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The Oklahoma City community, our business and civic leaders agree. If we want to put Oklahoma City on the map-to make it a great city, a destination for families, an employment center-we must have great public education in an attractive environment.

On Thursday night, KIPP Academy Lynn Collegiate's (KALC) Class of 2016 was commenced at Lynn City Hall. Salutatorian Enorenegbe Idahor reminisced about her school years and how important the experience will be in the future. "As we leave KIPP, we are going to enter a new journey in our lives," she said. "But it is important to take what we learned here with us."

KIPP Los Angeles College Preparatory School in Boyle Heights has been named a National Blue Ribbon School by the U.S. Department of Education.

"We are the first graduating class of seniors," said homecoming court candidate Bethaney Charles, 17. "So this is the first year of everything." The first homecoming game and dance. The first senior ring ceremony. The first senior gift to the school. The first senior picnic and trip. And not at all least, the first senior college applications.

Over the past four years, we have made great strides, and in Tennessee this has been a largely bipartisan effort. The federal Race to the Top competition awarded funds to states such as Tennessee that encouraged high standards for evaluating teachers, opened doors for charter schools and paved the way for more rigorous standards.

The debate over charter schools may be ready to explode again in Newark. The mayor's chief education advisor has called for a halt to all charter growth, the union is demonstrating next week, and credible rumors are spreading that KIPP - one of the top performing charter chains - is about to anchor a new expansion.

We don't expect most middle school bands to play beautiful music. But the KIPP Impact Middle School is breaking the mold.

A fourth-grade math teacher at KIPP Excelencia Community Prep has won the national Fishman Prize for educators that carries a $25,000 award.

The Executive Director of the local charter school KIPP Austin, Steven Epstein, joined us in the KXAN studio to give you a preview of what to expect this school year. KIPP Austin works to help students from educationally underserved communities go to and through college.

All of her students at Oklahoma City's KIPP Reach College Preparatory have earned a passing grade on the Oklahoma reading and writing test for the past three years.