Education is the key to unlocking all doors.

Thought this might be an interesting read for those of you interested in the present and the future.


Ryan Hill, head of the two KIPP schools in Newark (which are kicking butt, even by KIPP's lofty standards), writes:

There were two great Op-Eds in the WSJ today, one about Mayor Booker that mentions us, and one about my friend Scott Shirey’s KIPP school in the Mississippi Delta. The second article I copy just because it’s one of the best I’ve read on the power of a single KIPP school. During the school’s second year, the state passed a law putting a cap on new charter schools in the state, EXCEPT when those schools were KIPP schools. If anyone receiving this has contacts in Arkansas, please let me know. Helena is a place of rich tradition whose economy now relies almost entirely on the nearby casinos and a budding cluster of KIPP schools – they can use all the help they can get in raising the money they need to get to scale.

1) Here is the article about KIPP in Arkansas:
Helena's KIPP school is working in two ways. First, it's educating the kids. An important task for a school, don't you think? Before KIPP, Helena's kids were getting scores around the 17th percentile in language and 18th percentile in math on the Stanford Achievement Test. Only a few years later, those same kids are averaging around 76th and 82nd, respectively. Last year, KIPP's eighth-graders scored in the 91st percentile in math and the 84th in language on the SAT. As fifth-graders, those same kids scored in the 29th percentile in both math and language.
KIPP is also helping to revitalize this impoverished area. The school's current downtown location was the first new construction in Helena in 10 years. Now that the school has grown to 315 students in grades five through 10, there's talk about expanding....
For its next act, KIPP is expected to transform downtown Helena (technically Helena-West Helena -- the towns recently consolidated) and revitalize the city center, while serving as an economic engine for an area with double-digit unemployment that's been losing population for decades. Since 1950, Phillips County has lost more than half its population. Down here, the goal after graduating high school -- if you graduate high school -- is to get out.
A school transforming a community economically and maybe even emotionally? It does sound kind of nutty. Unless you're here and walking the dilapidated landscape that could be the future home of the KIPP Campus. Unless you listen to Mr. Shirey. ("Those would be athletic fields," he says, pointing at a vacant lot.) Unless you see the kids at Mr. Shirley's school wearing "There are no shortcuts" T-shirts. Unless you check out those test scores. Then you think maybe anything is possible. Even in the Delta.

2) Here's the article about Cory, my favorite mayor (with Mike Bloomberg running close behind):
Part of Mr. Booker's solution to this dilemma is education reform centered on school choice. "It's the last frontier we have to cross in order to become the most thriving city in America," he states confidently. "Parents in Newark are more demanding than ever, and they deserve a plethora of options of excellence to choose from that meet the needs of their kids." Mr. Booker is a longtime advocate of school choice: In 1999 he helped found E3, a prominent education-reform group in New Jersey that pushes for charter schools and vouchers for inner-city communities.
Newark's public schools enroll around 42,000 students. With frequent instances of in-school violence, decrepit facilities and low morale, the system is in need of serious overhaul. Just 37% of the city's high-school seniors passed the state proficiency exam in 2005, a statistic that is even more embarrassing considering that city schools spend around $20,000 per pupil -- far above the $13,000 state average (itself the second-highest in the country).
Before Mr. Booker can pursue any sweeping reforms, though, he must wrest control of the district from the state, which took over in 1995. "My goal is to turn the clock back to the '70s and vest control in the mayor to appoint school board members that can drive an agenda for reform," Mr. Booker says with hope. "Elected school boards often hit the lowest common denominator . . . they are not the way to get courageous, driven change."
Mr. Booker emphasizes that until local control returns -- which, thanks to recent moves by the state, could be within "16 to 18 months" -- his powers are limited. But that hasn't stopped him from cultivating donors to start thinking about charter schools for the future. Last month, he flew to Seattle to meet with representatives of the Gates Foundation. "We had very strong conversations," he reports. "I told them, 'If we can grow KIPP schools and overachieving charter schools [in Newark], it will be much easier to show that [school choice] can work, because you'll see results a lot quicker than in a place like New York, which has around a million school-aged children.'"

3) Speaking of Ryan, he asked me to forward the attached job description: the NJ Performing Arts Center in Newark (it's gorgeous) is looking for a VP of Arts Education.

4) This is an all-Ryan email: in response to the ongoing discussion of how to do performance pay for teachers, he sent me this report (which I confess to not having read yet, though I vaguely recall reading about it when the report was released earlier this year): Performance-Pay for Teachers: Designing a System that Students Deserve (http://www.teacherleaders.org/teachersolutions/TSreport.pdf). It's by the Center for Teaching Quality and is written "by 18 of the nation's best teachers."


---------------------------
Smart Growth
By KANE WEBBAugust 4, 2007; Page A6
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118618703415787941.html
HELENA, Ark. -- A walking tour of this Mississippi River town's past, present and future could start at Bubba's Blues Corner at the south end of Cherry Street, a whisky bottle's throw from the Mighty River. Bubba Sullivan has a little of everything in his shop, including a healthy dose of Helena blues history (free of charge) and old 45 rpm records (25 cents each). Keep walking past the broken bottles and dilapidated buildings until you're across from the old train depot. Turn into what looks like a strip mall store that might sell wicker chairs and scented candles (or in this town, second-hand clothes and garage-sale trinkets).
And then welcome to one of the best schools in Arkansas, maybe the South. A school that's so good both candidates for governor last year -- Democrat Mike Beebe and Republican Asa Hutchinson -- couldn't utter a sentence on education without mentioning it. It is the KIPP Delta College Preparatory School. (KIPP stands for Knowledge Is Power Program, a Brooklyn-born system of 57 charter schools nationwide.) It is filled with kids eager to be there even though the school meets almost all year long and every day but Sunday.
Scott Shirey runs the place. He's 31 years old and a native of Massachusetts. He filtered through the KIPP system and came out to Phillips County, one of the poorest in the country, where he started Delta College Prep five years ago with 65 students and the support of community leaders desperate for something -- anything -- to jumpstart their tired town. All else had failed -- from government handouts to gambling across the river.
Helena's KIPP school is working in two ways. First, it's educating the kids. An important task for a school, don't you think? Before KIPP, Helena's kids were getting scores around the 17th percentile in language and 18th percentile in math on the Stanford Achievement Test. Only a few years later, those same kids are averaging around 76th and 82nd, respectively. Last year, KIPP's eighth-graders scored in the 91st percentile in math and the 84th in language on the SAT. As fifth-graders, those same kids scored in the 29th percentile in both math and language.
KIPP is also helping to revitalize this impoverished area. The school's current downtown location was the first new construction in Helena in 10 years. Now that the school has grown to 315 students in grades five through 10, there's talk about expanding.
Actually, there's a lot more than talk. Just last week, the national KIPP charter school outfit in San Francisco named Luke VanDeWalle the principal of the new Delta College Prep High. Mr. VanDeWalle, an Illinois native and graduate of Purdue University in Indiana, is a former member of Teach for America. For the past three years, he's been teaching math at Mr. Shirey's school -- and doing quite a job. At last report, 93% of the Delta College Prep students scored proficient or better on Arkansas's end-of-course exam in algebra. Soon-to-be Principal VanDeWalle's high school opens later this month in a renovated train station.
But maybe not for long. Led by local investors at Southern Bancorporation and Southern Financial Partners, the community is out to raise $20 million for a K-12 Delta College Prep campus. It'll consume several blighted blocks of downtown, now home to broken liquor bottles, crumbling sidewalks and weeds -- not to mention the abandoned buildings and long-abandoned businesses. KIPP has already secured the land through a grant from the Walton Family Foundation. Now it has to raise the rest of the money.
In a state under a court order to fix its public schools, there aren't many examples of educational excellence. But because KIPP schools are charter schools, they operate free of the bureaucratic baloney that chokes the creativity out of so many traditional public schools and their teachers. And Delta College Prep is a different kind of charter school. You notice it right off. World map-sized posters of students' test scores decorate the hallways -- the way you'd see a "Go Team!" banner at a public high school.
"We're comfortable discussing data," Mr. Shirey told me. "We aim for absolute transparency," which sharpens the attention of both students and teachers.
Mr. Shirey notes proudly that he's run off three teachers this year but not many students, even though homework runs about two hours a night after a long school day. There's a dress code and detailed instructions about how to behave in class, right down to when to raise your hand. Parents and students and teachers all have to sign a "Commitment to Excellence Form" outlining life at Delta College Prep.
Teachers tend to be young and not from around Helena -- Mr. Shirey's staff has included recent graduates from Cornell, Purdue, Notre Dame, New York University and Spelman. Still, Delta Prep's Wyvonne Sisk, a teacher for 38 years, won a $10,000 Kinder Excellence in Teaching Award last year. Ms. Sisk had retired from teaching in nearby schools but was attracted back to work by this innovative charter school.
Earlier this year, the school received a grant from the Delta Regional Authority, a federal-state partnership devoted to regional economic improvement. DRA money typically goes to water systems and rail spurs, not schools. But to quote Pete Johnson, federal co-chairman of the DRA: "As we travel the region, we're holding up the KIPP school and Helena as examples of what children can accomplish when you go outside the restraints of the public-school system. . . . Unless you change the educational system in weak counties, you're not going to change the counties."
For its next act, KIPP is expected to transform downtown Helena (technically Helena-West Helena -- the towns recently consolidated) and revitalize the city center, while serving as an economic engine for an area with double-digit unemployment that's been losing population for decades. Since 1950, Phillips County has lost more than half its population. Down here, the goal after graduating high school -- if you graduate high school -- is to get out.
A school transforming a community economically and maybe even emotionally? It does sound kind of nutty. Unless you're here and walking the dilapidated landscape that could be the future home of the KIPP Campus. Unless you listen to Mr. Shirey. ("Those would be athletic fields," he says, pointing at a vacant lot.) Unless you see the kids at Mr. Shirley's school wearing "There are no shortcuts" T-shirts. Unless you check out those test scores. Then you think maybe anything is possible. Even in the Delta.
Mr. Webb is a columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in Little Rock.
-------------------------


Cory BookerAll American
By CHRISTIAN SAHNERAugust 4, 2007; Page A7
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118618739811387948.html
NEWARK, N.J. – "As difficult as it's been the first year, I'm blessed to be in the most important American fight going on." Thus spoke Newark Mayor Cory Booker when I sat down with him late last month in his spartan City Hall office.
There were no pictures of smiling politicians on the walls, few personal mementos and minimal paperwork cluttering the tabletops. Mr. Booker doesn't need any extra distractions. "I'm used to doing a million things and balancing them all," he tells me. "But a job like this has so many areas that are screaming for attention."
Mr. Booker is trying to turn around a city plagued by violent crime, poverty and failing schools. Problem cities can be found all over the country, but most of them don't have mayors like Cory Booker. Only 38, Mr. Booker is the son of African-American civil rights activists and boasts degrees from Stanford, Yale Law School and Oxford (where he was a Rhodes Scholar). His pedigree may instill confidence in outsiders, but it elicits suspicion from many Newarkers who have a hard time seeing Mr. Booker as one of their own.
The former All-American tight end -- who greets me with a hand the size of a bear paw -- certainly looks like he's up to the job. But with his vegetarian diet and affinity for meditation, it's easy to see why some residents have doubts about Mr. Booker's street cred.
Mr. Booker grew up in the wealthy suburb of Harrington Park, N.J. But soon after coming to Newark in 1997, he moved into an apartment in a drug-infested housing project, looking to provide legal help to the local residents. Five years later he ran unsuccessfully for mayor against the 16-year incumbent, fellow Democrat Sharpe James. Fearing imminent defeat the next time around, Mr. James dropped out of the race in 2006, giving Mr. Booker a landslide victory.
Mr. James had gained a reputation for running the city as a personal playground, and last month he was indicted on 25 counts of corruption. Mr. Booker has been left to clean up the mess left behind, including a $180 million budget gap. That's led him to make hundreds of layoffs, along with numerous other budget cuts. It has also meant raising municipal property taxes by 8% for 2006, angering many residents.
Mr. Booker is quick to point out that municipal taxes have been cut for 2007 -- a policy he hopes to continue in the future. "By cutting the rate [for 2007]," he says, "we began what we hope will be a process of increasing city revenue and improving our tax collection rate." He also aims at eliminating City Hall's patronage machine: "It may be like taking castor oil to fix all these problems, but at the end of the day, this city will be financially healthy and people will be better off for it."
A major part of the mayor's grand solution is developing Newark's private sector. "You want to create a more vibrant private sector that's going to generate more economic activity, more economic dynamism, and create more opportunity for residents." The city could certainly use it: one quarter of the population lives below the poverty line, and median family income sits at $30,665 -- half the state average.
When compared to some other poor cities in the U.S., Newark has distinct advantages. Sitting 12 miles from midtown Manhattan, it boasts extensive rail and highway connections, a booming international airport and one of the busiest seaports in the country -- all the infrastructure needed to jumpstart a moribund economy. And thanks to agreements with Continental Airlines, city unions, and new funds to give local entrepreneurs a boost, "We're creating jobs and trying to build sustainability at the same time," Mr. Booker enthuses. But as City Hall knows all too well, blue-chip employers like Prudential and Verizon need skilled labor, and in a city in which only 13% of residents have college degrees, Newark's high-skill workforce will continue to commute from the suburbs for the foreseeable future.
Part of Mr. Booker's solution to this dilemma is education reform centered on school choice. "It's the last frontier we have to cross in order to become the most thriving city in America," he states confidently. "Parents in Newark are more demanding than ever, and they deserve a plethora of options of excellence to choose from that meet the needs of their kids." Mr. Booker is a longtime advocate of school choice: In 1999 he helped found E3, a prominent education-reform group in New Jersey that pushes for charter schools and vouchers for inner-city communities.
Newark's public schools enroll around 42,000 students. With frequent instances of in-school violence, decrepit facilities and low morale, the system is in need of serious overhaul. Just 37% of the city's high-school seniors passed the state proficiency exam in 2005, a statistic that is even more embarrassing considering that city schools spend around $20,000 per pupil -- far above the $13,000 state average (itself the second-highest in the country).
Before Mr. Booker can pursue any sweeping reforms, though, he must wrest control of the district from the state, which took over in 1995. "My goal is to turn the clock back to the '70s and vest control in the mayor to appoint school board members that can drive an agenda for reform," Mr. Booker says with hope. "Elected school boards often hit the lowest common denominator . . . they are not the way to get courageous, driven change."
Mr. Booker emphasizes that until local control returns -- which, thanks to recent moves by the state, could be within "16 to 18 months" -- his powers are limited. But that hasn't stopped him from cultivating donors to start thinking about charter schools for the future. Last month, he flew to Seattle to meet with representatives of the Gates Foundation. "We had very strong conversations," he reports. "I told them, 'If we can grow KIPP schools and overachieving charter schools [in Newark], it will be much easier to show that [school choice] can work, because you'll see results a lot quicker than in a place like New York, which has around a million school-aged children.'"
Many charter-school donors won't touch Newark until Mr. Booker gains control. Without a powerful leader to ensure accountability, they fear, the city is simply a black hole for outside funding. "The Broad Foundation and others don't want to invest in cities that don't have mayoral control," Mr. Booker says. "So mayoral control has to be one part of the strategy to bring resources into Newark [schools]."
Mr. Booker realizes that educational turnaround will take a lot more than charter schools. Across the country "you're seeing teachers unions allowing merit pay, or unions allowing more leeway in the hiring of good teachers and the firing of bad teachers." In Newark, he predicts, multi-pronged reforms could quickly create "an abundance of excellent schools that can empower our kids to create a 21st century knowledge-based economy, plus keep a lot of residents here."
Meanwhile, Newark's high crime rates are a pressing crisis. Thanks to the zero-tolerance policy of new police director Garry McCarthy, a no-nonsense former NYPD crime strategist, most major crime categories are down in the mayor's first year. The high murder rate, however, hasn't budged.
"These homicides are principally drug-related," Mr. Booker says, explaining that his next step is to tackle New Jersey's draconian drug laws. "You lock up a nonviolent offender, now they have a criminal conviction, and it becomes very hard for him to get a job. . . There's no hope of joining the productive economy, so it's very easy to get sucked back into the narcotics trade." Mr. Booker hopes reforms to the drug laws can "liberate the economic potential of ex-offenders so they can rejoin society instead of going back to criminality."
This summer marks the 40th anniversary of the 1967 race riots that helped reduce Newark -- along with other U.S. cities -- to a burnt-out wasteland. In many ways the city has moved beyond the racial tensions of the late 1960s. But Mr. Booker, often accused of not being "black enough," is no stranger to Newark's lingering racial problems. Former Mayor Sharpe James once said of him, "You have to learn to be African-American! And we don't have time to train you all night!"
"That's such a shallow brand of racial essentialism," Mr. Booker retorts. "New Jersey is a state with 14% African-American population, but the prison population is 60% black. That's a racial reality that impacts my city that we have to deal with." Moving beyond the problems of 1967 doesn't mean "ignoring race," he says, but asking whether you "can you build a community where diversity is its strength . . . or will it tear us apart?"
My time with the mayor is coming to a close. Mr. Booker's ambitious schedule has prompted him to regularly call meetings as early as 6 a.m. and as late as 11 p.m. -- "not the smartest way to maintain balance," he admits -- and now he has to run.
As a final question, I ask him whether he has national political ambitions. Booker hopefuls claim he has all the charisma of a Barack Obama with the gritty urban experience of a Rudy Giuliani. Laughing, he says: "I think the greatest impact I could make would not be through running for Congress, the Senate or the presidency, but as mayor of a big city where I could create models on the most crucial issues of our country's future: Education, public safety."
He thus repeats the same assurance he has given to those Newarkers worried that he'll one day jump ship for a more prestigious office in Trenton, or Washington. "I know what I'm doing in 2010," he tells me. "I'm running for re-election."
Mr. Sahner is a Robert L. Bartley Fellow at the Journal this summer.