I have been following the progress of KIPP public charter schools since 2001. Initially this charter network was just one story out of many. But when its first school here, the KIPP DC: KEY Academy, began performing better than Northwest Washington schools with many middle class children, I made it a regular stop.
I also spent time with the network’s founders, Dave Levin and Mike Feinberg, visited about 40 of their other schools and wrote a book about KIPP, “Work Hard. Be Nice,” published in 2009.
This summer there are 125 KIPP schools with a total of 39,000 students in 20 states and the District. Eighty-seven percent of KIPP students are from families poor enough to qualify for federal lunch subsidies. Fifty-nine percent are black and 36 percent Hispanic.