Mikelle Willis knows that closing the educational achievement gap won’t be easy, but it’s necessary.
The former second-grade teacher for Teach for America said she was looking to have a deeper, broader impact on public education.
Her opportunity came in the summer of 2003 when she opened her first KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) academy in South Los Angeles.
“All of the students in South L.A. were not being served well educationally because the system was so large,” Willis said. “The students were in danger of falling through the cracks.”
In her four years as board director of KIPP Academy of Opportunity, Willis helped the school become one of the highest-performing middle schools in Los Angeles.
She is hoping to replicate those results in St. Louis.
KIPP, the most desired charter school program in the country, recently announced it would open a cluster of tuition-free, open-enrollment charter schools in St. Louis, with the support of Washington University. St. Louis was selected as KIPP’s only new national expansion site in 2009, and for the first time, the area’s most elite university will sponsor a charter school.
“We want to provide the children of St. Louis with the kind of education that will get them to achieve the highest level of academics,” said Trina James, a member of SULTAK (St. Louisans to Attract KIPP), who spearheaded the St. Louis KIPP application.
James said it took more than a year to get KIPP here. The program was looking at St. Louis well before the mayor started his charter school initiative, she said.
KIPP, based in San Francisco, targets African-American and Hispanic students in the nation’s toughest and poorest cities. With a combination of more time in school, a rigorous college-preparatory curriculum, and a strong culture of achievement, it regularly sends troubled students to college-prep high schools and to college.
“What makes KIPP so successful is the commitment from all the stakeholders involved,” said Willis, who now works as KIPP’s director of new site development. “From the teachers, parents and students, there is a strong sense of commitment by all three groups.”
KIPP would ultimately place roughly 1,500 low-income students in five new St. Louis schools over the next 10 years. The first, a middle school, would open in the fall of 2009. The plan is to add one new grade per year until the school becomes a fifth through eighth grade public middle school.
But KIPP leaders must first develop a board of directors, secure a school site, raise more money, recruit students and accept candidates into its grueling yearlong principal- and teacher-training program.
Students will be chosen by lottery after KIPP principals and teachers knock on doors, mainly in underserved areas, to recruit them.
All KIPP schools follow a similar model. Students are in school from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and return every other Saturday and for three weeks in the summer. Teachers give out their cell phone number for 24-hour homework help, for a starting salary of $35,000, according to KIPP.
Since its creation in Houston in 1994, KIPP has expanded to 57 public charter schools in 17 states, serving more than 14,000 students. Typically, students enter KIPP one or two grade levels behind. Test scores show students improve yearly and perform at a higher level than those in local district schools.
KIPP critics
Not everyone is sold on the KIPP system. Critics say the test scores aren’t surprising given the longer school days, smaller class sizes and high level of parental involvement. The school costs nothing to attend, but before children enroll they and their parents must sign contracts promising to arrive at school on time, complete and check all homework and follow a strict behavioral policy.
KIPP’s admission process rules out badly dysfunctional families, said Peter Downs, president of the elected St. Louis Public Schools board.
“The KIPP model is not the model for public education because we have a public responsibility to educate every child, regardless of what age or grade level they come to school,” Downs said. “I think that KIPP could be one piece of the puzzle. I don’t think it has the full solution.”
Recent KIPP history shows some KIPP schools have struggled.
According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, of the 64 KIPP schools that have opened in more than 30 cities, seven have closed or lost sponsorship. Schools have cited trouble recruiting enough students, failure to create a viable financial plan, problems finding a strong enough principal, inability to lease a bigger building and desire for more local control as reasons for closing or losing sponsorship.
Critics have also noted that the loss of students at some KIPP schools is alarmingly high. Attrition rates at a few schools in the San Francisco area, in particular, have drawn scrutiny. According to data from the California Department of Education, at one of the schools, KIPP Bayview Academy in Oakland, fewer than 35 percent of black males who entered the school in the fall of 2003 as fifth graders were still enrolled there in the fall of their eighth grade year.
KIPP Public Affairs Director Steve Mancini said many KIPP schools are still quite new, and enrollment is likely to be unsteady early on. He provided data that suggested that levels of student mobility vary widely across KIPP campuses.
He said students usually leave KIPP schools because they move to a new address, do not like the long KIPP hours, want to avoid being held back a grade, or are asked to leave the school.
“These are schools of choice,” Mancini said. “Parents do have a right to take their kids out of KIPP schools.”
Rick Sullivan, chief executive officer of the SLPS’ Special Appointed Board, said the SAB has not taken a position on KIPP, but he feels the competition could help push the troubled district into shape.
“As the competition gets better, we will have to respond,” Sullivan said. “St. Louis Public Schools will have to provide better education in order to compete with KIPP and other charter schools. We simply must get better at every aspect.”
Wash. U. connection
St. Louis won KIPP over several cities including Detroit and Jacksonville, Fla., for three main reasons.
First, St. Louis secured deep community support mostly with local business leaders, who poured in more than $500,000 to support KIPP’s start-up over three years. Funds will help support the creation of a local resource center as well as a search for qualified educators to lead KIPP schools.
Second, St. Louis is a hotbed for a growing educational reform movement called Teach for America, which places hundreds of top college graduates to teach in poor and underserved areas.
Finally, in teaming up with Wash U., KIPP gains the expertise of a well-respected research faculty and can encourage students to aim for elite colleges, James said.
Wash U. has long worked with local public schools providing mentoring, tutoring, science labs and teacher training among dozens of programs.
Little has been finalized about the partnership, so Rob Wild, assistant to the chancellor, would not give specifics.
He said Wash U. had been looking to expand in public education, among other areas, for several years now. He said KIPP presented itself at an opportune time.
“We felt it would be a great opportunity for KIPP and Wash U. to help the kids in the city of St. Louis,” Wild said.