The Knowledge Is Power Program, the most successful charter school (特许学校)network, has a new official name, KIPP, and a new approach to raising achievement for disadvantaged children. In its first decade the network focused on creating middle schools that started with fifth graders two or three years below grade level and got them up to speed by eighth grade. Now it is opening elementary schools so it can start raising achievement in pre-kindergarten and kindergarten.
The thought is that by fifth grade there will be no need for hero teachers who work ten hours a day, plus summers and some Saturdays, to save kids who have fallen so far behind. There will be less stress on staff and more hope for kids.
It makes sense. But I see a problem. What happens to the many fifth graders who are still far behind but find the doors to KIPP, or any of the other successful charters, are closed because they filled those classes back in pre-K and kindergarten
The most effective regular and charter public schools have been experimenting with every promising way to rescue kids who have reached middle or high school still unable to read and write well enough to study independently. If they no longer need to deal with struggling older children, we have lost a great resource for figuring out how to help them.
KIPP co-founders Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin said they share my concern about their new approach freezing out middle schoolers who need them and promise to admit older students if their families continue to enroll them.
Susan Schaeffler, a leader of KIPP, said she took in kids at every grade level this year, and looked for ways to raise them to KIPP standards. KIPP is too small to ever be the savior of inner city schools, but it can help the regular schools that must play that role see how they might do it.
According to the author, what is the problem with opening elementary charter schools instead of middle schools