Since there’s no shortage of news on low-performing schools, we’re interested in shining a spotlight on schools deserving of positive attention.  To that end, we hope to make "Great Schools" a recurring feature that gives some positive attention to schools that do more with less, that are shining examples of excellence, and are schools that lots of parents would send their children to if they had the chance.  If you know of a school–public, private, or public charter–that fits this description, please contact me at rboots at allianceREMOVETHISforschoolchoice dot org.-ed.

KIPP Philadelphia Charter School, which got its start in the summer of 2003, presently serves 300 students between the 5^th through 8^th grades.  KIPP schools are known for their high-flying ways, but even so, KIPP Philadelphia stands out: the current eighth grade class has improved from the 17^th to the 70^th percentile in math, and from the 21^st to the 55^th percentile in reading in their first three years at KIPP as measured by the TerraNova, a norm-referenced test.  In addition, those students outperformed both the state and the district on this year’s state test with 86 percent proficient or advanced in math, and 80 percent proficient or advanced in reading.

Principal Marc Mannella took the time to talk about how he wandered into education, what it’s like starting a brand-new KIPP school, and whether all those 80-hour days are wearing on him. 

You majored in biology and psychology at the University of Rochester.  What led you to go into education?

I thought would be a scientist like my father, so I was originally planning on medical school.  I finally decided against it, so I added the psych major for something more applicable to whatever field I ended up in.  I started exploring education through the University of Rochester’s Take Five year, which allows students to take a fifth year tuition-free to explore fields outside their major.  After I graduated in 1998 I ended up in Baltimore through Teach for America, and I found I loved it—I knew I would be working in education in some form for the rest of my life. 

Why Teach for America? 

I hadn’t heard of it until the sister of a girl I was dating at the time told me about it—the organization doesn’t recruit as much it does now.  The main thing that appealed to me about Teach for America wasn’t just getting into a classroom sooner, but getting into an inner-city school.  I’m a strong believer in public school, having attended public school all my life, but I also knew public schools weren’t all that good, and so I wanted to see things from the inside. 

While in Baltimore, I met my wife, who was a science teacher through Teach for America.  I went with her when she got accepted to the University of Pennsylvania.  When I arrived in Philadelphia, I had to decide if I was going to teach for the district or teach elsewhere.  I ended up applying to charters and ended up at a charter school in Logan, north of Philadelphia, in 2000. 

Which brought you to KIPP. 

After two years at that charter school, I was itching to do something new, so I applied to Univ. of Pennsylvania’s graduate school of education for a Ph.D. in education policy.  I thought it was the perfect marriage of my science background and education career. 

At a Teach for America recruiting event, I met KIPP founder Mike Feinberg.  When I heard him talking about KIPP, I approached him and asked him when he was going to open a KIPP school in Philly, because that was definitely something I wanted to be a part of.  Mike said, “Actually, you’re just the type of person we would want to open a KIPP school.”  “But I’m only 26.”  “I was only 24 when I did it.”  “But Mike, I don’t even have a master’s degree.”  “When do you think I had time to get my master’s degree?  Now, do you have any more “yeah, buts” for me?”

He made me walk out to his rental car and gave me an application to apply to lead a KIPP school.  That was the spring of 2002.  He I now had a decision to make: Ph.D. or KIPP’s school leadership program?  I put Penn on hold to apply to KIPP, and was lucky enough to be chosen. 

I started my Fisher Fellowship year, which is the year of training all KIPP leaders get before opening a new school, in July of 2002.  We learned a lot of organizational leadership and operations stuff.  There were 17 in my cohort.  We had all been successful teachers—the training we received was on the leadership side.  We looked at questions like how to help a struggling teacher, how to make a good teacher a great teacher. 

The organizational leadership and operations side were extremely important to me—how to run the budget, how to manage and track students.    

So it’s just learning the mechanics? 

To a great degree, but the organizational leadership side was also huge.  We read a couple of books—“Good to Great”, “Built to Last.”  One of the things they said, “If you get the right people on your team, you don’t have to motivate—you just have to make sure you don’t de-motivate them.”  I had never thought about that in the classroom, but it was different now that I’m sitting behind the school leader’s desk. 

So what was it like opening a new school? 

KIPP Philadelphia opened in July 2003 (KIPP schools always start with a summer session).  We only had a fifth grade of 90 students, three homerooms of 30 students each.  Our students come primarily from the surrounding neighborhood.  80 percent of our student body is African-American; the other 20 percent is Hispanic.  90 percent of our students qualify for free or reduced meals.  Between faculty and administration, there were six of us: four teachers, our office manager, and me. 

We’re split up departmentally—math, English, social studies, science.  I teach as well to allow one of our teachers to double for special ed classes. 

I can tell you the school leadership program did as good a job as possible for what I was about to face, but nothing can prepare you for the whole thing.  But I knew there was a lot riding on us—I’ve seen the schools they would have gone to if we had failed or never opened. 

So there’s a lot of motivation for you to not fail. 

Absolutely, but it’s not just me.  I think there was a sense of ownership for everybody.  Everybody was coming together; we all wanted this thing to work.  We made mistakes, but we knew we had to be brutally honest about what we were facing, but not lose focus on what we were trying to accomplish.

The nice thing about being so small is we could be much more nimble.  As an example, we changed the way we originally checked homework.  We decided our system took too long, so we changed it, because we had to understand it wasn’t working.

What other mistakes did you make in the beginning? 

I think in the beginning, I downplayed to prospective teachers how hard it is to be a KIPP teacher.  This is not easy.  What KIPP does isn’t terribly complicated, but it’s hard.  I don’t think we explained that to prospective teachers properly.  Of our founding staff, two are still with us; two left at the end of the first year.  Now when we recruit, we tell people, “Yes, it’s long hours, but it’s worth it.”

What is different about KIPP? 

I can boil it down to three things.  First: more time.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that if kids are at school longer, they’ll learn more.  We don’t have a magic curriculum, we don’t have pixie dust to sprinkle on their heads to make them great students.  We just roll up our sleeves and go to work.  By every measure, our kids come to us behind academically.  To help them catch up, they need more time.

Second is the liberty to be flexible and nimble.  I can set my budget, I have control over hiring and firing, I can work out a staffing plan.  I have an in-house social worker with two interns—we need that in Philadelphia.  If KIPP gave me a staffing plan, a social worker may not be in it. 

Third: the sense of commitment that we can engender from everybody.  It doesn’t start out that way, but because of how we run things, the people come to want to help the kids get into college, and soon the kids want to go to college.  And the parents change as well—many just sign up not realizing what they’re in for at KIPP.  I don’t want to generalize, because many parents are savvy, but because of the nature of Philly and the various charter schools that are here, they aren’t necessarily signing up for KIPP, but for something other than their old school.   Some parents who are resistant to what we do can come to understand what we’re doing, and we can point to what we do here and show that this works. 

And the kids caught up within three years. 

It took just a little over two years, actually—they were tested at the end of the seventh grade, with a space of 25 months between tests. 

How did you do it? 

They were being left behind.  The anomalous number isn’t the 70, it’s the 17.  They’re bright kids—they were being underserved educationally.  We work longer days, and we teach them math, we teach them how to read and how to comprehend it.  I firmly believe that all kids can learn, and that at KIPP all students will learn. 

What would you say to those who believe KIPP and other charter schools are harming public schools?

We invite other schools to take anything they think will help.  We’re not competing against anybody—there are 200,000 students and I’m serving 300 of them.  There’s nothing proprietary at KIPP Philadelphia.  If it’s going to help kids in this town, then come, listen, help, take. 

You say KIPP school days are longer.  What’s the schedule like?

At 7:25, buses arrive, and the kids eat breakfast and complete their "morning work" a collection of review questions from yesterday’s lesson.  Teachers circulate the cafeteria and make sure all the students completed last night’s homework. At 7:40, I lead the morning meeting where the teachers and I make announcements and share thoughts with the entire school community.  By 8:00, the kids are in their homeroom.  Monday through Thursday, their day ends at 5:00 p.m.; on Fridays, they get out at 3:30.

During these long days, there’s lots of intensive time to help the kids catch up: fifth and sixth grade students get two hours of reading, two hours of math, one hour of writing, social studies, and science.  They also have a one-hour extracurricular class.  7th and 8th graders also get an hour of Spanish.

Lunch lasts a little less than an hour, part of which we call "refresh" - it’s like a structured recess where kids play games, do puzzles, etc.  We don’t call it "recess"-we want to create a separation between that time at their old schools where inappropriate behaviors may have been the norm.

As you might be aware, KIPP is frequently accused of “creaming”—taking the best kids with the most motivated parents out of public schools.  What is your response to this?

KIPP doesn’t choose parents; parents choose KIPP.  We’re an open-enrollment public school that accepts kids on a first-come, first-served basis.  This past year, we held a lottery because the demand for seats was greater than the available slots.

Our students typically come into KIPP one or two grade levels behind their peers.  Look at our baseline numbers: our first batch of students started at the 17th percentile in math, and the 21st percentile in reading as measured by the TerraNova.  As I always tell people, those baseline scores show that if I’m creaming kids, I’m doing a terrible job at it.

As you have seen personally, KIPP has a high turnover rate in faculty.  Do you think there’s any way to change this?  Also, what do you say to people who believe that KIPP’s approach can’t be applied on a larger scale?

When you look across the national KIPP network, you have teachers that have been teaching for three years, and teachers that have been teaching for 35 years.  KIPP Philadelphia is currently in its fourth year of operation, and our turnover rate is similar to other public middle schools.  All of our teachers share the same drive and motivation that we expect of our students, and so they do put in more time to help our students climb the mountain to college. 

Regarding KIPP’s ability to grow, in 2001, there were 5 KIPP schools.  Five years later, there are 52 KIPP schools in 16 states and Washington, D.C.  We hope to open an additional 50 schools in the next five years without sacrificing quality.

Here in Philadelphia, our Board of Directors is currently exploring the possibility of adding pre-k through 4 elementary schools, and 9-12 high schools.

What sort of feedback have you gotten from parents?  Have you talked to any who have had concerns or disagreements with the way KIPP operates?

At KIPP, we believe that parents are a crucial part of a child’s education, and we encourage them to become involved.  When a parent enrolls their child in KIPP, the student, teacher and parent all sign a learning pledge – the Commitment to Excellence form – promising that they will do whatever it takes to help their students learn.

Like all charter schools, KIPP schools are schools of choice.  If it is not the right fit for the child, the parent can look elsewhere among charter, public and private schools.

What is your favorite experience so far as a KIPP leader?  What is your worst experience?  

That is a hard question, because I love so many things about my job.  I think my favorite experience is the first day of school each year.  I’m a grown man and yet I still can not sleep the night before the first day of school!  Ninety new fifth graders are sitting and looking right at me, and the room feels so full or hope and potential.  You can see in their eyes that they are so hopeful that their new school will give them what they need to be successful.  When it comes right down to it, everything I do is motivated out of fear - a fear of letting those 90 students down.  

Anyone who works with children for a living knows that the hardest part is dealing with the terrible things that sometimes happen to our children outside of our four walls.  Kids today have so many forces conspiring against them, and our world can be a scary and dangerous place.  That is a reality for us in north Philadelphia, but it is also a reality for our peers in rural communities, or in the suburbs.  The hardest part about being the school leader is that you know all of the terrible stories, and my worst experiences have happened right after my school social worker asked me if she could speak to me in private.  When I learn about these things, it motivates me to work that much harder to create a place where our children are safe, loved, and learning.

You said that you are a big believer in public education. What would you say to those that assert charter schools detract from public education? 

I would remind them as politely as I can that charter schools are public education!

What is your long-term goal professionally?  You’re presently putting in 80-hour weeks—aren’t you tired?

My long-term goal professionally is simply to continue to be a positive force in the lives of our kids.  As long as I’m able to work, I will be working to make sure that all children have access to a quality education.  As far as being tired - of course I’m tired.  Everyone who works hard is tired.  But I’m not tired of working because I love what I do.  When I do start feeling low on energy I simply sit in a classroom for a few minutes.  The energy of our kids and talent of our teachers always recharges my batteries, and I’m ready to get back to work.