Ventures in the News
Given the great work they are doing, our portfolio ventures are regularly featured in local and national news. Click on the links below to read recent articles showcasing their achievements.
Schools experiment with paying kids
WASHINGTON (AP) - Friday is payday at KIPP DC: KEY Academy, and some sixth-grade girls gather at the makeshift school store trying to decide how to spend their hard-earned money. They received paychecks for behaving well, doing their homework or making academic gains. The money is pretend. But it can be used at the store for genuine items such as pens capped with fluffy feathers, pencil cases shaped like animals and colorful erasers. Schools, under pressure to boost student achievement, are offering incentives - field trips and cash, for example - to motivate students. At KEY Academy, a public charter school serving low-income, minority students in the nation's capital, Cherise Johnson Wallace proudly clutched a pencil case she bought at the school store. She was glad to have the trinket, but even happier about what it represented. "It shows how I work very hard to earn good grades," she said, flashing a smile as she rattled off the A's she had earned. That kind of pride is what supporters of rewards programs point to. They say the prizes motivate kids at first, but that the children eventually form good study habits and become interested in succeeding regardless of whether rewards are on the line. The charter school's principal, Sarah Hayes, is a believer. KEY Academy is among the city's top-performing schools, as judged by test scores. "I think a lot of that is tied back to our incentives program because it reinforces to the students that our expectations of time on task are serious and that you get rewarded for them," Hayes said. (Associated Press via The Washington Post)
Alameda County judge upholds statewide charter school decision
ALAMEDA--The State Board of Education's decision to authorize a statewide public-school charter that bypasses local officials' input wasn't an abuse of authority, an Alameda County Superior Court judge ruled this week in dismissing a lawsuit. The California School Board Association's Education Legal Alliance sued the state board in October, claiming the board had overstepped its authority in January 2007 by approving Aspire Public Schools' petition to create "statewide benefit" charter schools; Aspire has opened schools in Stockton and Los Angeles under that charter. A 1994 law allowing such a charter - issued without local approval or oversight - requires the state board to make a formal finding, based on information provided by the applicant, that it will provide "instructional services of statewide benefit" that can't be provided by a charter operating only in one district or county. (Oakland Tribune)
Hope for Locke High: Finally, education leaders are signaling that they mean business at the troubled L.A. school.
LOS ANGELES--Locke High School is on the verge of a transformation that didn't come quite soon enough to prevent this month's melee involving hundreds of students. Behind the brawl were decades of neglect by the Los Angeles Unified School District. But the swift response by the new school leaders in town -- charter operator Steve Barr and the district's No. 2 man, Ramon C. Cortines -- brought a seeming promise that the inertia is coming to an end. Locke has long exemplified the underachievement and safety concerns that ail L.A.'s inner-city schools. Now, preparing for a takeover by Barr's Green Dot Public Schools, it might become a model of how dramatically a student-centered approach can buoy a foundering school. Already, Barr speaks with encouraging specificity about what it will take to make his students secure and to educate them better: buses to ensure safe passage to and from campus; breaking the school into smaller academies, each with its own cafeteria and staggered lunch hours to limit the number of students loose on campus at any time; a building-trades academy with a college-prep curriculum; engaged teachers who aren't averse to patrolling the campus if it keeps students safer and saves money for, say, reducing class sizes. Barr is even looking for oak trees to provide more hospitable spots on campus where small groups can gather, instead of the single shady zone where hundreds now crowd together and any toe-stepping can easily get out of hand. (LA Times - registration required)
Against Odds, New Orleans Schools Fight Back
NEW ORLEANS--It is little more than a collection of prefabricated steel-and-wood classrooms floating in a no man’s land by the highway, and its vague location and bootstrap atmosphere sum up the problems and promise of the big education experiment now under way in this city nearly three years after Hurricane Katrina. There is no gym and no auditorium at Carver, and at breaks the school’s 350 students congregate on unshaded strips of concrete between the trailerlike boxes. Carver’s only context is ruin — it sits across a field from the flooded-out pre-Katrina Carver High — and yet it is trying all over again, with new teachers and new methods, at what largely failed before the storm and immediately afterward: educating its students. Carver High is hope’s challenge to bleak circumstance. And it is beginning to meet that challenge. Though there is disorder in many classrooms, there is also learning going on, amid the struggle. In an English class taught by Courtney Stuckwisch, the searing hard-times images of a Langston Hughes poem touch a chord, and the students look up eagerly. … “There’s a recognition that it matters who’s in the building,” said Sarah Usdin, founder of a nonprofit here, New Schools for New Orleans, which is playing a leading role in formulating policy. “They have to perform.” Citizen-run boards have suddenly been thrust into managing individual schools all over the city. Neophyte teachers barely out of college instruct students sometimes older than they are. A wide range of teaching styles has been employed, from the rotelike call-and-response methods of the KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) Foundation school to more traditional textbook-based approaches. For the first time, parents are being asked to choose schools for their children (though in many cases the parents are absent, and the student is being raised by relatives). (New York Times – registration required)
Charter Schools To Receive Multimillion-Dollar Boost
NEW YORK - Charter schools that have been struggling to find homes in New York will receive a boost today from the Bush administration, in the form of a multimillion-dollar grant.Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings is presenting the award to a local group that finances, constructs, and renovates charter school buildings, Civic Builders, Inc. The money will be used to aid building efforts in New York City and Newark, N.J., charter schools, according to sources familiar with the grant. Both the New York City schools chancellor, Joel Klein, and the Newark mayor, Cory Booker, will be on hand at today's announcement. … Civic Builders helps charter schools construct and lease buildings that are separate from public facilities. With the help of private philanthropy, it has transformed a Bronx parking garage into a 43,000-square-foot school and a kosher salami factory in Hunts Point into a school with an arts specialty, and built a 90,000-square-foot school complete with a 10,000-volume library, a climbing wall, and a rooftop athletic area in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. The grant is part of a federal program aimed at making it more attractive — and less risky — for philanthropists to invest in charter school construction projects. The Bush administration has already awarded more than $175 million in grants to similar projects across the country, according to Education Department grant lists. (The New York Sun)
Editorial: DPS should cooperate with successful charter schools
DETROIT - The Detroit Public Schools sees charters as its biggest threat and fiercest competitor, vying with the district for the same students and the state per-pupil funding that comes with them. But there's no reason the two can't work together for the good of Detroit's children. The best charters could teach the city's public schools much about how to successfully educate disadvantaged urban students. The newest trend in the charter movement is "coopetition" -- part cooperation, part competition. Los Angeles, New York and other cities leading school reform see it as one of the most important developments in education, with the potential to boost student performance in every kind of school. Detroit, with its public schools rapidly sinking, would be irresponsible not to accept what help the charters have to offer. The district should consider teaming with leading charter schools -- University Prep Academy, Henry Ford Academy and others -- to quickly improve existing schools and open great new ones. That pathway is radically reshaping New York City's educational landscape. Four years ago, NYC Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein attracted a few of the most successful national charter networks -- KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program), Achievement First and Uncommon Schools -- to come to the city. He rented schools to the operators for a dollar a year and challenged them to produce better results. They did. Now, New York's schools, both public and charter, are working together to improve teacher training and student performance, and pooling resources to get the best results for their money. The new schools' test scores are hitting the top of the math and reading charts. The model easily could be adapted in Detroit. The district has empty school buildings that could be rented to charters to expand education options in the city. (The Detroit News)
West Valley area students ditch junk food at lunchtime
CALIFORNIA - Back away from the potato chips and put your hands up! Students fear this scenario when they hear that schools are taking fatty fried food off the hot lunch menu. But schools are well aware that some students may boycott hot lunch food altogether - stuffing their backpacks with Twinkies and Hostess Ho Hos - if lunch consists of fresh fruit, salad, tofu and sugarless fat-free-organic yogurt. Tofu, especially, is not so tough in the arena of tasty food. What does it take to convert students to eating fresh food (without force-feeding them and banning the word "yuck" from their vocabulary)? Several public schools know the answer. The Los Gatos Union School District and Saratoga Union School District, as well as Leadership Public School Campbell on the Prospect High School campus in Saratoga, have hired food companies that are making even tasty food healthier. LPS Campbell also converted its menus, with 50 to 75 percent of its food being organic. For a snack, students can grab yogurt and an apple or a granola bar and organic string cheese. The school hired Revolution Foods, a company that strives to provide fresh meals. The company, which was founded in 2006, purchases fresh fruits and veggies from local farmers and changes its menu based on what is in season. … "We know that there's a problem in our community with obesity," said Soozee Park, the operations director at LPS Campbell. "Sometimes nutrition education is lacking in our community. We thought Revolution Foods was an excellent alternative to what is out there. It's a little more expensive because organic food and hormone free food is more expensive. But, the value that we receive from this program is greater than the incremental cost." (San Jose Mercury News - registration required)