 "Photo: Courtesy of Ethan Pines")
The primary mission of Washington University is education—education of undergraduates, graduates and adults. For years, this mission has extended past the University’s walls in an array of tutoring and other community service programs. Soon, a new, ambitious project will be added to the list: the Knowledge-Is-Power Program, or KIPP.
KIPP is a nationwide network of public charter schools which focuses on at-risk students. The program emphasizes academic immersion: classes last from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. every weekday, every other Sunday, and three to four weeks out of the summer. Parents are required to sign a “commitment to learning” pledge which extends the classroom into the home. Teachers give their cell phone numbers out to students.
Details are sketchy. The school will not be official for another three months, and its relationship with the University is still largely theoretical. However, according to Rob Wild, assistant to the chancellor, “What we are going to give to this project is time and attention.”
Wild is the self-described “worker bee” between Dean Eddie Lawler, the project’s academic leader, and Dean Hank Webber, its administrative leader.
Also preparing to take a new job is Rosalind Davis, the principal of the new school. She will begin her intensive mandatory training in the spring, and she will determine more precisely the details of the school’s relationship with the University.
Some may wonder why this gestating project is so important to Washington University. Already a number of groups and projects on campus assist public schools in St. Louis. Each One Teach One, Science Outreach and Service First are only a few of the popular programs.
Wild insists, however, that because programs like Each One Teach One are so well-entrenched, and because KIPP is such a unique format, this addition will not be competing for time or resources with anything else.
The tiny size of the school, with only 300 children, selected by lottery, will also lighten the commitment.
“We have a pretty active and engaged student body,” he said. “We’re going to find ways, whether through tutoring or other means, to get students involved.”
According to Wild, the University has very compelling reasons to assist in the KIPP project.
“It is a fundamental part of our mission that we serve the community in which we live,” he said. “Washington University has a stake in what happens in St. Louis.”
Wild cited a Washington University tradition of civic consciousness, especially when it comes to education. Teach for America, an organization which recruits recent graduates to teach high school in under-served populations, remains the University’s highest volume employer year after year. Wild, who attended the KIPP national meeting in July, also reported that an alum, Glenn Davis, recently received the designation “teacher of the year.”
As much as students and faculty may want to think so, no program will be a solution to the complex problems with public education in this country. KIPP schools have problems of their own: teacher and student retention rates are very low, which leads to accusations of “creaming,” or skimming the cream off the top of their selection pools and thus skewing the final evaluation.
Wild flatly denies any wrongdoing in KIPP leadership, but he does admit that much more needs to be done to create real change.
“This is a school that will be around long after you’re gone and I’m gone, and it will be a project that will evolve over time.”
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