Initial data show students at Kipp’s Life Academy in Newark are doing better than when they went to a district school

Leslie Brody:

Ask Caleb Brooks, a 9-year-old in Newark, about his old school, and he points to a scar under his left eyebrow. He says he had to get stitches after an eighth-grader shoved his head into a table.

Caleb went to Bragaw Avenue School, a traditional public school that was one of the worst-performing in a troubled city system. Enrollment was low and more than a quarter of its students were chronically absent.

Meanwhile, Madison’s one size fits all model continues, despite its long term disastrous reading results.