KIPP DC: Lessons on Paying Attention, Proper Behavior

As the 2003-2004 school year opened three weeks ago for the inner city students of the KIPP DC: KEY Academy, one of the nation's best middle schools, the first sound they heard from their principal was not a spoken word, but her hands smacking together: "Clap Clap-clap Clap Clap." Susan Schaeffler, a freckled, 33-year-old former elementary school teacher with an athlete's sense of timing, waited to see if she would get the proper response.

The sixth and seventh graders, almost all veterans of the KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) system, gave her the two quick claps she wanted, and immediately stopped talking. The fifth graders, new to this and not sure what to do, still saw that everyone else was now intensely focused on Schaeffler, so they did the same.

Thus began the three-week summer session--required of all KIPP students--at this most unusual of public charter schools -- a collection of mostly young teachers from prestigious colleges and previously low-scoring children facing all the problems of preadolescence who have somehow produced some of the most remarkable achievement gains ever seen in a school where 80 percent of the students are poor enough to qualify for federal lunch subsidies.

The KIPP seventh graders, as Schaeffler informed them, jumped from 34.1 to 52 on the 99-point normal curve equivalent scale in reading in just two years, an almost unheard of improvement for children growing up in underserved, non-college families. The math increase was even more impressive, from 41 to 72 in those two years. The sixth graders' one-year gains at KIPP matched those of their older schoolmates. Most of the 14 other KIPP fifth-to-eighth grade middle schools in other low income, mostly minority communities around the country were showing similarly healthy gains, leading many school districts this summer to welcome 17 new KIPP schools for a national total of 32.

Scholarly discussions of how to raise achievement in low-income neighborhoods usually focus on raising spending-per-pupil, changing the curriculum, improving teacher training and winning parental support, but as I watched the new fifth graders get their first dose of KIPP, something rarely mentioned in those conference reports and foundation studies took most of the students' and teachers' time. Instead of beginning with the reading and math lessons whose successes had brought them so much acclaim, including a July 1 visit by President Bush to the Southeast Washington school, they concentrated on a dozen ways to encourage and enforce order and attention, every minute of every day.

The long range emphasis was on higher education. Schaeffler led the three grades (an eighth grade will be added next year) in shouted declarations of the year they would be going to college. "TWO THOUSAND NINE!!" said the seventh graders, whom Schaeffler called juniors. "TWO THOUSAND TEN!!" said the sixth graders, or sophomores. "TWO THOUSAND ELEVEN!!" said the fifth graders, or freshmen. Each student was assigned to a homeroom named after the alma mater of the teacher in that room. The 80 fifth graders were split into three groups, named UNC (University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill) for math teacher Meghan Little, 23, William & Mary for language arts teacher Laura Bowen, 25, and Illinois for science teacher Chrissy Hart, 24.

But the short range emphasis, repeatedly and relentlessly, was on paying attention. This was explained to the Illinois fifth graders by history teacher, Khala Johnson, 31. Johnson, who received her bachelor's and law degree from the University of Georgia, has been with the school since its beginning in 2001.

The students in their gray KIPP DC: KEY (for Knowledge Empowers You) Academy T-shirts had already heard much from Schaeffler about "tracking" -- keeping your eyes on the teacher. They knew the clapping signal, which was designed, according to Mike Feinberg, co-founder with Dave Levin of the KIPP schools, to make a room so quiet "one can hear a mouse fart." But there was more.

"Eyes tracking on me," Johnson said. "There is something really important I am going to teach you today. It is called 'Ready on 5.' " For the first of what would likely be thousands of times, the new Kippsters heard a teacher say: "Ready on 5, 4, 3, 2, 1." Johnson explained that by the end of the countdown, they were expected to be in the ready position: "eyes forward, hands together, elbows on desk."

And there was more. "Do not get out of your seat at all unless I give you permission," she said. "Work silently." She directed them to a chart on the wall showing the proper signals for various desires -- thumb up for a comment, all fingers up for a question, one finger up for a new pencil and a fist up for permission to go to the bathroom. The students worked on memorizing the school credo: "If there is a problem, we look for a solution. If there is a better way, we find it. If a teammate needs help, we give. If we need help, we ask."

And there was still more. In Bowen's language arts class, the students had several reminders that forgetting or ignoring the rules would have consequences. "I don't see these two young men tracking," Bowen said. She said to another student, "This is your warning, Sweetie. You should not be talking."

In Hart's science class, they learned the nuances of the bathroom rule. "If I see five fists go up, how many will go to the bathroom?" the teacher asked. "Nobody," one child guessed sagely. They were told they would have to take turns. Self-restraint, once again, would be the watchword.

In Little's math class, the fifth graders heard an explanation of the signs around the school saying "ASSIGN YOURSELF." "It means," Little said, "just in case you forget, do the right thing without being told. You are in middle school now. You are about to be an adult. Adults do things without being told. I am an adult. I am teaching you now, and Ms. Schaeffler didn't tell me, 'Ms. Little, you should be in teaching now.' "

For every action, the fifth graders learned, there would be rewards and punishments, carrots and sticks, or in KIPP terms, the paycheck and the bench. At the end of each week students received a paycheck, worth up to $40 in virtual cash that could be redeemed for snacks and other favors at the student store, and for a year-end trip to Florida or Tennessee or other interesting places if they had accumulated enough credit. Buying a snack, fortunately, did not reduce their balance as far as the trip went, but rule-breaking did. They would lose money for failing to bring homework, for speaking out of turn, for bad attitude, for leaving class without permission. They would earn extra money for unusually good work or selfless acts.

And if they faltered seriously -- talking back, frequent inattention, or just missing a part of their daily homework assignments twice in one week, they would be benched. They would have to sit in a chair in each classroom separated from the other students and not talk to anyone but teachers until their parents arrived at school to discuss the situation.

By the end of the second week of this summer, a dozen of the 80 KIPP fifth graders had been benched. When I asked if this was just a problem for newcomers, Schaeffler said that about a dozen of the 80 seventh graders, the school veterans, had also been benched. The older children were adjusting to new demands from new teachers that they either did not understand or did not believe, and they needed to be reminded.

KIPP does not produce robotic angels, Schaeffler said, but by spending so much time setting the ground rules, and then sticking to them, the school has become a much quieter and more productive place than most American middle schoolers are used to. Children can concentrate on learning rather than displaying or defending their hormone-induced inclinations.

And in such places, students who did not do very well in school before find that they have intellectual gifts they never realized.

"I remember when I used to teach in the D.C. public schools," Schaeffler said, "my kids were great in my class, and then I would send them to art or to another subject and the teacher would come back and say, 'Your kids are terrible,' and I would say, 'What is the problem?' "

"And that was because there wasn't a school-wide culture," she said, "and so although we push our teachers to be individuals and do their own thing in their classrooms, we have some things that are school-wide, the bench and the paycheck, to make it consistent."

Adults of my generation who attended Catholic schools in the 1950s have a sense of what KIPP is like. A new book, "No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning," by Abigail Thernstrom and Stephan Thernstrom to be published in October explores the power of new behavioral patterns in such schools. As the summer school ended last week, many fifth graders were still getting used to the rules, and many seventh graders were still adjusting to teachers taking them into new mysteries like algebra, but "we don't let anything slide over the summer," Schaeffler said.

The school's other strengths, such as an innovative math program and a book-rich reading system and a nine hour day and Saturday classes, will all play a role, she said, but at the beginning of a new school year, in these vital weeks in mid-summer, "we are establishing a culture."