Learning curve

LYNN -- The newest public middle school in this mostly working-class town 11 miles north of Boston is a small six-room annex at the rear of a church. Its playground is an empty parking lot. There's no official gym, no theater, no science lab, no lockers, no room to spare. Yet for the 77 Lynn families who sent their fifth-graders to the brand new KIPP Academy charter school this past August -- a month before classes began at regular public schools -- this place is a godsend. The Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), a national network of 38 public schools across the country, has been widely acclaimed for its success putting underserved students on the path to college. Started in 1994 by two former Teach for America teachers, KIPP's flagship schools in Houston and New York City continue to outperform their district counterparts, and in the last 10 years each has risen to become one of the top-performing schools in its district.

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Five months into their first year at KIPP Lynn, students are at home in their new classrooms. The atmosphere is one of quiet concentration, thanks to KIPP's strict standards of behavior, but the lessons are engaging and even spirited. In one math class, the teacher leads a group of enthusiastic fifth-graders as they clap their hands and shout their way through the multiplication tables in unison: "Boom! KIPP, KIPP, good as gold, let me see your fingers roll: 8, 16, 32, 40!"

And yet these children are not exceptional learners. As an open-enrollment school, KIPP draws from the same population found in its neighboring district schools, and, says principal Josh Zoia, is more heavily minority and has a higher percentage of special education students than the district as a whole. So what's KIPP's secret? According to the 31-year-old Zoia, who also wrote KIPP Lynn's charter, success comes from placing education at the center of children's lives and teaching behavior expectations as systematically as their lessons.

School days begin at 7:30 a.m. and last until 5:00 p.m., plus two hours of homework, four hours of class every other Saturday, and three to four weeks in the summer. "If students need extra help, teachers are available by phone until 10 p.m. each night," says Zoia. "If a mom can't rouse her child out of bed, we go and pick the kid up." After four years, Zoia explains, KIPP students will have spent up to 60 percent more time in the classroom than their public school counterparts -- an extra 2- 1/2 years of school.

Aside from the intrinsic draw of KIPP's program, for many Lynn parents the school simply represents another choice. Most have had few educational options for their children; unlike wealthier families, few can afford private schools or just pick up and move to the suburbs. To them, charter schools -- publicly funded schools that operate outside the regulatory constraints of most public schools -- seem a great alternative to their district options, and they've pinned their hopes on KIPP, sight unseen.   Continued...