Case 9: KIPP Houston Public Schools C-99
achievements, Levin and Feinberg decided to work
together to start a new program for HISD fifth graders
called the Knowledge Is Power Program, or KIPP.
After struggling to recruit students and maneuver
through the school district bureaucracy to get the pro-
gram off the ground, Levin and Feinberg launched KIPP,
co-teaching about 50 students in one classroom. The stu-
dents arrived by 7:30 a.m. and stayed until 5 p.m., came
for weekend enrichment classes, and were required to
attend summer classes. Using a mixture of Ball’s engag-
ing teaching practices, Esquith’s high expectations and
motivational techniques (including the chance to earn a
field trip to Washington, D.C., at the end of the school
year), a continual emphasis on college attendance, and
their own personal innovations, the two teachers suc-
ceed in leading 90 percent of their students to pass the
state’s math and reading tests, after a fourth grade year in
which about half had passed.
Nationwide Growth
With the success of KIPP’s first year under his belt, Levin
moved to New York, his home city, to start another
Knowledge Is Power Program in the Bronx. Hoping to
continue the gains the KIPP fifth graders had achieved,
Levin and Feinberg also decided to expand both pro-
grams to become full middle schools, adding grades 6
through 8 as the students moved up through the grades.
This expansion brought a new challenge of finding excel-
lent teaching talent to maintain the high academic and
behavioral expectations, but both Levin and Feinberg
were able to lead their schools to results that far sur-
passed the neighboring public schools.
The success of the schools began to attract atten-
tion. Dozens of Teach for America teachers visited
the schools to see the teachers and kids in action. The
mayor of Houston and the HISD superintendent and
future U.S. Secretary of Education, Rod Paige, dropped
in. In the coming years, the two schools broke off from
their school districts to become state-sanctioned charter
schools, free from some of the constraints of operating
in a school district bureaucracy.
In 1999, 60 Minutes aired a 13-minute segment show-
casing the success of the two KIPP middle schools. At
the same time, Donald Fisher, who had co-founded
the clothing retailer The Gap with his wife Doris, and
his family were in the midst of a year-long search for
an education-related philanthropic project. Fisher was
impressed by what he saw on 60 Minutes and donated
$25 million to help found the KIPP Foundation, which
was charged with training principals to start new KIPP
schools that would replicate the success of the first two.
“Fisher Fellowships” are still awarded each year to those
who will train with the foundation before starting new
schools.
In its original incarnation, the KIPP Foundation
focused on finding the right high-caliber leaders and
giving them free rein to start schools anywhere in the
United States. In those first years, each individual KIPP
school was governed by its own board of directors and
operated completely autonomously. Around 2005, when
Richard Barth became CEO of the KIPP Foundation, the
strategy shifted to a regional model, where KIPP schools
in the same city or geographical area were grouped
together into regional networks. Today, there are 31
regional KIPP organizations in 20 states and the District
of Columbia.A Region Is Born
Houston got an early start in this regional reorganization
effort, creating more middle schools and expanding into
elementary and high schools, which made it possible for
students to remain with KIPP from pre-kindergarten at
age three until high school graduation.
After working for the new KIPP Foundation, Feinberg
returned to Houston to serve as superintendent of the
growing KIPP Houston district. Feinberg believed the
traditional districts, such as the Houston Independent
School District, would continue to underperform until
they were directly challenged by a competitor capturing
a larger share of student enrollment. Using the analogy
of the U.S. Postal Service offering overnight mail ser-
vice only after FedEx had captured a significant share of
the market, Feinberg initiated an ambitious growth plan
called “KIPP Turbo,” which called for 42 KIPP schools in
Houston by 2017.^5
With the economic crisis of 2008, the Great Recession,
and a subsequent $5.4 billion cut to education spending
in 2011 by the Texas state legislature,^6 KIPP Turbo was
scaled back. Instead of the original goal of 42 schools
by 2017, KIPP Houston now plans to grow to 50 schools
by 2033.^7 The budget shortfalls also led Feinberg to
reconsider his role within the district. In 2011, Feinberg
announced he would dedicate more of his time to fund-
raising and political advocacy, on behalf of both KIPP
Houston and the KIPP network as a whole. Although
he would still play a key role on KIPP Houston’s board,
Feinberg decided it was time to turn KIPP Houston over
to a new leader.