Business Week ran a slightly different version of the Bloomberg story about KIPP (http://edreform.blogspot.com/2010/01/speaking-of-kipp-bloomberg-had-glowing_22.html) that I sent around a couple of weeks ago:

Touring a branch of the Knowledge Is Power Program in southwest Houston is like dropping into an underage executive boot camp. The building houses three KIPP charter schools spanning pre-kindergarten to 12th grade—each one a showcase for motivational tactics. The youngest kids wear shirts emblazoned with "Class of 2024," the year they plan to start college. Classrooms are named after Yale and other top colleges. Fifth graders chant their multiplication tables in unison. And the corridors of the middle school are lined with slogans such as "No Shortcuts."

The resemblance to executive training—an intense, communal focus on goals—is no coincidence. KIPP's two founders, Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin, drew lessons from some of America's top companies, including Gap (GPS), FedEx (FDX), and Southwest Airlines (LUV), as they built the program. Both men graduated from Ivy League colleges, and both are alumni of Teach for America, a New York nonprofit that funnels college grads into two-year teaching stints in poor neighborhoods. They and many of their principals have also taken business school classes. "KIPP school leaders are small business owners in many respects," says Elliott Witney, the chief academic officer of KIPP's Houston schools, who keeps a copy of Jim Collins' Good to Great in his office.

Started in 1994 as an experiment with 50 fifth graders in Houston's inner city, KIPP has blossomed into the biggest U.S. charter school operator, with 82 schools for poor and minority children in 19 states. The Obama Administration cites KIPP schools as models for some of the education reforms it hopes to spur with $100 billion in stimulus money. The program has gotten "remarkable results from students," Education Secretary Arne Duncan told Bloomberg. It helps kids "who didn't really have a good work ethic start to become extraordinarily successful."

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