- KIPP Schools Named Winner of 2014 Broad Prize for Public Charter Schools [KIPP PCS mentioned]
- Closing Schools While Opening Charters: Lessons Learned From Philly, Chicago
KIPP Schools Named Winner of 2014 Broad Prize for Public Charter Schools [KIPP PCS mentioned]
Education Week
By Arianna Prothero
July 1, 2014
KIPP Schools is the winner of this year's third annual Broad Prize for Public Charter Schools, besting two other well-known charter networks, Achievement First and IDEA Public Schools.
The winner was announced here at the 14th Annual National Charter Schools Conference.
The award honors charter systems in urban areas that are improving performance and closing achievement gaps between minority and low-income students and their white or higher-income peers. To the victor, goes $250,000 to spend on college-readiness efforts for its students, such as scholarships and campus visits.
KIPP plans to share the award with the other two finalists to create a scholarship fund announced Eric Schmidt, a school leader in one of KIPP's Houston campuses, who accepted the Broad Prize on behalf of his organization.
KIPP opened its first two schools in Housten and New York City in 1994, and since then it's grown into a national network of 141 public charter schools which focuses on college preparation. To determine the winner, the Broad Prize review board looked at data on student outcomes, scalability, size, poverty, and demographics.
"With 50,000 students—larger than 99 percent of school districts in the country—KIPP Schools is providing a quality education to low-income students and students of color on a scale that naysayers of public charter schools thought was impossible," said Bruce Reed, the president of the Los Angeles-based Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, in a statement.
The Broad Prize for Public Charter Schools is the sister award to the Broad Foundation's Prize for Urban Education, which recognizes traditional public school districts. KIPP and Achievement First were both nominated last year as well, though neither won. The honor went instead to New York City-based Uncommon Schools.
Closing Schools While Opening Charters: Lessons Learned From Philly, Chicago
Education Week
By Arianna Prothero
July 1, 2014
Closing a school is politically difficult and emotionally charged, but shutting down a traditional public school in a district with an expanding charter sector is especially tricky, and community members often feel left out of the process.
How to handle these situations and minimize conflict and public pushback was the topic of a panel at the 14th annual National Charter Schools Conference in Las Vegas. Stakeholders from Philadelphia, Chicago, and Washington weighed in on their experiences in districts where this has taken place, and I grabbed a couple of them after the session to ask for their advice based on the lessons they've learned.
"I think that any school closure decision that is blind to quality and performance is wrongheaded," said Andrew Broy, the president of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools. "If it's just about utilization rates and abstract enrollment numbers, I think that's the wrong approach because then you're adding capacity when the professed reason for the closure was utilization."
Last year, Chicago shuttered around 50 "underutilized" schools in basically one fell swoop.
Broy says it is essential when closing a school to have a plan to transfer affected students into better schools, a best practice echoed by Danielle Floyd, the director of capital programs for the Philadelphia school district, who says people respond better to a trade-off that ultimately benefits them.
Since 2005, Philadelphia has closed approximately 48 traditional schools but only 10 charters. The tension between the sectors and among parents is further exacerbated by the fact that traditional public schools in Philadelphia are usually shut down within a single school year, while charters are given three years from the time the decision to close the school is made to when they're actually boarded up.
In order to ease the potential conflict, Floyd says districts need to be very transparent and deliberate about their intentions. Conversations with the public should not focus on why a school is being closed, because the district has made its decision, but rather on how it should be done right, says Floyd. "How do we, at the end of this, walk away where families, students, parents, and teachers can say, 'you know, this process was successful because I was able to provide input.'"
Finally, charter school operators looking to move into an area where the traditional public school has been closed have to understand and be sensitive to the context, says Broy.
"School closings don't happen in a vacuum. They happen in neighborhoods," says Broy. "What charter advocates sometimes miss is that if [...] you live in a neighborhood where jobs have gone away, and there's violence, and there's disinvestment, the decision to close a school has a different sort of impact. So we as the charter community have to think carefully about how we engage these communities."