KIPP Report Card

KIPP's annual Report Card was released today. Check it out here. Here's why the report card is pretty cool.

1. Being transparent about our successes and our challenges is something we try hard to do well at KIPP, both nationally and at KIPP Philadelphia. The Report Card is a big part of this initiative because we publish tons of data about each of our schools and regions. We're proud of almost everything in the report, but we don't hide the information that we're not so happy with. We've taken this even further at KIPP Philadelphia, where we now publish everything from bios of board members to lease agreements for our buildings to our salary scale in the Open Book section of our website.   


2. Just like looking at a student's report card demonstrates what the school thinks is important enough to measure, the KIPP Report Card measures what we as an organization think matters most. And unlike what some critics may say, what matters at KIPP is way deeper than state test scores. The report contains information about our student attrition, staff retention, and the success of our alums in college, among other measures. 


3. This is the first year that KPEA is included! We're on pg. 112 if you're curious. 


4. Rowena Lesher, one of our amazing kindergarten teachers is highlighted in the report (pg. 11) and in a video on the report's webpage. Besides being a phenomenal teacher, Ro is the only person I know who has been a founding teacher at two KIPP schools, which is no small feat. 


5. Besides having one of our teachers featured in the report, a KIPP West Philadelphia Prep student named Brooklyn is highlighted in the Report Card and in the video on the website. She taped this interview when she was only in 6th grade and she's already a way better interview subject than I am. 


6. As always, the report looks cool, with vivid infographics, stunning photos, and a great overall design feel. Big props to fellow TFA Bay Area '03 corps member Rachel Young who creates the report for KIPP Foundation.


7. I love skimming through the report and being reminded of the scope of the work that we do at KIPP. It's sometimes hard to visualize what it means that we have 109 schools all across the country, but flipping through page after page of school reports (and seeing the great things happening in these schools) makes the power of our collective work incredibly tangible.

A Culture of Practice

In a previous post I laid out our big picture thinking about student culture and since I often get asked a version of “what do academics look like at KPEA?” I thought it made sense to lay out how we think about instruction at KPEA. Where we start at KPEA is not going straight to what purchased curriculum we should buy, but with bigger picture ideas. Just like I believe strongly that we need a point of view and an approach about hiring and student culture, a school needs to have a common understanding of what great instruction looks like and how kids learn. We use the term “Culture of Practice” to describe what this means at KPEA.

Carnegie Hall- Our visual anchor for Culture of Practice

The idea of a culture of practice means that we believe students will make dramatic academic progress when three key conditions are met: students have lots of time practicing skills and engaging with the material, the work is at the correct level for each student, and teachers give lots and lots of feedback to students. The corollary to these ideas is that just because you taught something doesn’t mean students have gotten it and kids don’t learn by osmosis. Kids need to be taught in an intentional way – and then they need practice those skills until they have mastered the concept.


What does this mean for our instructional programming? Lots of things:

• We maximize the amount of time that students are actually doing things. We try to limit carpet time to no more than 1/3 of each lesson so 2/3 of the time can be spent with students practicing and applying what they have learned. In reading, this looks like over an hour of guided reading and literacy centers (computers, phonics practice, buddy reading, etc.) each day so that students have guided almost every day. In math, this means a quick mini-lesson and then it’s students working individually or in small teacher-led groups to practice the daily skill and then cycling through math centers to review previously taught objectives. In writing, we use a workshop approach where students are doing authentic writing each day. In art class, students create their own sculptures, paintings, and collages. During Spanish, students sing songs to review basic vocabulary, draw and label family portraits with correct terms, and match which animals live on the farm or in the savanna.

• We make differentiation a part of what we do in every lesson so that students are working with material that is just the right level for them as much as possible. We use our reading data to place students in guided reading groups and then we adjust groups and objectives every three weeks to make sure we’re still hitting the right level. In math, we use our interim assessment data to identify students who need extra review and they get in-class small group instruction multiple times each week. We split students across all three homerooms for our word study (phonics) part of the day so that we can create up to 7 differentiated groups, ensuring that all students are mastering the key phonics skills they need and are pushed when they are ready. In kindergarten, we use different kinds of writing paper because we know that while some students are ready to write 2-3 lines of text, others still need larger spaces and handwriting guide lines to help them correctly form letters. Our special education teachers and reading specialist work with students who need even more individualized practice.



• The feedback part of the equation is where we have been working hardest this year to get better. A lot of our work has been done with guided reading since it’s the most important part of the day if we want our kids to become great readers. We’ve done about 15 hours of professional development on guided reading this year, with a lot of the focus being how to coach and support readers, going all the way down to the level of what prompts are best for when a student gets stuck on a certain kind of word. Teachers have also been working super hard on the delicate balance of how to guide and support students without simply giving them the answer. This means thinking hard about where the breakdown in learning is taking place, how far back you need to back-track, and what questions you can ask to help students get unstuck.  Our staffing plan and schedule are built around the idea of putting as many great teachers in front of our kids as possible because you can’t give good feedback as a teacher if you’re not working with small groups of kids. In both our kindergarten and 1st grade classrooms we have two highlight qualified teachers working with our students all day and both teachers are teaching all day. Both teachers are pulling guided reading groups, leading small math groups, conferencing with students about their writing, etc. By putting all our specials in the afternoon, I created a schedule where our “specials” teachers don’t just teach art, gym, and Spanish, but teach reading, word study, or math in the mornings. I and our assistant principal frequently teach guided reading, word study, and other subjects. 

This is just the beginning of how we think and what we do, but having a clear central concept is so important as a guiding tool because it gives us guidance as a school about what to focus on. For example, we’ve made a small but important change to the kindergarten schedule to increase the amount of time students have for independent reading. We’ve formalized our reading interim assessment schedule this year so that we are doing F&P running records every three weeks (combined with STEP assessments every 12 weeks) so that we are making sure to adjust reading groups frequently. And lots of the lesson plan feedback teachers get is around finding ways to increase the number of “at bats” a student gets to practice a skill.

If you want to see more details of what we think about instruction, check out our instructional vision document and our 1st grade schedule, both hosted at the KIPP Philadelphia website. 

On Trayvon

As the leader of a school that is 95% African-American and whose job it is to see my students make it to and through college, the killing of Trayvon Martin has been on my mind often the past few weeks. The killing of a 17 year old boy who was only armed with a bottle of iced tea, a pack of Skittles, and a hoodie has that effect on you, especially when the local police refuse to do anything about it. My students will look just like Trayvon in about 10 years and as this tragedy shows, just looking like Trayvon or Brandon or Joshua or Nadir can be dangerous, even in 2012.

In trying to wrap my head around what happened and what it meant, I’ve read a whole bunch of amazing writing about this case. The piece that is staying with me most is this one by Danielle Belton. It’s long and it’s intense and it’s personal. And that’s why you should go and read it right now. One excerpt in particular hit home, where Belton is writing about the advice that black parents give to their children:

That if we're just "good" we'll be safe. If your son doesn't listen to hip hop, goes to the church camp, gets A's and Bs in school, is polite, says "sir" and "ma'am," if he's a good kid, he'll be safe. That's the bargain black parents make with their children. 

If you are "good" the gangs and the violence and the racism won't get you. You will be safe. You will live to see 25. You will have a great life. Opportunity will abound for you. We will be proud of you. The community will be proud of you. You will be Barack Obama and Michelle Obama and life will be beautiful if you just want it enough. 

Just be "good." Be good, Trayvon Martin. Stay in school. Listen to your parents. And you'll be safe. 

But that's a lie.

I’m not black and my own little boy does not look like Trayvon. So I don’t understand the full intensity and heartache that Belton feels as she writes these words and I can’t pretend to. But the promises that all parents want to make to their children are similar to the ones I make to my students and their families every day. If you work hard, you’ll achieve. All of you are going to college and that’s where you learn to be anything you want to be in life. If there is a problem, we can find a solution. If you’re nice and you treat others with respect, they will do the same.

But this is a lie too. The full tragedy of the killing of Trayvon Martin, combined with the recent violent death of KIPP students in Houston and New Orleans, is that this lie is smacked across our face in a way that we can’t ignore. Being “good”, playing by “the rules”, and having families and schools do everything right isn’t always enough. At our little elementary school, we can teach our students to read above grade level, write beautifully, and master math skills their peers will learn in middle school. We can teach them to be good friends, solve problems, and treat others with respect. But that makes no difference if the wrong person thinks they look suspicious walking home one dark night.

That fact is inescapable and it’s depressing. There is no getting around how sad this fact is. But the killing of Trayvon demonstrates more than ever the necessity of what great teachers and schools do. There is injustice in this world and it’s not going away any time soon, but the only way to counter injustice, ignorance, and intolerance is through education and love. The hardest part of my job is that I can’t shield my students from the hard reality of the world around them, just like Trayvon’s family couldn’t keep him safe. As hard as it is sometimes, this is all the more reason that everyone working in our school needs to work as hard as humanly possible to make what happens inside our building as good as possible for our kids. We need to be building the intellect, character, and imagination of our kids during every single one of our 197 instructional days. Not because it’s going to change everything, but because it’s the only way we can change something. 

Ribbon Cutting, Part II

The official video from our Ribbon Cutting a few months ago is now available. Check it out below!

Getting Things Done

While I'm a very structured thinker, I'm not by nature a super organized person. I don't organize my closet by color, in fact, you're more likely to find my dress shirts on the floor in a pile than on hangers. When I was a young teacher, my desk would be overflowing with stacks of papers that were organized in no other system other than there was no system. This worked well enough as a teacher and I saw myself in opposition to people who I felt were too organized and fixated on their binders, planners, and filing systems. In short, I thought being organized had to do with what kind of person you were and had little to do with how effectively you did your job.

And then I read Getting Things Done by David Allen. The book and overall concept are nicely summarized in a piece in The New York Times this weekend, so go read that if you want to understand the main idea. While I've implemented lots of the key ideas that Allen writes about, the biggest impact his writing had on me was in changing how I think about organization. To Allen, being organized is not the goal. The goal is getting things done and accomplishing your goals. Organization and certain habits help you to be more effective. This seems obvious, but it had a profound impact on me because having a system for remembering important deadlines or learning how to deal with lots of email no longer was about if I saw myself as an "organized" person. It become about how to execute effectively so I would be good at my job.

While being a school leader takes instructional chops, strong people skills, and the ability to build relationships with families, you can't underestimate the necessity of being able to put your vision into reality. Not every school leader needs to love Getting Things Done, but every good school leader needs a system to make sure they are working as effectively and efficiently as possible.

Never Forget This Lesson

The finale of Top Chef was last week. The two finalists' task is to make an amazing four course meal for the judges and 100 guests. Since both chefs are cooking at a super high level, even one small mistake can be the difference between winning and losing and earning the $125,000 grand prize. To help the chefs out and build dramatic tension, the producers have brought back chefs eliminated earlier in the competition to serve as sous chefs. One of the finalists, Paul Qui, is doing well halfway through the meal, with the first group of judges raving about his food. Then he realizes that one of his sous chefs has overcooked the last batch of a key dish. Not a single one is properly cooked and there's not time to make any new ones, meaning he's going to have to serve the second group of judges food he knows is not his best.

As frustrated and disappointed as he is, this is what he says of his assistant chefs, "I can't be mad at him, because I'm the one who trained him how to cook the dish."

This is super obvious, yet super profound if you're someone who manages other people. And so important not to forget.

Big Goals and Big Smiles

8 things that are awesome about this picture:

1. Each of these students has made at least a year's worth of reading progress in 2/3 of a year. 
2. Each of these students is reading on an end of kinder/beginning 1st grade or higher reading level 
3. The kids and their families were so excited to walk into school and see their pictures on the Big Goal poster hanging above their classroom door that morning.
4. Birthday crowns and pieces of bulletin board border make great foundations for Big Goal hats. 
5. Kids with no teeth are particularly adorable! 
6. Students take naps in their Big Goal hats and try to wear them day after day 
7. One of the best things about working with kindergarten students is the effect of great teaching is so clear. Some of the students in this picture could not rhyme words, identify letter sounds, or write their full name when the year started. Now they're reading level "E" books, segmenting 4 sound words, and writing complete sentences. And we still have 3.5 more months of school left for them to learn even more.
8. The kids are SO happy and SO proud of their hard work!