Earning Their Wings
Long Hours and Tough Love Turn Marginalized Middle Schoolers into Top Scholars

by Joan Capuzzi Giresi

Mike Feinberg, C’91, chuckles as he recounts the story of Abby, the hapless fifth-grader more duty-bound to her 27-inch TV than to her school work.

Founder and superstar educator behind the revolutionary KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) network of public schools, Feinberg rocked Abby’s world when he arrived at her doorstep and left with her television. Each morning after, the digitally deprived adolescent was to deposit her completed homework next to the cherished appliance, which Feinberg kept in his office, “just to be mean.”

All worked out between the principal and boob-tube princess: Feinberg returned the TV after three weeks. Abby, now a student at Texas A&M, earned high honors and became class valedictorian at KIPP Academy Houston. Feinberg’s hard-line approach is dogma at KIPP, where long hours and in-your-face discipline mingle with street-savvy pedagogies like chanting multiplication tables to foot-stomping beats. The KIPP formula, Feinberg holds, is the elusive key to improving education nationwide.

The concept began in 1993, when Feinberg and Yale grad David Levin had bottomed out emotionally during their two-year teaching commitment with Teach for America. Feeling like frustrated surrogate parents, they questioned the impact they were having on their troubled pupils who, says Feinberg, “were going off to middle school and drowning in low expectations.”

Together, Feinberg and Levin drew up a proposal for an innovative academic program that enrolled mainly low-income minority students and used unconventional teaching methods seated in high expectations, no-nonsense discipline, and a tight focus on results. Houston’s school district embraced the plan, and KIPP Academy Houston opened in 1994. A second KIPP Academy, in New York’s South Bronx, opened soon after.

Today, there are 31 KIPP middle schools nationwide —with five more, plus a preschool and a high school, slated to open this summer —all in low-income urban and rural communities. Laurie Bieber, C’93, the program’s manager of resource development, says KIPP is a needed lifeline in these communities, where concepts like college education have not become institutionalized. Top policymakers have taken notice. “ A child is a victim of an educational monopoly when he or she leaves the house,” says Congressman Ralph Regula (R-OH), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and champion of the KIPP approach. “The quality of the teachers in each child’s public school really depends on where they live.”

KIPP’s goal is simple: To give students wings to escape their fractured communities. By providing a superior education during the tumultuous adolescent years, grades five through eight, KIPP helps its students shine so they can gain admittance to elite high schools and footing on the path
to college.

Elliott Witney, C’97, principal of KIPP Academy Houston and another of the eight SAS alumni working in the KIPP network, says it’s all about teaching the so-called “KIPPsters” to be scholars in an environment that doesn’t support scholarship. “We try to take the bell curve, put it on our shoulders, and walk to the right”—bringing better educational opportunity to the outliers on the curve.

This is no easy task. For the students, it means marinating in academics. Classes go from 7:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. during the week, half days on alternate Saturdays, and nearly a month added in the summer. That’s 67 percent more time in school for KIPPsters than for their traditional public school counterparts. Add to this two hours of homework nightly, compared to the public school norm of about 30 minutes.

Emilio Gonzalez admits to frequent bouts of sympathy for daughter Leslie, a KIPP Houston eighth-grader who’s shed many tears over her academic burdens. Yet he is grateful for KIPP’s “no-shortcuts” method, which kept Emilio, Jr.—now a senior on full scholarship at a tony prep school in Virginia—busy and out of trouble.

Students, along with their parents and teachers, sign contracts committing themselves to KIPP’s high demands. Students pledge to complete long homework assignments, and parents vow to supervise them. Through KIPP’s Wall Street program (the name was inspired by Feinberg’s Wharton friends who work on “the Street” well into the night), students can—and do—stay at school until 9 o’clock on weeknights to do homework. Teachers make home visits to assist parents and provide their cell phone numbers for after-hours homework questions.

Good behavior and strict adherence to KIPP’s dress code and rules are mandatory. For social or academic achievement, students earn “KIPP dollars,” which are redeemable at the school store and on school trips. But rule violators are sent to the “porch,” a symbolic jail where they are required to wear their shirts inside-out and forbidden from talking to classmates.

Cynthia Hernandez vividly remembers the seclusion she felt the time she was porched after forgetting to have her mother sign a merit form. As part of her repentance, she had to write letters of apology to her “teammates” (what the students call each other) for behaving irresponsibly. Now a student at the prestigious Peddie School in Hightstown, NJ, Hernandez thanks KIPP for its tough love and unforgiving standards. “They don’t teach you about just academics,” she says, “but about life itself.”

At the Bronx KIPP school, every student is required to play a musical instrument. And KIPP’s “it’s-okay-to-be-a-nerd” culture has spawned book clubs, where seventh- and eighth-graders read classics like The Jungle and Jane Eyre.

Having bucked an educational system that Feinberg says stifles creativity, KIPP takes a multi-sensory approach to teaching, letting students incorporate new knowledge using their eyes, their ears, and even their noses. In developing this teaching model, Feinberg was inspired by Walter McDougall, the Alloy-Ansin Professor of International Relations, whose animated lectures—in which he would sing out of key to make a salient point—made his lessons impossible to forget.

Feinberg laments the paucity of inspired teachers. “We live in a microwave generation. That’s great for popcorn, but bad for teaching reading,” he says. “Everyone’s looking for that extra little gadget to throw into a mediocre teacher’s classroom to make them better.” The KIPP Foundation, created four years ago with a grant from Gap, Inc. founders Doris and Donald Fisher, trains educators to lead new KIPP schools throughout the country.

Whether it’s the dedicated teachers, the rigorous academics, the creative latitude, the strict oversight, or the enthusiastic atmosphere, one thing is certain: The KIPP model works. KIPP Academy Houston has been named a Texas Exemplary School all years running, and KIPP Academy New York is consistently among the top-performing middle schools in the Bronx. KIPP’s statistics also bear witness across the network: high test scores, stellar attendance rates, and, in the last five years, over $20 million dollars in scholarships at premier prep schools. Though most of the KIPPsters come from poor families—nearly 90 percent qualify for the federal breakfast and lunch programs—affluent parents increasingly clamor to
send their kids through KIPP’s open-enrollment program.

“ For every Mercedes Benz pulling into our parking lot,” insists Feinberg, “we make sure there are 10 Chevy Novas.” And, as Abby could tell you, sometimes one less TV set at home.

Joan Capuzzi Giresi, C’86, V’98, is a journalist and veterinarian.