Printer-friendly versionAt the KIPP Philadelphia Charter School on 27th and North Broad Streets, the eighth grade English room is named for Penn, the alma mater of its teacher, Elizabeth O'Flanagan, C'97. Each of the students inside has won a highly competitive lottery allowing him or her to be in school over nine hours each weekday, on alternate Saturdays and for a month of the summer. All are African-American or Hispanic; some travel for up to an hour and half each morning to make it to class by 7:30 a.m. They dream of attending the country's best high schools and colleges, and thanks to the Knowledge is Power Program, these dreams are likely to come true.
KIPP was the brainchild of two Teach For America corps members, Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin, who were both teaching fifth grade in Houston in 1992. Feinberg, a 1991 Penn alum, said that the two roommates felt like they were making progress with their first groups of fifth graders, but noticed that their formerly well-behaved kids reverted to truancy, drugs and gang activity once they left their classrooms and advanced to middle school. Unlike their colleagues, Feinberg and Levin were unwilling to lay the blame on the schools, the district, the students, their families, society or anyone else.
"We had this epiphany," says Feinberg. "We had to look in the mirror and know who to point the finger at. We sat down at the computer all night long in late '93. and by 5 a.m. we had KIPP on our screen."
In a "desperate desire to be part of the solution," they based the program on their strong belief that there are no shortcuts in education. They wanted to work hard and become the best teachers they could be - and then train others to follow their model.
For Feinberg, Teach For America was supposed to be a short commitment between college and law school. But he decided not to leave until he had made a truly lasting positive impact. "Sixteen years later, I'm still working toward that," he says.
The program was up and running by the summer of 1994, when Feinberg and Levin met the Houston school board's requirement of recruiting at least 50 fifth graders by going door to door. Watching their kids hurry back into the classroom after lunch on the very first day, they knew that they were on to something.
During the early years, they were part of the Houston school district, moving from school to school, wherever there was room for the growing program. They encountered opposition from just about everyone - the school district didn't understand what they were doing, principals denied them access to facilities like auditoriums and many local businesses rejected their appeals for financial support.
"Plus, not to mention, we were young and white. What did we know about working with kids, especially in underserved communities?" Feinberg says, echoing a common objection to their project.
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