KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Programme) Schools

Did you ever heard about KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Programme) Schools ?
KIPP is a national network of free, open-enrollment, college-preparatory public schools dedicated to preparing students in under served communities for success in college and life. The mission of KIPP is to create a respected, influential, and national network of public schools that are successful in helping students from educationally underserved communities develop the knowledge, skills, character and habits needed to succeed in college and the competitive world beyond.
Their vision is that, one day, all public schools will help children develop the knowledge, skills, character, and habits necessary to achieve their dreams while making the world a better place. KIPP began in 1994 with a powerful idea: to create a classroom that helped children develop the knowledge, skills, character, and habits necessary to succeed in college and build a better tomorrow for their communities. Founders Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin began by redefining what was possible for a classroom of public school students in Houston. The following year, they opened two KIPP middle schools, one in Houston and one in New York City. By 1999, these original KIPP public charter schools were among the highest-performing schools in their respective communities.
In 1999, reacting to the overwhelming responses to the 60 Minutes segment, a friend introduced Mike and Scott Hamilton. Scott was working with Don and Doris Fisher, founders of The Gap, to identify education-focused efforts with the potential for impact and scale. And that is exactly what Scott saw in KIPP.
With the help of Stacey Boyd (an education entrepreneur and Scott’s wife), Jessica Levin (an education policy researcher and Dave’s sister), and Elliott Witney (a teacher at KIPP Academy in Houston who would become a KIPP school leader), Scott, Mike and Dave created the plan for replicating KIPP. Their plan focused on leadership training and development, and KIPP’s Five Pillars. Don and Doris gave it their full support. Over the next five years, Mike and Scott each spent time as KIPP Foundation CEO, and worked together with Dave to design and lead the organization. In 2005, Richard Barth, KIPP’s current CEO took the reins and has led KIPP’s growth since then.
As KIPP opened new schools in more cities, expanding from middle schools to elementary and high schools, our network began helping transform futures for thousands of children and families in underserved communities. Today, the KIPP network serves nearly 60,000 students in 162 public schools in 20 states (plus D.C.) across the country.

Now, where i want to go with this? The interesting findings are underlined in the independent reports about the concept and the results of KIPP schools.

Look here at just few of them:

Who Benefits From KIPP? NBER Working Paper Series

Angrist, Dynarski, Kane, Pathak, & Walters. February, 2010.
Key findings: "The results show overall gains of 0.35 standard deviations in math and 0.12 standard deviations in reading for each year spent at KIPP Lynn. LEP students, special education students, and those with low baseline scores benefit more from time spent at KIPP than do other students."

San Francisco Bay Area KIPP Schools: A Study of Early Implementation and Achievement - Final Report
SRI International. September, 2008.
Key findings: "Bay Area KIPP students make above-average progress compared with national norms, and they outperform their host districts."

Urban School Reform: Year 4 Outcomes for the Knowledge is Power Program in an Urban Middle School
Center for Research in Educational Policy, University of Memphis. March, 2008.
Key findings: "Overall, the achievement analyses revealed fairly positive outcomes for KIPP students relative to matched control students."

Baltimore KIPP Ujima Village Academy, 2002-2006: A Longitudinal Analysis of Student Outcomes
The Center for Social Organization of Schools, Johns Hopkins University. June, 2007.
Key findings: "Even when pre-existing differences between KIPP and comparison students are controlled in statistical analyses, KIPP students generally outperformed comparison school students on achievement measures."

Opening Closed Doors: Lessons from Colorado's First Independent Charter School
Augenblick, Palaich & Associates. September, 2006.
Key findings: "Standardized test scores indicate that Cole College Prep produced improved student outcomes. This [study] reviews Cole College Prep student performance on both the Colorado Student Assessment Program (CSAP) and Stanford 10 (SAT-10) standardized tests."

San Francisco Bay Area KIPP Schools: A Study of Early Implementation
SRI International. March, 2006.
Key findings: "Students attending Bay Area KIPP schools score consistently higher on standardized tests than for comparable public neighborhood schools across grades and subjects - in a few cases dramatically so."

Focus on Results: An Academic Impact Analysis of the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP)
The Educational Policy Institute (EPI). August, 2005.
Key findings: "The Knowledge Is Power Program has posted large and significant gains on a nationally norm-referenced standardized test. This performance is true across schools and throughout the nation. The fact that KIPP fifth grade cohorts showed a dramatic increase well above normal growth rates in reading, language, and mathematics is laudable and worthy of continued investigation and practice."

Can an Intense Educational Experience Improve Performance on Objective Tests? Results from One Charter School
Musher, Musher, Graviss, and Strudler. Summer, 2005.
Key findings: "Objective testing showed that the KIPP students in this study improved remarkably in academic performance during three years of observation."

KIPP DIAMOND ACADEMY Year Three (2004-2005) Evaluation Report
Center for Research in Educational Policy, University of Memphis. October, 2005.
Key findings: "Parents remain positive regarding KIPP:DA. Parents cited the "innovative ways of teaching" along with smaller classes where teachers pay more attention to students as positive aspects"

Analysis of Year 2 (2003-2004): Student Achievement Outcomes for the Memphis KIPP Diamond Academy
Center for Research in Educational Policy, University of Memphis. January, 2005.
Key findings: "These results are clearly suggestive of positive KIPP DIAMOND Academy effects in year two, especially in view of the doubling of school size and special unanticipated challenges faced during the year."

Year 1 Evaluation of the KIPP DIAMOND Academy: Analysis of TCAP Scores for Matched Program-Control Group Students
Center for Research in Educational Policy, University of Memphis. May, 2004.
Key findings: "These results show that KIPP:DIAMOND Academy students performed directionally higher than control students on all criterion-referenced tests and norm referenced subtests."

Evaluating Success: KIPP Educational Program Evaluation
New American Schools, Educational Performance Network. October, 2002.
Key findings: "The results of this evaluation provide evidence that students' test scores improved at impressive rates after their enrollment in the KIPP schools. Of critical importance, these gains were reflected across demographic subgroups and exceeded those achieved by these same students in the year prior to their enrollment."

What it is different here is that at everyone of their students you can observe an incredible improvement of their mathematical abilities, and not only. Some of them are even going from bellow average to an almost genius level, even if this is not a very often result. What change them and made them to become mathematicians? First of all, some researches pointed out that while the students from normal and rich families background usually improve slightly during summer holidays, the performance of a children from a poor family background decrease slightly, making us wondering if this could be one of the explanation of the students from the rich family background being much more successful than their poor peers. At the KIPP schools the schedule is longer than a normal school, with fewer breaks and with difficult, achievement focused lessons. Which make me consider this as a original application of Ericsson 10.000 hours mastery study.
But enough for today, i will tell you more about this study tomorrow.