The private educational organization KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) announced this week that it has picked the Twin Cities as a site for an expansion school in 2008. The 12 year old KIPP schools and curriculum are designed to close the achievement gap between white and low-income minority students. KIPP was profiled in an article in the New York Times Magazine on Sunday that describes both the successes and controversies surrounding the program. Though some analyses note that kids enrolled in KIPP may have economic or family advantages as compared to their local peers, and others complain that public schools can't replicate KIPP's program due to lack of funds, as far as I can tell, no one disputes that KIPP is achieving considerable success at educating their students. Kids in KIPP schools spend 62% more time in school than peers in their districts. 79% of KIPP alumni are in college, as compared to 48% of high school seniors from New York City and Houston schools. Performance of KIPP students on standardized tests is as good as or better than their peers in many school districts, and a few KIPP schools are the highest performing schools in their districts or cities (though one can debate the value and appropriateness of standardized tests). The introduction of a KIPP school in the Twin Cities is clearly good news for those kids who will get to be in the program.

School choice and quality remain contentious subjects, and the debates about funding and testing will probably be rehashed next year when No Child Left Behind comes up for renewal. (Side note: Minnesotans led the charge on charter schools, as we live in the first state that passed charter school legislation, in 1991.) One of the most important benefits of the introduction of charter schools is that the pace of innovation in our educational system has greatly increased in the past 15 years. 131 charter schools are currently operating in Minnesota. Although academic success at these schools is varied, they have a highly diverse range of methodologies and focus areas to learn from. One of the most interesting-looking schools that I found in a quick perusal of MN charter schools was the Great Expectations Charter School in Grand Marais, MN. This school says they use a framework called “Environment as an Integrated Concept for Learning� (EIC), meaning that kids reinforce their lessons in basic academics by getting involved in their local community. This means that when kids at Great Expectations are learning about geology, they take trips to the North Shore to see and identify the geology of their home. Cool. Not only that, but there are troves of other ideas out there that are ripe for harvest, like those of KIPP, or the San Francisco Green Schoolyard Alliance. From what I can tell, these programs help kids gain mastery of the technical skills (e.g. literacy and math) they need by making them important and relevant to their lives. Here’s hoping that we continue to innovate and improve our educational system, such that our kids grow up to be highly creative, technologically proficient, industrious, thoughtful, critically-thinking and sustainably-living grown-ups.