Color is one of the first things to greet visitors at KIPP Ujima Village Academy in Baltimore. Lots of it. Green and red and yellow murals with the names of African nations line the walls.
They are bright, just like the 330 middle school students who attend. It is the highest performing public middle school in Baltimore City. And in 2006 and 2007, its students earned the highest 8th grade math scores in Maryland.
Replicating their success should be a high priority for state legislators. But Maryland’s charter school law, passed in 2003, threatens to quash its growth and deny thousands of other low-income students across the state the opportunity to thrive under its direction.
KIPP stands for Knowledge is Power Program. KIPP’s national network of schools educate mostly poor, mostly black or Hispanic students. They select students by lottery, and many perform below grade level when they enter.
In Baltimore, 86 percent of students qualify for free or reduced price lunch. These are the same statistics many public schools often hide behind to explain the lack of learning going on within their walls.
But KIPP believes, and has proven, that every child will learn under the right conditions. Each student, as well as his or her parents, and school staff sign a Commitment to Excellence that demands hard work, integrity and kindness.
KIPP school days are longer. In Baltimore, students attend daily for at least 9.25 hours during the school year and for 6.5 hours per day for three weeks during the summer. They keep students longer because KIPP educators believe “more time on task” yields more learning. Teachers are also available on their cell phones after hours and have been known to pick up children when transportation falls through.
Every student should have this kind of attention. But regulations in the state’s charter school law give the teacher’s union a virtual veto over whether KIPP can expand beyond the elementary school planned in Baltimore for next year.
This is because Maryland does not exempt charters from the collective bargaining process. There is some discretion within the law, but this year the union demanded that each school meet its terms. This is a problem given KIPP’s significantly longer school day.
Baltimore City Public Schools CEO Andres Alonso said that “if certain schools want to have longer days and the teachers agree, they should be able to do it,” at a panel discussion Thursday at KIPP Ujima Village Academy in northwest Baltimore.
But pushing KIPP is not his priority. He said he does not want to create a two-tiered system where “some schools are defined as good schools and almost by implication the rest are not.” He favors making each traditional public school more like a charter by giving principals control over funding and making them accountable for student performance.
In his less than two years overseeing city schools he’s significantly raised student test scores. Most recently, city first and second graders performed better than the national average in three of four subject areas.
Alonso said about 90 percent of high school seniors meet graduation standards now compared to about 35 percent a few years ago. He is also closing six poorly performing schools this year. Those are all great achievements.
But it does not follow that parents and students must wait until every school meets Alonso’s high standards. As Kevin Chavous, a former D.C. City Councilman who advised Barack Obama on education during his presidential campaign said at the same meeting, “We don’t have the luxury of time.” Besides, why should Baltimore wait for a program on pace to double the college-going rate of cities where it enters?
He said Maryland legislators must give charter schools the ability to live up to their obligations – starting with making it easier to open them and by giving charters full financial support. He blames politicians for “preparing a permanent underclass that will be predators on us.”
Legislators should revisit the state’s charter law when they return to session next year. Asking KIPP parents to testify about their children’s experience would be a great place to start the debate.
As Chavous said, it is “shameful” that one of the best performing schools in the state can’t expand because of arbitrary rules geared to maintain the current system at the expense of student learning.
Examiner columnist Marta H. Mossburg is a senior fellow at the Maryland Public Policy Institute.
