Inside the KIPP School Summit

Jay Mathews with a great article about the KIPP School Summit:

The first thing  I noticed about the KIPP School Summit, the annual meeting of the country's  most intriguing public school network, was the food. It was cheap, simple and  abundant -- potato chips, popcorn, corn chips, juice bars, hamburgers and  fajitas available outside the many meeting rooms last week. This was fuel for  teachers half my age, about 1,200 of them, nearly all in their 20s and early  30s.
 

The second thing I noticed were the principals. Each time I  met a school leader, as they are called at KIPP, my generational surprise  alarm sounded. Forgive me, but my 62-year-old brain still thinks of principals  as men in the middle to later years of their lives. About half of the KIPP  school leaders were women. Nearly all of them were, like the teachers, also in  their 20s or early 30s, and much more representative of inner-city ethnicities  than any other school organization I have seen.

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Inside the KIPP School Summit

By Jay Mathews
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 7, 2007; 9:06 AM

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/07/AR2007080700572.html

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- The first thing I noticed about the KIPP School Summit, the annual meeting of the country's most intriguing public school network, was the food. It was cheap, simple and abundant -- potato chips, popcorn, corn chips, juice bars, hamburgers and fajitas available outside the many meeting rooms last week. This was fuel for teachers half my age, about 1,200 of them, nearly all in their 20s and early 30s.