While the KIPP Foundation was initially created for the sole purpose of recruiting and training school leaders to open new KIPP schools, the Foundation’s purpose and function has grown to provide support and expertise for existing schools.

By leveraging the power of the KIPP network, the KIPP Foundation helps to ensure that KIPP schools continue to deliver a high quality education for their students. The KIPP Foundation does this by focusing on the following functions:

• Recruitment and Selection – Last year, the KIPP Foundation recruited over 400 candidates to open new KIPP schools. Through a rigorous selection process conducted by the KIPP Foundation and with the help of current school leaders, 11 successful candidates were selected to enter the KIPP School Leadership Program to potentially open a KIPP school in 2007.
• KIPP School Leadership Program – The KIPP School Leadership Program (KSLP) remains the core function of the KIPP Foundation. Each KIPP school leader undergoes a year-long training program including coursework at Stanford University, residencies at other KIPP schools, and support from expert KIPP Foundation staff.
• Legal – The legal team provides support before a school opens, helping to negotiate a charter or contract, and offers advice on legal issues that arise as a school matures, such as insurance, compliance, and employment.
• Financial and Operational Support – A team of business operations experts provides direct assistance to schools with financial planning and budget review, training of non-instructional staff, support in securing facilities, and development of business operations toolkits.
• Instructional Support – The instructional support team helps to identify and share best practices in curriculum across the network. As the KIPP network grows, they provide valuable assistance and documents, such as a math toolkit, so that teachers can learn from the expertise of over 10 years of KIPP instruction.
• Quality Control – The KIPP Foundation conducts three separate inspections of each school to ensure quality control. The inspection process helps to ensure the quality of KIPP schools by ensuring that schools adhere to the Five Pillars, are instructionally sound, and remain financially solvent. These inspections include new site visits in a school’s first year, a formal inspection in a school’s second year conducted in partnership with Cambridge Associates, and a fifth year inspection conducted by other KIPP school leaders.
• Leadership and Training Retreats – Throughout the year, the KIPP Foundation provides both KIPP school leaders and teachers the opportunity for professional development through a series of retreats. Retreats include training for school leaders and business operations managers as well as content area retreats for teachers that focus on subjects such as English language arts, mathematics, social studies, and science.
• KIPP School Summit – Each year, the KIPP Foundation plans and executes the annual KIPP School Summit, a weeklong national conference that brings together school leaders, teachers, and staff from each of our schools across the country. The event features content workshops, networking events, planning sessions, and celebrations of the achievements of KIPP schools nationwide. In the summer of 2006, over 1,000 KIPP educators and staff assembled in New Orleans for this event.
• High School Design – As KIPP begins to open more high schools, the high school design team is focused on creating a sustainable instructional and operational model and training future high school leaders.
• Assessment – The assessment team not only collects and analyzes data from the KIPP network of schools, but helps to train school leaders to use data to drive and improve instruction in the classroom.
• Communications and Public Affairs – The communications team provides schools with high-quality materials, templates, and strategies to help recruit students and teachers.
• Development – In addition to their development work for the Foundation, the development team provides expertise and guidance to schools in their individual development efforts.
• Board Development – The KIPP Foundation most recently launched an initiative to recruit and provide support and training to board members at individual schools.