About a month ago, I drove into Baltimore to visit the KIPP Ujima school. If you’ve never heard of the Knowledge is Power Program, it’s a national network of charter schools located mostly in urban areas and serving primarily middle school students, though that focus is expanding.
Despite setting up shop in some of the most under-resourced communities and working with some of the most challenging students, the KIPP model has been successful where traditional public schools have not. In fact, in Baltimore, KIPP Ujima (which is named after the Kwanzaa principle of collective work and responsibility) is the highest performing public middle school in the city.
My visit, as part of an upcoming ASBJ feature, was to figure out why this was. Of course, before driving there I’d done some research and had formed some theories. I knew that the KIPP model (high expectations, results-driven, autonomy at the ground level) rested heavily on the addition of time.
KIPP kids log work days, spending on average nine-plus hours a day in school; with their teachers no doubt logging even more time than that. The extra time, I kept pressuring KIPP officials to admit, was the main reason for the better academic results.
But when I arrived at KIPP Ujima, I realized it was, as they had insisted, more than that. Though the school served fifth through eighth-grade students, I heard hardly a peep as I toured the school. The students silently walked down the hallway in single-file fashion. I learned later that the uniforms the students wore were given to them only after they had earned them, and could be taken away for any number of infractions, which included things, of course, like cheating or talking back, but also not being attentive enough in class.
It was a very different kind of learning environment at KIPP Ujima and I frankly marveled at how the staff had been able to convince all of the students to behave in this manner.
The current issue of Education Next provides some insight. In “Appeal to Authority” writer David Whitman takes a look into the reemergence and success of paternalism in urban schools, and cites the KIPP academy as an adopter of this role.
Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor
