greeted by an oasis of calm and orderliness – just like every KIPP I’ve ever visited (nearly two dozen now).
If you know what to look for, you can quickly see signs of a top school – pretty much anywhere, I’d argue – by visiting a few classrooms. Most importantly, the children are totally focused on learning – what KIPP calls SSLANT (Smile, Sit Up, Listen, Ask and Answer Questions, Nod Your Head When You Understand and Track the Speaker). Also, notice in the pictures below that the desks aren’t cluttered – each child has one notebook on the desk and that’s it. Finally, the walls are filled with students’ work and slogans that capture KIPP’s culture: “Work hard. Be Nice.”, “There are no shortcuts”, “All of us will learn”, etc.
Here are some classroom pictures:
Lots of enthusiastic hands go up in response the teacher’s question.
Notice how every student is looking at the student who was called on to answer the question.
KIPP Dollars
One of the many tools KIPP uses to build culture, instill teamwork and maintain discipline is to carefully track, evaluate and report on students’ behavior. Every day, every teacher evaluates every student’s behavior (seriously!), which is captured in a system of “KIPP Dollars”. Students can earn up to 50 KIPP Dollars per week, and lose KIPP Dollars for failing to do homework (which automatically results in a zero for the day, partially added back if the homework is turned in the next day), rudeness toward anyone, speaking out of turn, failing to pay attention, etc.
Every week, a KIPP Dollar report is sent home to parents, detailing exactly why dollars were deducted, which must be signed by a parent and returned to the school. And here’s the most clever part: each student’s dollar amount is posted in the hallway (see first picture below), so everyone knows who’s behaving – and who’s not. The students who get perfect 50s get their pictures on the wall (see second picture below).
In addition, the students’ scores are posted by class, with an average for the entire class. Classes that have the highest average scores get special perks and privileges such as McDonald’s for lunch on Saturday instead of cafeteria food or tickets to a Broadway show that someone has donated. This creates a healthy competition among classes and, importantly, peer pressure on the misbehaving students. Imagine how upset the well-behaved students are at the students who are dragging down the class average, costing all of them.
This is one of many tools that KIPP uses to create a feeling among students that they’re part of winning team – one that will win together. Almost all great schools I’ve ever seen – in fact, almost all great organizations of any type I’ve ever seen – understand that the most powerful human motivator is the desire to be part of a tightly-bonded winning team. Think the Yankees (as much as it hurts to write that – I’m a 4th generation die-hard Red Sox fan), the Marines (where men regularly risk (if not give) their lives for their “teammates”), Starbucks, JetBlue, Wal-Mart and Home Depot (in their heyday), etc.
KIPP to College
As noted above, KIPP’s mission is “To teach our students to develop the academic and character skills needed to enter and succeed in top-quality high schools and colleges…” But how does one persuade students that, if they work hard and play by the rules, they’ll go to college, when often no-one in their family or entire neighborhood has ever gone to college? One way is to celebrate the KIPP alumni who are currently in college. Thus, all students, when they graduate from KIPP, get a plaque embossed with their name and year of entrance to college. Then, when they go to college, they can come back to KIPP and hang their college pennant on KIPP’s “Hall of Fame”, with their plaque below it. The three pictures below show KIPP’s large (and rapidly growing) Hall of Fame.
Hallways
Like every other successful school I’ve visited, the walls are festively decorated, celebrating KIPP’s values, staff and, most importantly, the achievements of the children. David Levin once told me something very obvious (I know from my own kids!): “What do kids love to see more than anything else? Pictures of themselves and their work. Isn’t this self-evident?”
Slogans
KIPP is as much focused on building character as it is on academics. This is instilled in many ways, including countless posters in every hallway and classroom. Some of my favorites are below.
Finally, here is one of my all-time favorite articles about KIPP:
School Reform’s 38th Parallel
By R.H. SAGER, NY Sun, 9/22/03
In the
One can pace the hall, moving from quiet to bedlam and
back again.I did so repeatedly on Friday, my jaw a tick away from slack.”A lot
of people notice that,” a young woman said as she walked past.
The hallway is split between Intermediate School 151
and the Knowledge Is Power Program Academy charter school. The schools share
a building on
Last week, the UFT’s president, Randi Weingarten, made
an offer: Teachers at some schools would give up their intricate work rules
in exchange for more power in their schools’ administration. It seems even Ms.
Weingarten recognizes that the teachers contract’s regulation of the length
of the school day, what teachers can and can’t be asked to do, and how teachers
can be hired and fired is too burdensome on principals. But her solution of
making teachers their own bosses is a cure worse than the disease. Instead,
KIPP offers the model of flexibility Messrs. Bloomberg and Klein ought to be
replicating.
”We are, in a technical sense, under the contract,”
the co-founder and superintendent of KIPP, David Levin, told me. The operative
word is “technically,” however, as KIPP exists in a world divorced from such
bureaucracy.
The UFT contract determines teachers’ base pay. But
outside of that, Mr. Levin, a boyish, 33-year-old Yale graduate in his 12th
year of teaching, has a mostly free hand to run his school. Classes there run
Monday through Friday from 7:25 a.m. to 5 p.m., and most Saturdays from 9 a.m.
to 1 p.m. That’s opposed to the roughly six-hour day and five-day week allowed
under the UFT contract. On top of that, KIPP has an extended school year, with
three weeks of mandatory summer school. There is a dress code. Students maintain
silence and walk single-file between classes. All 251 students are expected
to go to college.
Teachers, students, and parents sign a contract called
the “KIPP Commitment to Excellence Form.” For teachers, this means: “We will
do whatever it takes for our students to learn.… We will always make ourselves
available to students, parents, and any concerns they might have.”
”You have to put in the hours,” a sixth-grade English
teacher, Blanca Ruiz, told me. Ms. Ruiz, 26 years old and Brooklyn born, spent
some time teaching in a traditional public school in Patterson, N.J., with Teach
for America. “Some teachers were there for retirement purposes,” she said. At
KIPP, she finds her work rewarded and reinforced by her colleagues. “There’s
consistency,” she said. “There’s a certain expectation across the board, and
the kids understand it.”
The teachers Mr. Levin selects are the key to KIPP.
As a charter school, KIPP is not required to accept seniority transfers — teachers
who, simply by virtue of having spent enough years in the public system, get
first pick of plum jobs under the teachers contract. Still, if a teacher doesn’t
work out, KIPP, as a converted rather than a new charter school, isn’t exempt
from the contract’s machinery blocking principals from firing incompetent teachers.
Asked whether he’s gotten in trouble on this front yet, Mr. Levin looked up
at the ceiling with apparent dread, took a deep breath, and knocked on his wooden
desk. “Not yet,” he said.
Mr. Levin is no ideologue hostile to the public schools.
“I’m a public school teacher,” he said with pride. But he has a message: “Ultimately,
principals need authority over their staffs.”
If Ms. Weingarten doesn’t get that, Messrs. Bloomberg
and Klein are wasting their time with her. Instead, they could be getting ready
to approve the five or more applications for new charter schools expected to
come in at the end of this month. That’s the way to assault the line that separates
KIPP from IS 151. Let’s expand the freedom embodied in KIPP — down the hall
and throughout the city.
