I attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony yesterday for the newest KIPP school, Rise Academy Charter School in Newark

Whitney Tilson's Photos, Videos and Thoughts From a Visit to Five Newark Charter Schools

I attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony yesterday for the newest KIPP school, Rise Academy Charter School in Newark. While I was there, my two friends (Charlie Ledley, the latest addition to the board of Dems for Ed Reform, and Daniel Oscar, who was part of the original team with me that helped Wendy Kopp start Teach for America 17 years ago) and I visited four outstanding charter schools in addition to Rise: the first KIPP in Newark, TEAM Academy, two North Star Academies (part of the outstanding Uncommon Schools network) and the Greater Newark Charter School (Daniel was the founder of the school and remains on its board). All of these are outstanding schools, with the scores to prove it. An interesting though not surprising fact: nearly all of the school leaders and teachers are Teach for America alums.

It was an AMAZING day -- I never tire of visiting great schools, and I always learn a great deal. To get some perspective on how important these schools are, consider the following statistics that TEAM principal Ryan Hill cited in his speech at the Rise ribbon-cutting ceremony: In Newark right now, there are 3,000 8th graders. Assuming the current (disastrous) trends remain in place, only 100 (I kid you not -- 3.3%) will EVER graduate from college. (For more on Newark's public schools are -- I guarantee you can't imagine how bad they are -- click here.) However, assuming the trends at KIPP continue, the two KIPP schools in Newark will, by themselves, DOUBLE that number! He also noted that "we're not reducing the achievement gap, we're REVERSING it!" It gives you goose bumps, doesn't it?

I brought my camera and took some pictures (below) and videos. In the captions for each picture, I describe what's going on. As for the video, I've spliced together four segments into one 3-minute clip and posted it here. Here's what you'll see on the video:

1) All of the students at the North Star Academy doing what's called a Call-Response. One student is leading the chant, in which every student is loudly proclaiming to work hard, go to college, be a community, etc. Anyone who knows anything about psychology will understand how INCREDIBLY POWERFUL this is in influencing behavior.

3) A math teacher at Rise using "um-pop-drop", another chant/game, to teach student how to multiply 430 x 7 (if I recall correctly).

In all of these cases, look how engaged the kids are and what fun they're having! Note that these chants are only a small fraction of what goes on in the classes -- almost all of the time, they appear to be like good classes anywhere, but that makes for pretty boring video footage!

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.

15 pictures for you

Our first stop was the new North Star Academy, which is in its 2nd year and has roughly 160 5th and 6th graders. Every day begins with an all-school meeting in the gym, led by Mike Mann (shown above; he was a teacher for 8 years at the original North Star Academy). The meeting is a mix of Mike preaching the North Star values/principles, admitting a mistake HE'D made, leading some chants and then we heard a student confessional. The boy had hit another the previous day, so stepped forward and read a prepared statement, expressing how sorry he was and detailing which values he'd violated. After he was finished, a teacher stepped forward and said it wasn't a good enough apology, so Mike Mann said the student had to come meet with him afterward. More of the psychology that I mentioned above...

That's Mike in the middle, with two people from Uncommon Schools, Carlos and Twinkle.

This is the outside of the school.

We then went to Rise Academy, where classes were going on (the first video clip is from this classroom).

Ryan Hill, founding principal of TEAM, making some remarks at the Rise ribbon-cutting. Don't you LOVE the circle in the center of the basketball court?!

This is Drew Martin, the founding principal of Rise Academy (he was a teacher at TEAM before taking a year to go through the KIPP School Leadership Program (http://www.kipp.org/leadakippschool.cfm?pageid=nav2))

Drew told the story of this child, Ahmad Harris. Drew started by saying that he always tells parents how important it is to get their child to school on time. "It's 7:25am, not 7:26!" So when he went to visit Ahmad's mother, he was running 15 minutes behind schedule, and sure enough, when he arrived, she said, "You're late." As he started to apologize, she cut him off and said, "That's not what I mean. You're many years too late." You see, Drew explained, Ahmad had a terrible stutter and the other children had always made fun of him and everyone assumed he was stupid. Not so at Rise -- it goes without saying that mocking him would never be tolerated and Ahmad was already thriving. The one sad part of the story: Ahmad's mother asked, "Can you please help my younger son as well?" Unfortunately, the answer is, "Not yet," but TEAM is planning to open two elementary schools and a high school in coming years.

6 students did the ribbon cutting.

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I chatted a bit with three of the Rise students. Really sweet kids!

The first time I've seen KIPP's motto, Work Hard, Be Nice, in Spanish.

I liked this poster at KIPP TEAM (sorry, I forgot to take pictures of the school).

Daniel (on the left) and Charlie at the original North Star, which is in its 11th year (if I recall correctly) and now has grades 5-12 (three classes of students are now in college). This is the highest-performing school in all of Newark (with KIPP TEAM close behind).

I liked this touch -- outside each of the classrooms at North Star, the students had written a testimonial about that room's teacher.

The Greater Newark Charter School overcame some rough early years in which it had to move to a different building every year and is now among the top 25% of all schools in Newark, with test scores surpassed only by a handful of charter schools and public schools in the better off East and North Wards. Its students have higher scores than EVERY school in the low-income West, South and Central Wards (the Greater Newark Charter School, like all of the schools we visited, serves almost entirely low-income, minority students).