3 Things At Once

It’s hiring season so I’ve been doing a lot of talking to prospective teachers recently about what we do and how we do it. A lot of what I say I’ve been saying for the last 4 years – I talk about our mission of sending kids to and through college, about our focus on developing student character, about the teamwork our staff shows each day, as just a few examples. But I’ve found myself coming back to an idea that’s always been implied in my conversations about KPEA, but that I’ve been making more forcefully this year.
  
My teachers and I are trying to make a school that does three things:

• We take in all kids (enrollment process held up as a model in Philly. 88% F/R lunch, 21% SPED rate)

• We keep our kids (2% student attrition or less each year, no expulsions) 

• We are creating a great school (strong academic growth and achievement on multiple assessments, high family satisfaction) 

Why do I keep coming back to this set of ideas this year? Like I’ve written about before, not all charter schools and ed reform leaders think doing these things are important and as a result, it’s more and more important that leaders in the charter movement who believe in serving all kids are vocal about what we do. With more and more school choice options, it’s our obligation to make sure teachers, parents, and policy leaders understand who we are and what we stand for. If folks outside of our organization are confused about what we do, it’s on us to do a better job explaining what we care about.

Awesome 1st grade artwork

I’m also talking about these ideas because I want our new teachers to know that doing all three is really, really hard! I want them to know that part of working at KPEA means embracing the challenge of having crazy high expectations for kids while working with students who have special needs, behavior challenges, or tragically sad home lives. If you’re not at least a little crazily idealistic this might not be where you want to work. Our teachers celebrate when we get 92% of our kindergarten students reading on/above grade level. But we celebrate even more when one of the students who came to us not knowing any letters finishes the year almost on grade level and starting to read.

As every single person who works at KPEA would tell you, doing all three of these at the same time is really hard and we don’t always get it totally right. There are many, many things we’re working on doing better, like student behavior on buses, building student vocabulary in a more coherent way, and making this work more sustainable for teachers, to name just a few. But we have no interest in making a school that gets great results by only taking in the “best” kids. Or getting great results by getting rid of the “bad” kids. Or a school that tolerates not great results because our kids are “hard”.

We can take all kids, keep our kids, and have a great school. We can and must do all three.

Tyranny of the Anecdote - An Experiment

Part of being a manager/boss, is knowing how the people who work for you are doing. Are they happy? Are they feeling successful in their work? Any major personal challenges that are popping up? Any conflicts with folks on their team? Any conflicts with you? In other words, you need to have your finger on the pulse of your team because knowing how people are doing and feeling lets you take action to address any concerns or reinforce what is working.

That was easy for me to do when KPEA had 8 staff members, a little bit harder when we had 17, and pretty much impossible now when we have 26 team members. Even though I’m active and present throughout the school each day and talk to pretty much everyone on staff at least quickly each day and even with all managers having regular check-ins with everyone on staff, it’s impossible for me to really know how every single person in our building is doing.

While I have to keep trying to know how people are doing as best as I can, I need to understand that any feeling I have for overall staff satisfaction is at best a guess and at worst, in incorrect guess. Not only are there tons of people in the building having very different experiences each day, I’m also very aware that whether I have a “good” or “bad” day has little to do with everyone else’s. When you’re in a leadership role, you spend a lot of your time dealing with the challenging conversations and hard situations. I may have a “bad” day because I have two hard parent meetings and am dealing with an extreme student behavior issue that sucks up two hours of my afternoon. But those situations may not impact the other 25 folks in the building at all. And of course the opposite is equally true.

So what to do? One thing is to get past the tyranny of the anecdote and get some more objective data. All KIPP schools do this every January in an in-depth way with a network-wide survey to every teacher that asks a whole bunch of questions about everything from overall satisfaction to recruitment to training. We also do smaller surveys throughout the year as a region and/or school. But these are still pretty big picture and infrequent so I’ve been experimenting with something new – using quick, daily surveys. Teachers answer one question each day – how would you rate today on a scale of 1-5? We use the website polleverywhere.com so teachers can answer that question by going to the website or by texting (think voting for American Idol). In short, I’m trying to see each night, how teachers felt about that particular day.

I’m looking at this very much as an open-ended pilot – I don’t have any idea what the data will show or what I will do with it, but figured it could be interesting to see. We’ve been doing this for about the last two weeks and I have two big take-ways so far:

• The overall satisfaction for each day is within a pretty narrow band – no real extreme highs or lows. This is true even though the days we’ve polled have included field trip days, days when we have a bunch of teachers out, and totally regular days. There have been days I thought would have scored lower that haven’t and vis versa.

• Within each day, there are wide variations among teachers, which makes sense. For almost every day, there are teachers who have horrible (score of 1) or bad (score of 2) days and other people on the same day and in the same building who have great (4) or amazing (5) days. This is obvious, but seeing those extremes has been a good reminder that trying to generalize “how people are doing” is impossible with any degree of precision.

We’re going to keep the experiment going at least for a few more weeks to see if more trends start to emerge. I’ll keep you all posted.

My Typical Week as a KIPP School Leader

So you want to be a KIPP school leader? Good, because it’s a great job and I don’t think I could love any job more than this one. 

But you probably have lots of questions and one of them might be just how hard this job is and what kind of hours you’re going to be working. I don’t think I’ve seen a good breakdown anywhere of what a typical week looks like for a KIPP school leader, or really any charter school principal so I figured I would share what a typical week looks like for me.

Before we dive in, here are a bunch of caveats:

• This is what my week looks like and I’m sure there are school leaders who work way more than I do and some who might work less. I can only speak for myself.

• I’m in my third year doing this so I’m hopefully more efficient at my job than I was in year one and I can work fewer hours. 

• I have two young sons so my schedule naturally revolves around my family more than other folks.

• Sustainability for teachers and leaders is a key initiative at KIPP and has been a big part of our work at KPEA since we opened. Our staff culture overall is way less intense than some other KIPP schools so you’ll see that reflected in my schedule. 

• There really is no “normal” week in this job, which is part of what makes it fun but I tried as best I could to capture what is most typical in a week.

Weekend:

• I work for 3-4 hours on either Saturday or Sunday morning (but not both) sending out the staff Weekly Memo, setting up my observation and coaching meetings, responding to emails from the end of the week, and setting my weekly objectives.

• During nap time or after the kids go to bed, I probably work another 4-5 hours over the course of the weekend. I make it a point during the weekend and on weeknights to never do work when the kids are awake.

A Typical Workday: 

• I get up around 6am most mornings and am at school between 6:45am and 7:00am. I live 8 minutes from the school which makes the morning commute pretty easy. 

• From the time I get in until kids start arriving at 7:30am, I’m informally checking in with teachers, having scheduled coaching meetings, or meeting with parents. 

• From 7:30am to 8:00am I greet our kindergarten students as they are dropped off in our parking lot. Our Assistant Principal or Director of Operations greets our 1st and 2nd graders as they get off the bus at our front entrance. This is one of my favorite times of the day because I get to spend some informal time with other staff members on drop-off duty and see so many of our kids and families excited for the day. We do this outside greeting even in the rain, ice, or cold weather so that our kids and their families get to see a smiling, familiar face each morning as they come into the building no matter what. 

• 8am-11:30am – During the morning hours I am doing one of a hundred things. I’m doing instructional walkthroughs of our classrooms, observing teachers, handling students sent to the office for misbehaving, talking with families, meeting with leadership staff, giving tours, teaching classes for absent teachers, etc. Every single day is different, but it’s pretty much non-stop one way or another. I try to squeeze in 30 minutes of work time each morning, but that doesn’t always happen. 

• 11:30am- 1pm – Our students eat lunch in three shifts during this block and I try to be in the cafeteria for a good chunk of this time so I can check in with specific students and help teachers help our kids make good choices at lunch (no, that’s not how we eat our oranges). 

• 1pm-4pm – More teachers have their planning periods during the afternoon so I tend to have more coaching meetings during this time. I normally have about 5 teachers I’m observing and meeting with each week, on top of meetings with school leadership members. I also have regular meetings with regional staff like our CEO (to talk about everything since he’s my boss), the Director of Finance (to talk budget), and our Director of Talent (to talk hiring). I also teach more often in the afternoon when teachers have to leave early for appointments or because of child-care needs.

• 4pm-4:15pm – This is our dismissal time and I’m in the cafeteria with our 150 1st and 2nd graders making sure they are getting on the right bus. This is a complicated process especially since some students have differing routines on different days. My role is to make sure students are all in the right place and following instructions while teachers take attendance for each bus before walking them outside. 

• 4:15pm-5:15pm – We have a variety of after school meetings happening during this hour. Depending on the day, it could be a grade level meeting, a staff meeting, intervention/student support meetings for a particular homeroom, or nothing at all. These meetings happen on a rotating schedule with most teachers having 2-3 meetings per week. On days that they have no meetings, they can leave as early as 4:15pm. One of the great things about being in our third year is most of these meetings are led by other great leaders in our building and I get to sit in as a participant or pop into a variety of meetings like on Mondays when all of our grade levels have their weekly meetings. I lead our staff meetings which happen every other Wednesday. 

• 5:15 – 5:45ish – After meetings wrap up, I might have a meeting with a teacher or informally meet with our Assistant Principal to debrief the day. I try to leave the building by about 5:45pm so I can be home by 6pm. Sometimes it’s earlier than this and often it’s a bit later, but I’m almost always home by 6:30am unless there is some special event like a prospective teacher open house. 

• 6pm-9pm – Family time! I get home, eat dinner with my wife and kids, and then play with my 2 year old and almost 4 month old for a few hours. They’re normally both in bed by about 9pm. Like I wrote above, I don’t do any work while they are awake. 

• 9pm-11:30ish – Depending on the night, this is time for catching up on some cheesy TV shows with my wife, responding to emails from the day, or planning for an upcoming meeting. I try to be in bed by 11:30pm, but that doesn’t happen too often.

So that’s my week. I’m sure some folks are looking at it and thinking working about 70 hours a week is crazy, while maybe others are thinking that doesn’t look too bad. All I can say is that at this stage in my life, this works for me, my family, and KPEA. And that working this many hours can be a lot of fun if you love your job. 

One of My Favorite Books

If you're reading this piece, you've probably already read the great NYT piece on three college students from Galveston, TX and their bumpy road trying to not only make it to college, but to graduate. Lots of smart people have already responded to the piece and there's not much more that I have to add. But the piece did contain some quotes from a UPenn sociologist named Annette Lareau who wrote one of my favorite education/parenting books, called Unequal Childhoods. This is my pitch to convince you to read it.

• Lareau's work is grounded in hundreds of hours of field work with real families from a variety of races and classes. These rich experiences allows her to get past easy stereotypes, pop-psychology analysis, and judgement rooted in classism and racism that often mar these important conversations. In other words, she's not Ruby Payne.    

• The thesis of the book is that different social classes (and because of the segregation inherent in our American society, different races) raise their children in different ways. This argument verges on stereotyping, but Lareau walks this delicate line really well in the book. To summarize a complex argument, Lareau finds that poor and working class families parent with an idea of "natural growth" where kids are basically who they are and a parent's main responsibility is to keep them safe and happy. On the other hand, middle and upper class families practice what Lareau calls "concerted cultivation" where parents take an incredibly active role in bringing out the potential of their child. As a quick example, a child from a parent from a poorer family will likely only sign up her son for the age group basketball team if he really asks to, while a parent from a middle or upper class family is likely to sign a child up for the basketball team even if the child isn't that interested because it will be "good for him". Middle class families are looking for how to develop their kids and prepare them for what's next, while lower income families are more interested in kids being happy kids.

• Where the book is so valuable is Lareau's steadfast even-handedness in comparing and contrasting the two parenting styles and the effects of each on children. Wealthier families expose their children to more cultural experiences, advocate for them more in school, and sign their children up for more organized sports or dance classes. Children from poorer families have much closer relationships with their families, are less stressed out from constantly bouncing from activity to activity, and learn to be more independent at an earlier age. While both styles of parenting have their advantages, Lareau argues (like she does in the NYT article) that the skills wealthier children learn, like being able to advocate for yourself to get what you need from large institutional systems, are better matched with what is needed to be a successful adult in the United States in 2012. In other words, kids from more affluent families are taught to play the game. 

• When I read this book with my educator hat on, I think about things like how to teach my students to have the confidence that will allow them to go to the financial aid office at their college when they think something is wrong with their bill or how to engage our families at KPEA so we make our school a place they feel confident asking questions of teachers and being a real partner in this work. As a parent, I think about how not to be some of the more affluent families in the book, who are full of busy, unhappy adults and kids running non-stop from activities they think will give their children an "advantage" in life. I think about how to help my children have the right amount of self-confidence without being entitled. I think about how to make sure they have the unstructured time to just be a kid.

I've barely done justice to the book and the deep implications for parents, teachers, and school leaders. I can't recommend it enough. 

First Year Teachers and First Time Parents

As often happens, I’m following in Mike Goldstein’s wake. In this case, Mike and associates had a couple of really good posts a few weeks ago on some of the challenges for teachers at this time of the year – challenges that are even greater when you’re a new teacher. His posts inspired me to write an email to the new teachers at KPEA that I’ve edited slightly for clarity below.

For context, here are some of the cast of characters:
Bri – my wife
Max – my son who is almost 21 months old. That's him below in his Halloween costume.
Owen – my newborn



I’ve been thinking a lot about how different having a second child is than having a first. While having Owen at this age is no walk in the park – no newborn is – it’s so much easier than when Max was this age. With Max, Bri and I literally had no idea what to do. You leave the hospital, where you are surrounded by nurses and doctors at all times and after two days you go home, where you have each other, some advice books on the shelf, and our own parents on the phone.

So to repeat, we had no idea what we were doing. What if the baby isn’t feeding? He’s sleeping a lot, is that ok? He’s not sleeping at all this afternoon, what’s up with that? What is that noise that just came from his diaper area? That can’t be normal – but what if it is? Is that rash getting worse? Is that sound normal? Why is he crying all the time? Are we supposed to feel this exhausted? Should the umbilical cord have fallen off by now? How do you give a newborn a bath? Do you really need to? Why is he crying – and not stopping? He has a fever, but is it high enough to be worried?

Dealing with the actual challenges is bad enough, but what is worst is the fact that you have nothing to compare it to you. This is your first child and making sure he is healthy and happy is sort of a big deal, so of course you worry. And you simply don’t have the experience to know if that rash actually is a big deal or something that will just go away. And you don’t have the context to know that there are going to be days and nights when a 3-week old cries a lot and there's not much you can do to stop if, but that it will get better.

Making any connections to being a new teacher? As you’re well aware, being a new teacher is hard and one of the hardest parts is that you don’t have experience or context that you’ll have in the future. It can be hard to tell how to handle every situation you’re going to face, what situation is a big deal (and which just seems that way), or have the confidence that a challenge is going to get better. And just like being a new parent, when you don’t know the answer and don’t know what to expect, new teachers get worried and stressed.

New teachers start to feel this more in October and November, as the honeymoon phase wears off and you begin to see some of the more long-term challenges you’re facing. Yes, that student really does have really loud tantrums on a regular basis, teaching at the end of the day is challenging, and weekends don’t ever seem long enough. And you start to worry about if those challenges are ever going to get better and if the issue is something you could be or should be doing better. And what makes it even harder is you don’t have the experience to know what it’s going to be like in two weeks or two months.

I hate to break it to you, but there is no fast forwarding to get the experience that you’re craving. There is no way to take the accumulated wisdom that fills the brains of our veteran teachers on staff and pour it into your heads. You only get that wisdom and experience by living it each day, learning from what goes well (and doesn’t) and stealing great ideas from those around you. 

What can you do in the meantime?

• Know that this is path that millions of teachers have taken before you including everyone else on staff. Every single first year teacher has wondered if something they are struggling with is going to get better. Every single one.

• Learn something each day. The good news is you don’t have to wait until next year to grow – each day you get another chance to take a new approach or try something again. Not to mention, each day is a chance to learn something from your mentor teacher and other staff. You will have more experience, knowledge and confidence two weeks from now and even more in two months. And just wait till next year! 

• Use the people around you. Bounce ideas and thoughts off your mentor teachers, your grade level chairs, Betsy (our AP), me, each other and anyone else on staff. Every single person around you would love to help you think through a challenge but we can only do that if you let us. Part of what makes the Co-Teacher program work is we don’t kick you out of the hospital after 2 days with your new students. You get to be surrounded by experts all year long – so make sure you’re using them. 

• Remember the Stockdale Paradox that Marc (our CEO at KIPP Philly) talked about at the all-region session this summer. We need to be honest with what is going well and what is not, but to never lose faith that we will reach our goals. Don’t be afraid to admit that something isn’t going as well as you want, but never doubt for a second that with hard work and clear thinking it will get better.

And as a former new teacher and now as a former first-time parent, I can tell you that this uncertainty and doubt about what is coming next gets better. With Owen, we don’t worry because we know that really is what he sounds like when you burp him after a feeding, that he is going to be wide awake from 11pm-1am each night, and that you don’t actually need to give a kid a bath for at least a few weeks.

In the same way, trust that this period of uncertainty will pass and you’ll soon know what’s normal, what’s not, and what to do about it. And as you work to build that experience, keep doing what you do every day so well, which is help our kids start their climb up that mountain to college. You all are doing a great job and I can’ wait to see what’s next for you all.  

Year 3!

Our kids are about to go into the third week of our third year at KPEA. A couple of cute pictures and facts about our third year:

• Our founding class of students is now in 2nd grade and while 2023 (the year they go to college) still seems miles away, middle school feels just around the bend.

2nd graders working hard and looking so mature!

• We're now up to a full-time staff of 25, including our first ever reading specialist and full-time speech therapist.
• After 16 months, construction on our building is just about done and our 2nd graders have moved upstairs into the newly renovated section of the building. 

The Class of 2023 during their lesson on using the stairs. Because we have stairs now!

• Thanks to KaBoom! our kids will be getting an awesome playground in early October as the final part of the conversion of an old warehouse into a sparking school for kids.

• There are now over 300 students on our kindergarten waitlist, which while flattering, means that there are hundreds of families trying unsuccessfully to get their children into a better school. This will hopefully be the year we start another KIPP elementary school in Philadelphia and double the number of kids we can serve.  

• Even with all the changes, the core part of the job stays the same. Over half of our new kindergarten students have such low literacy knowledge that they aren't even at a pre-reading level. A bunch of our students know less than 5 letters and can hardly hold a pencil to write their name. But if we can duplicate the success of our first two years, over 93% of our students will be reading on grade level by the end of kindergarten.

•  Our kids are pretty adorable :)

1st graders at recess putting on a puppet show

A Few Sometimes True Arguments and Some Facts

This post is about what I believe regarding charter school enrollment policies, comparisons with district schools , and other touchy subjects. I’m writing for myself and not for KIPP or KIPP Philadelphia.

There are lots of people who don’t believe in or like charter schools. They believe all kinds of things about what charter schools are like and why they are bad for American education. Working at KIPP for the last 7 years, I don’t agree with many of the critiques I hear, but there are more than a few that are rooted in fact. Here are some of the ones I believe are at least sometimes true: 

• Some charter schools play games with what kind of students and families they take in

• Some charter schools play games with what students they keep and who they kick out

• Some charter schools have mismanaged public monies, or worse, intentionally redirected money meant for kids to enrich school administrators.

• The distinction between charter schools and district schools doesn’t tell you anything about the quality of the school. While studies have shown different things, there is no doubt that many charter schools do no better than district schools. 

• Some charter schools aren’t transparent with what happens in their buildings or what happens in the back offices. The current system of charter oversight in Philadelphia, with a well-meaning but small staff in the charter school office looking over 80+ charter schools is not sufficient.

• Some charter schools only care about high test scores and teaching to the state test 

• It’s too hard to close charters where kids aren’t achieving or are mismanaged

• Too many people look to charter schools as a silver bullet that will “fix” urban education.

But just like the still developing cheating scandal in the district (and yes, in some charters) doesn’t offset all the good things happening in many district schools and the hard work of thousands of teachers, the actions of some charter schools do not mean that all charter schools are trying to destroy the school district, make money for corporate interests, or impose a separate and unequal school system designed to prepare the urban poor for a lifetime of low-wage work. I don't know what happens at each charter school in Philadelphia, but I know what happens in the one I run. And none of the sometimes true attacks I listed above are what happens at KIPP Philadelphia Elementary Academy (KPEA), the school I founded in 2010.

Too often when I read education websites, blogs, and comment sections I see people on both sides of many issues repeating the same talking points without having as good an understanding of all the facts on the ground. This is as true of debates about the Common Core standards or phonics instruction as it is of charter school conversations. Just like with Middle East politics or figuring out why my wife is mad at me, a key first step in these education debates is getting all the information out on the table. While this is just the first step in having a productive debate, we can then at least have a conversation about the same set of facts and maybe even find some common ground.

So I’m going to try to do my part and give some information about how some anti-charter arguments stack up to the facts on the ground as I see them at KPEA. Before I begin, three caveats - to be clear, facts are never without interpretation so I expect that some will argue with my facts. I’ve tried to be as objective as possible but I’m obviously not a neutral observer here. Secondly, this is the information that I know best because it’s about the school I work in each day and the details are going to be different at every charter school even within the KIPP network. Finally, I can’t attempt to answer every criticism of charter schools in one post so I’m focusing on what I hear the most.

Charter schools play games with what kind of students and families we take in

At KPEA, our enrollment form is one, single-sided page that simply asks basic demographic information like address, phone number, and date of birth. Our open enrollment period is for two months (February and March) and no additional information is required for a child to be entered into the lottery other than the one-page form. No special in-person meeting, no bringing in proof of address, no essays, no report cards – nothing. We distribute these enrollment forms to locations where we can find lots of families in our neighborhood – places like community centers, Head Start centers, corner stores, and supermarkets. We go door-to-door in our immediate neighborhood handing out our information. The enrollment form is available online. We also host three voluntary enrollment Open Houses during our open enrollment time for interested families to see the school, observe classes, and ask me questions. It’s totally optional, but we think it’s important to provide a chance for interested families to see the school they want to send their child to.

As a result of our open process, our student population is reflective of the communities we serve, with over 85% of our student qualifying for free or reduced meals and over 20% of our students having an IEP, including more severe challenges like intellectual disabilities, autism, and Down’s syndrome.

Charter schools play games with what students they keep and who they kick out

Many people know that at KIPP, we do home visits to meet our new students and families before they start school. This happens after they are admitted and is basically an orientation to school that happens at the student’s home because we feel that this is a really effective way to start to build a strong home-school connection. This meeting has zero impact on which students are admitted. To be absolutely sure that all our families understand this, the very first thing I say to families when we sit down is “Relax, this is not an interview. Your child already has a spot.”

Our goal is to keep 100% of our students each year and for as many of our students who start with us in kindergarten to stay at KIPP for the next 13 years until they go to college. In our two years at KPEA, we have never kicked a student out and hope we never have an incident serious enough that this would have to happen. This doesn’t mean we don’t have hard kids, because we do. We have kids who were absent over 40 times in a year, students who were physically violent towards teachers, and students who were frequently defiant. But we don’t get rid of those students (this is no doubt easier for us as an elementary school than it is for both district and charter schools with older students because serious incidents are simply less extreme when kids are 6 and 7). When students are really challenging we just work harder to figure out how to meet their needs. Because we don’t get rid of students who are struggling and because our families are satisfied, our yearly student attrition rate has been under 2%.

Charter schools only care about high test scores and teaching to the state test

First, the caveat that our oldest group of students are only now in 2nd grade and won’t take the Pennsylvania state test until next year. But our students do very well on commercially available reading assessments like STEP and F&P and the nationally normed NWEA MAP assessment. At KPEA we believe a core part of our mission is to give our students the academic skills to succeed and this included rigorous literacy and math instruction taught in a student-centered way. This looks like students getting phonics for 30 minutes per day in small, leveled groups. It means students get small group guided reading four times per week and lots of time for independent reading and literacy centers. And it also means 70 minutes of math each day that includes at least 30 minutes of math centers. But we know if we are really serious about developing our students to be the kind of people and learners who can be whatever they want in life, that success in reading and math is necessary but not even close to being sufficient. 

Because we have a longer school day (8am-4pm) we have more time to fit in great core academic instruction with the “extras” that are so essential for elementary kids that calling them “extra” doesn’t do their importance justice. All of our students have 30 minutes of recess each day. All students have science or social studies for 45 minutes per day. Kids have art, Spanish, and gym each week, starting in kindergarten. Our kinder students have nap – real nap with cots, blankets, and (optional) stuffed animals. We have special education teachers in every grade, a full-time speech therapist, and part-time occupational therapists and social workers. We go on three field trips a year. Students put on extravagant musical performances. We teach character education classes focused on social skills and values. In other words, we try really hard to give our students the well-rounded education that families pay lots of money for. My goal is to make sure that KPEA is a place I would want to send my 18 month old son when he gets older and I know we're on the right track because there are multiple KIPP staff who send their own children to KPEA.

Charter schools aren’t transparent with what happens in their buildings or what happens in the back offices

One of the many reasons, I’m really proud to work at KIPP Philadelphia is because of our strong stance around transparency. We have created a special section of our website called Open Book where anyone can find information on our board, our budgets, school leader salary scale and tons of other topics. We’re a public school and the public deserves to know how we operate. And at KPEA we also have a literal open door policy at our school. Our families can come into our building to observe classes anytime they want, no appointment needed. We hosted between 50 and 60 visitors last year from other schools, foundations, and community groups and never said “no” to anyone. We’re proud of what we do and happy to share it with others. 

This post isn’t mean to show anti-charter advocates that they are wrong – because in some important ways they are right. It’s not to show that we have things figured out at KPEA, because I have a long list of what we’re working to do better this year. It’s simply to say that there is too much at stake for all of our kids to not find common ground where it exists and part of that is for everyone – myself included – to do more to engage with the real issues. That starts with getting down to the ground level to learn what is really happening in all of our schools, no matter the type. Please contact me if you’d like to visit KPEA. We’d be happy to have you.