News

In an effort to boost college completion rates, national charter organization KIPP and Notre Dame de Namur University have partnered to enroll 15 local high school graduates in the Belmont school in the next few years.

KIPP and Washington University St. Louis partner to help more students get to and through college. The university pledged to meet all demonstrated financial need for all KIPP alumni who meet the academic rigor required to enroll.

The White House recognized eleven individuals from across the country as "White House Champions of Change for College Opportunity" including a KIPP New Jersey alumna, A'Dorian Murray-Thomas.

Here in Oklahoma City, a debate is underway about the expansion of a charter school called KIPP Reach. While KIPP is only one school in our city's public school system, I know that allowing KIPP to expand could have an enormous impact for children in northeast Oklahoma City.

The district asked KIPP, an established charter network, to take charge starting with last school year. Turning around a failing school in a poor, high-crime neighborhood is notoriously hard, but initial data provided by KIPP suggest that relaunching the site as Life Academy, for kindergarten through fourth grade, is paying off. "Before there used to be chaos," said Caleb, a fourth-grader. "Teachers didn't push us to persevere. Now they do."

A trip to the doctor's office on school grounds was made possible for the first time this academic year for children at the KIPP Ujima Village Academy and its sister school, KIPP Harmony Academy, under a new model for a school health clinic that offers more extensive medical services than the typical nurse's office.

As teachers do when creating daily lesson plans, I start to think from my students' perspective. I am engulfed by a tidal wave of fear. My fury grows. The realities of my white privilege violently collide with the social consequences of growing up in a poor, inner-city neighborhood. It felt as if the police stopped us with the intent to intimidate. While my interaction with police has always been positive and safe, it was not so for my students. Some as young as sixth grade have been harassed by police. How would I cope and grapple with this reality every time I walk outside? How do they? I can only imagine the persistent anxiety of mothers of black boys across this country.

...As a South Bronx native, I easily could've been a statistic myself. But last month I received my diploma from Syracuse University. I just started my first full-time job as a financial analyst.Why did I succeed where so many of my peers did not? Two reasons: my mother and my guidance counselor.

I find my planning works a bit like a giant pinboard. There are a lot of ideas that I want students to understand, and there are threads between them that connect and intersect in a brilliant geometry.