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A pilot program will give students at KIPP urban charter schools college savings accounts — along with education about college readiness — in hope that college savings will inspire them to go to college. >

A new report being released today will add to the debate about the Knowledge Is Power Program or KIPP schools — a highly influential non-profit network of public schools serving low-income students. The study is important because it's the first large-scale look at the college completion rate for students in schools at the leading edge of today's reform efforts. The results show that while KIPP graduates—who are 95 percent African-American and Latino and overwhelmingly low-income—far outpace the national averages for similar students, they also fall short of the network's own goals: 33 percent of students who completed a KIPP middle school at least 10 years ago have a bachelor's degree today. Among similar students nationwide, just 8 percent have graduated college. >

Harriett Ball, a well-known teacher trainer who inspired the most successful charter school network in the country, died Feb. 2 at a Houston Northwest Medical Center after a heart attack. She was 64. >

We respect Mr. Kahlenberg’s right to question KIPP’s results, and we welcome healthy debate about the merits of KIPP’s philosophy and model. However, it is also important to clarify the fact base around the issues he raises. >

As Mayor-elect Vincent C. Gray prepares to take office, the D.C. education community is holding its breath. With the winds of progress at our back, it is critical that we continue to be relentless in our efforts to provide a high-quality education to every student in the District. Though the outgoing administration laid the groundwork for reform, many important and difficult decisions lie ahead. >

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A NEW REPORT documents again that middle school students in the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) outperform their counterparts in traditional public schools -- and debunks some of the arguments often used to discount KIPP's success. One reason KIPP students learn more is that they are in school more. >

ONLY A SMALL portion of the $100 billion the federal government directed to states in school stimulus spending funds last year was directly tied to reform. But even those relatively small amounts have had a sizable impact as states rushed to make needed changes to compete for Race to the Top dollars. Yet Congress is considering taking precious dollars from this and other reform programs of the Obama administration to fund a suspect effort to preserve education jobs. >

Touring a branch of the Knowledge Is Power Program in southwest Houston is like dropping into an underage executive boot camp. The building houses three KIPP charter schools spanning pre-kindergarten to 12th grade-each one a showcase for motivational tactics. >

...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...The Obama administration cites the Knowledge Is Power Program as a model of the kind of education reform it hopes to spawn with $100 billion in stimulus money. >

...The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will make $30 million in bond guarantees to high-performing charter schools in Houston. It is part of a new two-year, $400 million push in so-called program-related investments, which can consist of direct loans, equity investments, bond guarantees and other non-traditional forms of financial support. The first bond guarantees are going to the Knowledge Is Power Program, or KIPP, to help its schools in Houston secure funding in tax-exempt bonds...It is the first time a private foundation has backed charter school facility bonds at this scale. >

KIPP is featured as part of an ongoing series, "What Works," which highlights programs that are helping communities across the country. NBC gave video cameras to two KIPP students, one in New York and one in Los Angeles, so they could film a "day in the life of a KIPPster." >

A cheery yellow building in southwest Houston may not look like the centre of an educational revolution, but appearances can be deceptive. >

"I’m going to college!" she said, virtually singing. "I’m going to college!" I met Shanequa High some years ago when she was a sixth-grader at a middle school that was still in the embryonic stage (there were only two grades) in rural Gaston, N.C. The Gaston College Preparatory School was part of the KIPP network of charter schools, and the early word was that it was showing great promise. >

I've been invited [to Newark] by KIPP (the Knowledge Is Power Programme"), the biggest and best known of America's charter school chains, which has three schools in Newark, with a fourth to open this autumn. >

...KIPP's unlikely rise is the subject of Work Hard. Be Nice. ($14.95, Algonquin Books), a new book by Washington Post education columnist and longtime reporter Jay Mathews. He spent two years visiting 31 KIPP schools and interviewing its two founders, Dave Levin and Mike Feinberg, as well as the parents, teachers and thinkers who influenced them. >

One hot summer day in 2001, Susan Schaeffler, a 30-year-old D.C. teacher, was in the basement of an Anacostia church, getting blisters assembling classroom furniture while explaining to me why her new public charter school would be different from other ill-fated educational experiments. She said the first class of students recruited for the KIPP DC: KEY Academy middle school would not be called fifth graders, but the class of 2009. >

...At KIPP, we believe that "the actual proves the possible." Barack Obama's election embodies this credo. As Obama and Education Secretary-designate Arne Duncan begin to shape the policies that will drive the new administration, we would like to offer five concrete thoughts from the field on how to channel Obama's "yes, we can" spirit into substantive education reform. >

...But consider Team Academy, a charter public school in Newark, N.J. The school, set amidst some mean streets in the inner city, is a KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) school, which means it has just two rules: Work Hard. Be Nice. >

Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin are co-founders of the Knowledge Is Power Program, a network of high-achieving, publicly financed but independently run charter schools that serves mostly low-income minority children in 19 states and Washington, D.C. >

As the founder of Teach for America, a nonprofit program that recruits elite college graduates to teach in low-income schools, Wendy Kopp has presided over many triumphs, and the group's annual dinner last month was another. It raised $5.5 million in one night and brought so many corporate executives to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York that stretch limousines jammed Park Avenue for blocks. >