The Knowledge Is Power Program, a charter school network widely praised for its results with low-income students in its 52 schools nationwide, yesterday announced a $100 million plan, financed by private donations, to expand its Houston operations over the next decade to serve about 10 percent of the city’s public school population.
KIPP, which has eight schools in the city, plans over the next decade to grow to 42 schools serving 21,000 students, pre-kindergarten through grade 12.
“Houston is very fertile ground to start new public schools,” said Mike Feinberg, a co-founder of KIPP, who supervises its Houston schools. “There’s a decent to good charter law, tremendous support for KIPP in the community and a very generous private sector.”
A spokesman for the Houston schools said the district welcomed KIPP’s expansion.
“It simply gives kids and parents more choices, and we think that’s a good thing,” said Terry Abbott, the spokesman. “I think it’ll make us work harder to recruit and keep students.”
With more than 200,000 students, Houston is the seventh-largest school district in the nation, and the largest in Texas.
There are 2,500 students on the waiting list for the 600 new seats that will open next year at KIPP’s Houston schools, which currently enroll 1,700 children.
Charter schools, public schools that are tax-supported but independently run, have been growing steadily since the early 1990s, with some 4,000 such schools now enrolling more than a million students nationwide. In Washington, D.C., more than a quarter of all public students now attend charters.
But charter schools are still controversial. Some parents and educators say their very existence pushes school districts to compete and improve, while others say that charters harm public school districts by drawing off the students with the most involved parents.
KIPP started in Houston 13 years ago, founded by Mr. Feinberg and Dave Levin, then two idealistic young fifth-grade teachers finishing their stints in Teach for America. Mr. Levin now supervises the four KIPP schools in New York.
More than 80 percent of KIPP students are low-income, and 95 percent are black or Hispanic. The KIPP program has built a record of increasing achievement levels and preparing students for college, with its long school days — 9 to 10 hours a day rather than the standard 6 ½ — Saturday classes, required summer school and disciplined behavioral expectations. Students are taught to sit up straight, look at whoever is speaking and follow two basic tenets: “work hard” and “be nice.”
Within the realm of charter schools, KIPP has long been a media favorite, featured on “60 Minutes” in 1999 and “Oprah” last spring.
The big question — what Mr. Feinberg calls the “Yes, but ...” — has always been whether KIPP could grow into a large-scale effort without diluting the quality of the teaching, or the promising results it has shown so far. Even some of the program’s admirers have been skeptical that it could find enough highly committed, enthusiastic and well-trained educators to become a real force for improving American schools.
Mr. Feinberg said recruiting would be important. “We have large boxes of résumés, but we do not have large boxes of great résumés,” he said. But he said he had no doubt that KIPP would find new principals who met the same standards as the current ones. “If I didn’t believe it, we wouldn’t be doing this,” he said.
KIPP said it would not change its existing policy of training new principals in a yearlong school leadership program. About two-thirds of the program’s school leaders are, like the founders, alumni of Teach for America.
KIPP announced yesterday that foundations and private philanthropists had already pledged $65 million toward the Houston expansion. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Houston Endowment, Laura and John Arnold, and Hines Interests Limited Partnership have pledged $10 million each. The Walton Family Foundation pledged $8.7 million, and the Doris and Donald Fisher Fund, KIPP’s largest long-term donor, pledged $5.3 million.
