Quality,
not quantity,
is our
measure.
BoyarMiller is a proud sponsor of the 11th Annual KIPP Houston Dinner, held March 31 at the Boyar City Event Center.
The 2012 event honors The Holthouse Foundation for Kids and the Houston Independent School District.
Attending the Dinner from BoyarMiller are Bill & Pam Boyar, Chris & Catherine Hanslik (pictured right), and Edgar & Christy Saldivar along with guests Ron & Dixie Messner (Gulf Winds International) and Thao & Ron Costi
Sehba Ali will become KIPP Houston superintendent this summer, replacing co-founder Mike Feinberg. Ali, 35, started her career with Teach for America in Houston and moved up the ranks of KIPP in California. The mother of three took time during a visit to Houston this month to talk with Chronicle education reporter Jennifer Radcliffe.
Q: Tell me about your personal K-12 schooling experience.
A: I grew up in California (in San Jose) and my parents are both immigrants - from Pakistan and India - and they actually sent my brother and me to private schools. The schools in our neighborhood at that time were not great and so my parents made a lot of sacrifices to be able to afford private school for us. We lived in a really small house. My parents drove a rickety old station wagon to school. We didn't go on family vacations so that my parents could afford to send my brother and me to these schools. I feel very grateful to have gotten such a great education.
AT&T* surprised 20 high school seniors today from KIPP Houston and YES Prep Public Schools with gifts from a special “Secret Santa.” The students participated in a school ceremony where AT&T enhanced its investment in education by donating $5,000 to each school’s college preparation program for a combined gift of $10,000 to the schools.
However, it was Santa who was keeping a big holiday secret from the student participants. He surprised each of the 20 students with their very own Samsung Galaxy 8.9 Tablet at the KIPP Houston High School campus.
“These gifts reflect AT&T’s ongoing support of education in Houston. The computer tablets were a thrill for our surprised seniors who have been working around-the-clock to prepare for finals and completing college applications,” said Mike Feinberg, founder of KIPP. “Our schools will use the generous monetary donation from AT&T to help pay for KIPP students to take college preparation exams so we can make sure they are ready for success in college.
Hoping to boost college graduation rates, the KIPP charter school chain will partner with 10 universities across the country next year to increase support for low-income students.
The first partner is in Houston, the birthplace of the Knowledge is Power Program. The local partner is theUniversity of Houston.
"Kudos to the University of Houston for stepping up first," KIPP co-founder Mike Feinberg said. "Not only are they acknowledging that they want to be part of the solution, they're also acknowledging that there's a problem. Just acknowledging that there's a problem is half the battle."
KIPP started in 1994 to better prepare low-income, minority students for college. The model expanded rapidly as a public charter school system and now has 27,000 students in prekindergarten through high school nationwide.
The Walton Family Foundation is announcing its plans today to donate $25.5 million to the Knowledge is Power Program, or KIPP, charter network.
The Bentonville, Arkansas-based foundation, created by Wal-Mart founders Sam and Helen Walton, has been a longtime supporter of KIPP schools. But this award is the foundation's largest gift to KIPP so far. It's intended to provide support to help double the number of students attending KIPP schools by 2015, raising the number of children enrolled from 32,000 this year to 59,000.
In a press release announcing the award, Jim Blew, who leads Walton's K-12 education efforts, said the foundation is concentrating resources on KIPP because it "has an established track record of creating public schools of excellence in low-income communities, and there is growing evidence that traditional public school systems are striving to replicate KIPP's successes."
Harriett Ball, a Houston teacher and mentor, was posthumously selected as one of the World’s 7 Most Powerful Educators by Wendy Kopp, CEO and founder of Teach for America. Kopp’s list was published in Forbes’ latest issue.
Ball, who passed away this February, taught at Houston ISD and served as a mentor to the founders of the KIPP public charter schools, Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin.
HOUSTON - Rice running back Jayson Carter, who said he's 4-9, 130 pounds, just might be the smallest player to ever suit up for Rice.
Certainly he's one of the smallest players ever in the Football Bowl Subdivision.
And while Carter, who walked on to the Rice football team this week, is vertically challenged, he said he bases everything on the size of his heart.
"If they ever come up with a device that measures the heart and put it on top of my head, they'll see I'm 6-9," said Carter in an interview with FOX 26 Sports
.
Carter, who played high school football at Kipp in Houston, does not consider his size as a disadvantage.
KIPP co-founder Mike Feinberg delivered his first-ever “State of the Schools” address today — 17 years after KIPP was born in a Houston classroom crowded with 48 students.
Today, the school system has 7,800 students across the city and consistently outperforms other predominantly low-income campuses, with some KIPP schools rating among top in the nation. While skeptics say KIPP achieves those results by enrolling the best students and by returning lower-performing kids back to traditional schools, Feinberg noted Thursday that KIPP’s overall attrition rate over the course of last school yeas was just 9 percent, much lower than its urban counterparts. (Still, he said he’d like to see the rate drop to about 5 percent.)
HOUSTON - Learning to properly handle personal finances can be a tough lesson for a lot of us, and teenagers don’t often get a lot of help in the classroom.
But a couple of unlikely teachers are helping KIPP Houston High School seniors by sharing their personal story.
Sisters Nina Pennington and Mandy Williams wrote their book, “What I Learned about Life When My Husband got Fired” three years ago.
KIPP decided its non-traditional approach to education was the perfect venue for the sisters to share their story and help kids make smart financial decisions.
Now, the book is required reading before graduation.
KIPP Spirit Middle School, located in Sunnyside, is kicking off its second annual Million Word Challenge with a goal of having all students collectively read 1 million words over the course of the 2011-2012 school year.
Mike Feinberg, the co-creator of KIPP, is excited for the students.
“The is the second year that the schools has taken on this Million Word Challenge, which means each student has to read a book a week,” said Feinberg. “But they successfully did it last year, and they are fired up for this year.”
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