A Miracle in the Making?

The Washington Post's Jay Mathews continues to be one of the best writers about KIPP, though I don't know why he expresses any skepticism about what KIPP SHINE Prep's kindergarteners are doing -- I've seen them myself and the educatational "miracles" are the same that KIPP's been achieving for more than 10 years...

Let us stop here for a word of caution. I have not visited KIPP SHINE Prep myself, though I plan to soon. Skepticism is in order. Accounts of educational miracles, like most otherworldly events, are usually wildly exaggerated -- akin to that image of Elvis your neighbor swore he saw on his frosted windshield.

But I have been watching Bowen and her colleagues at the KIPP DC: KEY Academy, a public charter middle school on M Street SE, since 2001, when it was originally housed in an Anacostia church basement. To my surprise, the school has turned out to be as successful as they said it would be.

I love this line -- hear, hear!

If education in America were treated like professional football, guys would walk around in jerseys bearing the last name of KIPP DC executive director Susan Schaeffler, instead of Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger.

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A Miracle in the Making?
KIPP turns its efforts toward elementary schools

By Jay Mathews
Sunday, April 2, 2006; W20

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/28/AR2006032801334_pf.html

Laura Bowen wants to create the best elementary school in the District. That doesn't seem very realistic, considering that she is only 28 and that the public school will be located in one of the city's poorest neighborhoods. But the KIPP charter school instructor has had success teaching low-income middle school children in Washington, and she saw something at a new school in Houston recently that convinced her the project is not as nutty as it might sound.

Bowen visited KIPP SHINE Prep, a 1 1/2-year-old charter elementary school housed in a collection of portable classrooms in southwest Houston. Seventy-eight percent of its students are Hispanic, 21 percent are African American, and 98 percent come from low-income families. Often kindergartners in such schools struggle to recognize just a few letters of the alphabet. But when Bowen sat down with a SHINE prekindergarten class last November, several 4-year-olds rushed up and asked her eagerly, "Can I read you a book?"

And they did. The books had lots of pictures, and only a few words per page, but the kids were reading them. They knew not only all their letters, Bowen says, but all their word sounds, and they could read simple stories only three months after they had arrived at the school...