C-104 Part 4: Case Studiesand coordinating activities within the grade level in
addition to their teaching duties. Some teachers are also
given department chair responsibilities, which involves
aligning the curriculum and instruction for one content
area across the different grade levels.
Given the Power to Lead principle, much of the job
descriptions of teachers, how they are trained, and the
ongoing professional development they receive is deter-
mined at the school level by the principal, who is respon-
sible for the safety and academic performance of the
school. Principals have wide discretion in resource alloca-
tion, including personnel decisions (teachers are “at-will”
employees). This autonomy leads to differences in school
organization within KIPP Houston, and the delegation of
a school’s administrative responsibilities can vary from
school to school. Some principals hire a Dean of Students,
who heads up student culture and discipline, and a Dean
of Instruction, who is responsible primarily for the pro-
fessional development of teachers. Other principals hire
assistant principals, whose job descriptions combine
Dean of Student and Dean of Instruction roles but who
might be assigned specific grade levels to manage.
The principal reports to a Head of Schools at
KIPP Houston’s regional office. According to Head
of Schools Ken Goedekke, these four heads report to
Superintendent Ali and manage a “feeder pattern,” which,
when fully built out, consists of two elementary schools,
two middle schools, and the one high school they feed
into. In the last two years, heads of schools have also
been in charge of spearheading curriculum alignment,
which is the process of ensuring that similar academic
standards and performance benchmarks are being used
across the region. Curriculum alignment has long been
on the radar at KIPP Houston but it has received more
emphasis and resources since 2011. Next year, the cur-
riculum alignment responsibilities will be managed by a
separate head of schools with the other heads focusing
on managing their feeder patterns.^29
In addition to the line of direct reporting from schools,
Ali manages a central office that includes managers of
bus transportation, food services, and facilities; HR
and finance professionals; and curriculum and student-
support specialists. One of Ali’s first acts as superinten-
dent was to change the name of this central office from
KIPP Inc. to the Regional Services Team (RST) to reflect
its role as a support center for the region’s campuses.
According to Goedekke, who manages a feeder pat-
tern in Southwest Houston, there has been something of
a shift in organizational expectations in the last two or
three years. In 2010, most schools were still led by their
founding principal. These principals had been given
wide latitude to create a school according to the unique
visions they had developed during the Fisher Fellowship
year. Principals expected to be regionally supported in
logistics, such as facilities maintenance, food, and trans-
portation, but did not expect to have curriculum and
instructional decisions made at the region level.
“They were given the reins to build a school, and
they did,” Goedekke says. But in 2013, only one original
school founder remains in the principal role, and the
new crop of principals expects more regional alignment
to take place.^30
“The new school leaders have seen the benefits
of alignment. They asked, ‘Why are ten fifth grade
math teachers all writing their own lesson plans?’
Organizationally, we needed to do something different.”^31
Goedekke says that schools that get excellent results
on assessments of student academic progress continue to
get wide latitude to make site-based decisions.^32
Not all schools are performing up to KIPP’s high
standards. One measure of school performance is the
annual state achievement tests that the Texas Education
Agency uses to give an “accountability rating” to each
school. The ratings measure the percentage of students
who meet minimum requirements and are (from high-
est to lowest): Exemplary, Recognized, Acceptable, and
Unacceptable. In the 2010–11 school year (the last year
for which ratings are available), of the 10 KIPP Houston
middle and high schools that received ratings, two were
Exemplary, four were Recognized, three were Acceptable,
and one was Unacceptable. By comparison, another
Houston charter school network, YES Prep, achieved an
Exemplary rating for six of its seven schools, the other
school receiving Recognized status.^33
How does the Power to Lead principle fit with these
discrepancies? Goedekke says that for schools not per-
forming well, district leadership needs to delicately
intervene by, for example, suggesting exemplary lesson
plans that struggling teachers can use.^34
Sehba Ali believes that the Power to Lead allows for a
more entrepreneurial and creative spirit in KIPP schools
and can lead to innovation. She does not believe schools
should simply try to replicate best practices.
“School leaders have a responsibility to be creative and
innovate. We can’t just say, ‘You’re a replication school,’”
Ali says. She cites the example of KIPP Courage, a recently
founded school that is getting good results using more
technology in instruction. Some of their new practices
will be adopted by an older, exemplary-rated KIPP school.
She believes that when school leaders see compelling evi-
dence of an effective practice, they will make the decision
to adopt it without the need for top-down management.