New Teacher Jolts KIPP
But one of the secrets of KIPP's success in attracting the brightest young teachers and raising achievement for low-income children throughout the country is its insistence on letting good teachers decide how they are going to teach. KIPP principals, such as Johnson, have the power to hire promising young people such as Suben and let them follow their best instincts, as long as the results -- quality of student work, level of student classroom responses, improvement in standardized test scores -- justify the teacher's confidence in her approach.
Johnson and Schaeffler were variously startled, amused and intrigued by Suben's determination to do math her way. They say they are also very pleased with the results, which justify both the hiring of Suben and the KIPP insistence on lively engagement of every child in class.
By Jay Mathews
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 19, 2006; 10:44 AM
When Lisa Suben took a job last year as the fifth-grade math teacher at the AIM Academy in Southeast D.C., she was told her lessons had already been prepared for her. AIM was the second charter school founded for low-income D.C. students by KIPP, the Knowledge Is Power Program. KIPP had gained a national reputation for math instruction. The KIPP leaders in D.C. had good reason to think, as they told Suben, that "we have math pretty much figured out."
posted by Whitney Tilson at 4:10 PM
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