March 20, 2007, 12:54AM
KIPP academy takes a big step
By JENNIFER RADCLIFFE and ERICKA MELLON
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle
The Knowledge is Power Program — the much-touted national charter school network born in Houston more than a decade ago — will unveil a $100 million plan today to expand its number of schools here fivefold, creating a system that could rival the Houston Independent School District.
Within a decade or so, the Houston chain would grow to include 42 charter schools with 21,000 students, a huge jump from the 1,700 students who currently attend KIPP's eight area schools.
The large number of campuses — more than many suburban districts, including Spring and Galena Park — would give KIPP ample enrollment to prove whether its success at preparing some of the nation's poorest students for college is just a fluke, advocates said.
"Someone's got to step up and do it. Frankly, why not KIPP? Why not Houston? Why not now?" said Mike Feinberg, co-founder of the KIPP charter school system, which serves 12,000 students at 52 schools nationally. "Houston is very fertile ground in the country to do this work."
The expansion could test the basic tenet of the charter school movement: Will the influx of KIPP schools drive bad schools in the Houston area to get better, or will it force some of them to close?
KIPP's initial plan is to expand to 16 elementary, 16 middle and 10 high schools — drawing low-income, at-risk students from several districts, including HISD, Alief and North Forest.
Before enrolling, students and parents must sign contracts committing to KIPP's rigorous demands: longer school days, class every other Saturday and three weeks over the summer.
Some HISD school board members said they welcome the competition and additional choices for parents, while acknowledging that some of HISD's less popular schools could be in trouble.
"The market has become competitive, and we need to shape up," trustee Larry Marshall said.
Touted by Oprah
A 1995 Texas law paved the way for charters, publicly funded schools that don't have to comply with as many state mandates as their traditional counterparts. Today, roughly 70,000, or 1.6 percent, of Texas' 4.5 million public school students attend one of 438 state-approved charter campuses. The majority of them are located in inner cities.
KIPP's campuses have been among the state's most successful. Its flagship Houston middle school, for example, earned a "recognized" rating in 2005-06, a rare accomplishment for an urban middle school.
More than any other public charter school system in America, KIPP has been held out as a model for others to follow. The hype surrounding KIPP, with its mottos such as "Work hard. Be nice" and its ability to raise test scores for low-income children, reached its zenith last spring when Oprah Winfrey featured KIPP during a special report titled American Schools in Crisis.
That type of exposure helped KIPP in the "quiet" phase of its fundraising effort, which collected about $65 million in less than eight months. That's the largest collective donation in the history of the charter school movement, KIPP officials said.
"KIPP is an easy sell," said Leo Linbeck III, a Houston executive and an adjunct business professor at Rice and Stanford universities. "Their results are pretty spectacular, not just in Houston, but around the country."
Linbeck estimates that at least 40,000 more children will be entering school in the Houston area over the next decade — plenty, he said, to sustain KIPP and HISD.
"There's no reason to think this is going to be a battle for a fixed market share," he said.
Charter schools already hold about 15 percent of the market share in Houston, but KIPP's expansion plan will mean that one chain is serving 10 percent of children.
"It's a big deal. It's huge," said Todd Ziebarth, a researcher with the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. "Those are significant numbers for one charter school network to have in a state, let alone a city."
Advocates will watch to see how HISD — a shrinking district whose enrollment sunk below 200,000 this year — responds to the pressure, he said.
HISD already has made several efforts to appeal to parents — creating specialized magnet programs, a popular gifted program and opening its own charter schools.
"If we learn from (KIPP's expansion), then it will be great for the district," said HISD trustee Harvin Moore, a former KIPP board member. "If we continue to treat them as if it's us against them and make excuses for why they do better than some public schools, then we won't learn from them."
HISD school board President Manuel RodrÃguez Jr. said he wishes philanthropists would invest their money in the traditional public school system.
"This is private monies, and I'm sorry they're not coming to the public school system," he said. "It would be my hope that all the different facets of the community could come together and work to make the public school system better."
While charter schools are public schools, RodrÃguez contends that they don't face the same funding shortages, high number of state and federal mandates, or struggles to get parents involved as HISD.
The schools also will be vying for the best teachers. KIPP expects to hire about 1,000 over the next decade, and a spokeswoman said the salaries are about 20 percent higher than those at traditional districts, though teachers work more hours.
Steven Seleznow, program director of state and district partnerships in education for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said HISD shouldn't see this expansion as a knock on the traditional public school system.
"Our aim is to lift all boats," he said of the Gates Foundation, which donated $10 million to the effort. "Our aim is to create more and better public, free options for parents and children who need them the most ... We're not at all abandoning HISD in any way."
Other donors include the Walton family of Wal-Mart fame, and Laura and John Arnold. John Arnold, 33, is a former Enron energy trader who now runs Houston-based Centaurus Energy.
Public school options
HISD's high dropout rates and other shortcomings are driving parents to explore their options. About 2,500 Houston students are on KIPP waiting lists, about five times the number of new students KIPP schools can accept next year.
"I don't want to keep telling them 'No,' " Feinberg said.
The expansion will begin with two middle schools opening this summer: KIPP Sharpstown Academy in Sharpstown and KIPP Polaris Academy for Boys in North Forest.
Houston resident Sharon Simpson, whose children and grandson have all attended KIPP campuses, said she's thrilled that more families will have choices other than traditional public schools.
"To me, it's like a dream come true," said Simpson, whose oldest son was so dismayed at the idea of Saturday school that he purposely forgot to bring the KIPP enrollment form home.
Still, Simpson was sold on the charter school's rigid discipline and tough academic standards.
"This is one of the best decisions I've ever made," she said, adding that her first-grade grandson is already learning Spanish and rattling off vocabulary words like "altered."
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