Strong Schools/Profiles

In 2006 CityBridge Foundation established partnerships with two high-performing local charter school management organizations, DC Preparatory Academy and KIPP DC, to create new early childhood/elementary schools.

Both DC Prep and KIPP had already established successful middle schools in Washington prior to becoming CityBridge partners. Central to CityBridge’s concept of successful early intervention was the continuous track both schools would provide to high-performing middle schools. Early gains, such as seen in the Head Start program, can fade if a child goes on to a low-performing elementary or middle school.

These partnerships demand more than typical grantee-funder relationships: CityBridge staff has worked closely with both organizations to help ensure the schools’ designs and operations meet the highest possible standards. Typical of our close relationship with partners, CityBridge senior staff serve on the boards of both partner schools. 

DC Preparatory Academy
In 2003, Emily Lawson founded DC Prep. A native Washingtonian and Harvard Business School graduate with wide-ranging management experience, Emily established the first campus in the Edgewood Terrace neighborhood in Ward 5, in Northeast Washington. DC Prep’s first campus serves 250 children in fourth through eighth grade, 60% of whom are low-income (as determined by Federal free- and reduced-price lunch criteria).

DC Prep is highly successful: students who have attended DC Prep for three years are twice as likely to be proficient at reading and three times as likely to be proficient in math as their peers in traditional public schools. Even this performance, however, cannot mask the enormous time and effort that is spent remediating basic deficiencies in reading and math ability. How much more could DC Prep accomplish if students did not enter middle school so far behind average grade level?

DC Prep had already begun considering a solution—starting earlier—when CityBridge approached DC Prep’s leadership to investigate an early education partnership: a new DC Prep school for three-year-olds through third graders, a “feeder” school for DC Prep’s middle school campus.

CityBridge Foundation recruited the elementary school’s founding principal, Dr. Doreen Land, and worked closely with her as she developed the educational program of the school and hired her leadership team.

DC Prep has an ambitious expansion plan. With its strong management team, DC Prep plans to establish four more pairs of early elementary and middle school campuses by 2015. At this proposed scale, DC Prep would educate 10% of the public school students in the eastern (and lower-income) half of Washington, D.C.

In September 2007, DC Prep opened its doors to welcome 330 new students.

For more information about DC Prep, click here.

KIPP DC
KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) is the most successful network of charter schools for low-income students in the country. Eighty percent of KIPP graduates eventually matriculate to college—a rate one-third higher than that of their low-income peers nationwide. In 2004, KIPP opened its first elementary school, KIPP SHINE Prep, in Houston, Texas. Founded by Aaron Brenner, a Teach for America alumnus with experience teaching pre-k, KIPP SHINE was intended to eliminate educational inequity at the earliest point in a child’s education. KIPP SHINE is succeeding brilliantly: in its third year, 91% of first grade students—most of whom are low-income, English language learners—scored “proficient” on Texas’ reading assessment.

Under the local leadership of Susan Schaeffler, a Teach for America alumna and founding principal of Washington’s first KIPP school, KIPP DC has grown to three successful middle schools. In 2006, CityBridge entered into a partnership with KIPP DC to create three new schools—all early childhood/elementary sites—in the nation’s capital. All three new schools will follow the Texas model of KIPP SHINE. In addition to supporting three new KIPP schools, our work with KIPP has included support for documentation of SHINE’s model and for fellowships for prospective KIPP elementary principals.

Laura Bowen, hired as the founding principal of KIPP: LEAP, KIPP DC’s first elementary school, served as a teacher and vice principal at a KIPP DC middle school before becoming a principal in training and beginning her design work.

KIPP DC ultimately intends to create a complete public education continuum for D.C. students, stretching from preschool (for three-year-olds) through high school. This plan is good news for D.C. students, as KIPP has a proven, national record of highest-possible standards, excellent teaching, and best-in-class results.

KIPP: LEAP began teaching its first class of pre-k students, 96 strong, in September 2007.

For more information about KIPP DC, click here.