Retiring D.C. Charter Leader Can Celebrate Her Own Success — and the District’s

It’s odd, but the remarkable resurgence of D.C. public schools over the last two decades could have been predicted from the 1992 Teach for America classes in Baltimore and Washington.

Those classes included three players who would shape the future of District of Columbia schools: Michelle Rhee (future D.C. chancellor), Kaya Henderson (Rhee’s successor) and, perhaps most importantly, Susan Schaeffler, 55, who is retiring after 25 years as the founder of the KIPP DC Public Schools charter network.

It was Schaeffler (pronounced SHEFF-ler) who proved with her 2001 launch of KIPP KEY Academy that hiring highly motivated and skilled teachers could make academic success stories out of high-poverty children with multiple at-risk flags. Six years later, standardized math and reading tests in grades 5-8 would show KIPP students outscoring their D.C. Public School peers, particularly in eighth grade and most strongly in math.

In a few years, Rhee would choose the same strategy, pushing hard on teacher quality. And Henderson would do the same.

It was Schaeffler who showed that her one school was not a fluke. By 2006, she ran three successful middle schools with long waiting lists: Today, there are 20 KIPP schools in D.C. that educate roughly 7,300 students, of whom nearly 70% meet the at-risk definition (students with families on income or food support and those who are wards of the state, homeless or overage in high school).

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