printBloomberg.com - "Ivy leaguers' class for poor becomes 'platinum' charter schools"
by Molly Peterson | January 20, 2010
In 1993, Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin were recent Ivy League graduates teaching fifth graders in Houston's inner city. The students were as much as two academic years behind their middle-class peers.
In 1993, Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin were recent Ivy League graduates teaching fifth graders in Houston's inner city. The students were as much as two academic years behind their middle-class peers.
A year later, Feinberg and Levin started a classroom that operated nine hours a day instead of the normal seven, as well as on some Saturdays and during the summer. Within a year, the number of students performing at grade level in reading and math jumped to 90 percent from 50 percent.
Today the 50-pupil experiment has grown into the biggest U.S. charter-school operator, with 82 schools for poor and minority children in 19 states. The Obama administration cites the Knowledge Is Power Program, as the nonprofit system is known, as a model of the kind of education reform it hopes to spawn with $100 billion in stimulus money.
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