KIPP Charters Revolutionizing Public Education: Why Public Institutes Model after KIPP

While exploring the blogosphere this past week, I came across two posts concerning the revolution of public education through KIPP Charter, (Knowledge Is Power Program), displayed at the right. The authors have made the case for another look at why the nation should consider giving students more diversified alternatives to becoming successful learners through KIPP Charter because its mission reflects in the student results. At KIPP, more than 80 percent of the students are low income and more than 90 percent are African American or Latino. Nationally, more than 80 percent of students have matriculated to college. KIPPs motto in ensuring students quality and college-bound education is through absolutely “no shortcuts.” Rather, they believe “more time in school learning, a rigorous college-preparatory curriculum, and a strong culture of achievement” instructed by “outstanding educators” will help students make significant academic gains and excel through high school and college. In journalist, Amber Arelleno’s, “No excuses: One leader's successful urban school revolution” she discusses the outstanding success of KIPP educational services and illustrates that the nation should look beyond the citadels of public schools to find an answer to the much publicized No Child Left Behind. The second blog, “What lessons does KIPP offer for urban education reform” offers a similar standpoint. My comments for these blogs can be seen in the provided links or below for your convenience.

Comment: "No excuses:: One leader's successful urban school revolution"
In this article, you have attempted to present a balanced report on your findings of about the case for Charter Schools. However, you have allowed for your admiration of the success made by Charter Schools to eclipse your objectivity; in regarding on the values of well administrative services that can help to ease the burden of teaching and classroom management for the teachers. You seem to have ignored the warning sign of human greed. You seem to be making the case that why teachers in a Charter School do better at teaching is because they are better paid and receive additional perks. But historical evidence has shown that best teachers, such as Plato, Socrates or Aristotle were not necessarily motivated by the desires to get rich, but rather by the internal satisfaction of knowing that they have opened the flood gate of reason in as many students desire. In as much as I agree that you have made a strong case for Charter School, KIPP, which advocates more power and more money to the teachers and less to the administrative bureaucracy, we should not lose sight of the indispensable roles that good administrators play in ensuing the smooth running of a school. You should have given equitable credits to such successful school administration to maintain a balanced view.

Comment: "What lessons does KIPP offer for urban education reform"
You have made a very strong case for the lesson offered to urban educational reform by KIPP’s experience. Your statistics offered by research studies help to illustrate that early interaction in education has been the reason for the two-thirds of the reading achievement gap between the “poor kids” and their advantaged peers. However, you have not conclusively demonstrated in this article that KIPP schools have come up with a progress report card for a considerable number of years to longitudinally prove their case. In other words although, researchers have illustrated that disadvantaged kids learn at a much lower rate during summer than their advantaged peers by using the rate of learning curves, no such statistics is available in this article on KIPP schools. For purposes of clarity and balanced view when writing a post, a writer must demonstrate that he/she has exhausted all the available facts before drawing a conclusion or making an opinion. This is a necessary and essential quality of a professional journalist, writer, commentator, or a moderator. Otherwise, the report would look lopsided or biased. If such statistics are not available, the writer should acknowledge that. As in the case of KIPP schools, statistics are available and here is the link you could follow to get more tangible evidence. http://www.kipp.org/01/resultsofkippsch.cfm

Going Beyond the Bell: An Extension of School Hours Improves Urban Student’s Overall Performance

Inner-city public schools continue to face strenuous challenges--students fail to meet state standards and dropout rates inextricably skyrocket, as demonstrated in the correlating graph. An antecedent of this unfavorable result owes to insufficient hours of schooling. While the average student in America spends approximately six hours in class per day, students in European and Asian countries “spend closer to seven or eight hours a day, plus half-day on Saturday.” Producing promising results in Europe and Asia, administrators in America have begun to adopt similar strategies in an effort to enhance their students’ academic achievements. Public entities such as Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) and Green Dot have attested to substantial results from extending school hours. The extended day reform has the capacity to transform the way students delight in learning and view their post secondary school endeavors, and for that reason, educational policy makers and administrators should give generous support public schools in order that they extend school hours beyond the normal 2 o’clock bell.

While additional hours can provide more thorough apprehension of subjects and elective classes that are customarily abandoned in compressed lessons, predicaments arise when teachers are not given higher salaries alongside their supplementary lessons, as former LAUSD Superintendent Roy Romer noted: "The cost of extending learning time--including teacher salaries and facility costs--can be considerable." Morever, students express apathy towards this reform because extending school time conflicts with their involvement in sports and youth clubs. In short, if students are repelled during the after school lessons, then the initiative defeats its sole purpose. Subsequently, educational donors began researching new strategies to motivate both teachers and students in valuing the school day reform.

Independent organizations such as The National Center on Time & Learning (at the left) and The Los Angeles-based Broad Foundation have expressed concerns about reforming public school hours nationally and have worked to ameliorate the controversies that stem from teachers and their students. The National Center on Time & Learning’s mission extends beyond bringing young people up to par; more importantly, the goal is to prepare 21st century youth for today’s demanding workforce. The organization believes that in order to ensure students in disadvantaged areas a well rounded education, they must have more time at school in a day. With supplementary hours students have opportunities to master subject matters or attain new insights from nontraditional skills. The Broad Foundation mission reads: “To train a broad, deep bench of current and aspiring leaders in education, equip school systems and their leaders with modern tools for effective management, and provide tangible incentives for educators to advance academic performance.” Their endeavors have been deemed successful in investments nationally. For example, at KIPP Charter, where more than 80 percent of students are low-income and more than 90 percent are African American or Hispanic/Latino, nearly 80 percent of alumni have matriculated to college. Unlike most non-charter public institutions, KIPP School extends its school hours by three hours on weekdays. Just last summer The Broad Foundation donated “$2.45 Million to Fund New KIPP Public Charter Schools in New Orleans,” in order to facilitate expenses that teachers and/or students require in the extended school hours.

Furthermore, Green Dot Charter, which demonstrated high academic achievements for its students, received $ 10.4 million dollars from Broad. Green Dot also believes in the extended day reform and has made substantial progress from the new program. In 2006, the charter graduated 78 percent of its students, while the Los Angeles Unified School District graduated only 46 percent. Green Dot sets high expectations, including a college preparatory curriculum for all, by implementing additional hours for instruction. They also “allocate more funding to classrooms and significantly raise teacher pay,” in an effort to keep students learning with relatively new materials and reward teachers for their ample support.

With the extension of school hours, inner city students also remain protected from violence or crime that tends to be penetrated in the community. Two recent cases in urban Los Angeles suggest that additional school hours would produce better outcomes for inner city students. In 2005, a 15-year-old girl was killed by gunfire while walking home from Locke High School. Having ample leisure after school, a student decided to use his discretion in demoralizing a bus with gang inscriptions in early February, as displayed on the right. Without the extension of school hours, students have a greater chance of being crime suspects or victims, whereas additional school hours provide students with safe environments and keep them from getting involved in crime.

Inevitably, the extended school day reform does not operate idealistically; many of the concerns arise from both students and teachers and should not be overlooked. Foremost, policymakers must increase teachers' salaries in order that supplementary lessons are accounted for. Additionally, after school lessons, in particular, should be hands-on and interactive in order that students can apprehend subject matter in an enjoyable manner. At Wisdom Academy for Young Scientists-(an elementary charter school), students practice spelling words through HORSE basketball games and incorporate arts and crafts for social studies assignments. The results from implementing the after school program are substantial because they not only enhance students' overall learning capabilities and comprehensions, but in inner cities, they protect young people from getting involved in violence and crime. By extending the school day, students will be in a safe learning environment that will enable them to strengthen their overall performance in school learning.

Charter Schools Reconstructing LAUSD: NCLB’s Downfalls are Improved through Charter Divisions

While the debate of No Child Left Behind is heating up in educational politics, likewise are the challenges that nationwide school districts face from charter innovators. There continues to be stringent criticism opposed to NCLB; opponents argue that “drilling kids with rudimentary knowledge, teaching the standardized test year round, and leaving no room for originality or authenticity,” in a terse are the most harmful consequences of the Act. Institutes that suffer the most from the law are public schools in impoverished areas. Consequently, audacious educators took the initiative to implement charter schools as a way of providing better opportunity for students coming from disadvantaged backgrounds. Furthermore, these new divisions offer small learning centers in order that each student receives 1 on 1 attention and provide parents with a variety of excellent school choices. While exploring the blogosphere, I came across two other posts that further expanded on these notions. The first is titled, “Finally, Some Real Changes in Public Education,” by a journalist of L.A Times who discusses the surpassing benefits students obtain from charter schools rather than public high schools; moreover, he mentions that the Los Angeles Board of Education handed over to Green Dot charter one of the lowest performing schools in the district, Locke High School. Displayed to the right Green Dot and Steve Barr celebrate superb decision. The latter is “Kozol on Hunger Strike to Protest NCLB,” by a LAUSD educator, who critically analyzes No Child Left Behind and describes how one educational activist fasts publicly to protest the Act. My comments for these posts can be viewed in the links provided.

“Finally, Some Real Changes in Public Education”

Comment:

Foremost, I would like to address that your title immediately drew my attention because of its ingenuousness; furthermore, its sincerity lead me to have high expectations for your blog. As a charter school teacher myself, I hinted that your post would allocate discussion to the charter division, if not placing it at the forefront of your argument. Secondly, your post was very well-composed and articulate, keeping me interested and fond of reading it thoroughly. I relished how you incorporated your own unique secondary school experiences into your argument; they were very appropriate and supplemented tangible evidence to your position. I definitely agree with your argument that charter schools are a miraculous remedy for students and parents from underprivileged backgrounds. Referencing Green Dot in particular was a very prudent decision being the non-profit organization has an outstanding reputation reflecting its great increase not only in test scores, thus fulfilling NCLB, but also in high school graduation rates and transitioning students into 4-year institutes compared to neighboring public schools. My only concern reflected primarily on athletics. Though Green Dot has been successful in many domains that traditional public schools remain unaccomplished, what happens to the various extra-curricular activities offered in public schools? Moreover, are sports and student clubs even a vital aspect of Green Dot’s entire curriculum? Extra- curricular activities, in addition to academics, remain prominent to a student’s high school experiences, if not his/her future career aspiration. Furthermore, what happens to highly gifted athletes who certainly desire good education alongside getting recruited into the University of their Choice on a full-ride scholarship? One memory that I admired at LACES but never got from my later charter high school was the great sense of school spirit being that I was one of the renowned Breaststrokers and dance team innovators. I wonder if Green Dot or similar charters consider athletics in their rigorous programs. Though athletics should not be the greatest aspect of a child’s educational structure, they do play a crucial role in the child’s overall school experience and transition into their next realm of education.

“Kozol on Hunger Strike Protest NCLB”

Comment:

Your post addresses prominent issues and you disclose cogent arguments by way of articulately presenting your views. I definitely acquiesce with your take on NCLB and Senator Kennedy’s stringent response to the bill. It is completely absurd that the Act continues to be implemented, consequently, as you mentioned, “plung[ing] urban education back to the dark ages of desegregation.” I think it is important that education activists take action on their beliefs beyond fasting like the legendary Kozol. I agree that if modifications are not made, NCLB should be discarded altogether. But after getting rid of the bill, what’s next? Though I initially opposed NCLB’s extensive focus on standardized testing owing primarily to the fact that it disallows teachers to incorporate creative teaching methods, schools could not be administered with unlimited spontaneity. A key focus on test results keeps the teachers and students, as a whole, mindful of grade-level standards that need to be acquired before a grade promotion. Furthermore, how else can educators assess kids and evaluate students' results if not through standardized testing? I consider the more salient issue to be concerning the discrepancies between public schools- how urban districts get much less resources and benefits in juxtaposition to their suburban rivals. I think you could heighten your argument by expanding on such notions. Furthermore, acknowledging that charter schools serve as a remedy for students attending disadvantaged institutes could have been a possible way of offering constructive criticism to the dilemma of NCLB. Contrary to public schools that overwhelm children with test-prepping courses in hope of receiving government funding, charter educators have applied different mechanisms and have made substantial progress in bringing urban districts up to par, and beyond. To the left, I have displayed a graphic chart as evidence to the significant results of Green Dot charter.