Going Beyond Z with KIPP

Lessons learned from KIPP's 21 years as a traditional public school and public charter school helping children succeed in PreK-12, college, and life.

Mike Feinberg is co-founder of the KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) Foundation and executive vice chair of KIPP Houston, which includes 24 public charter schools: 9 primary schools, 11 middle schools, and 4 high schools serving over 12,500 children. To date, 90% of the KIPPsters who have left the KIPP Houston middle schools have gone on to college, and 51% of those former middle school KIPPsters have graduated from college (compared with a national college graduation rate for low-income children of 8%).

Feinberg received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Pennsylvania and a Masters of Education from National-Louis University. After graduating from Penn, he joined Teach For America and taught bilingual fifth grade in Houston, Texas. In 1994, he co-founded KIPP with Dave Levin and established KIPP Academy Houston a year later. In 2000, he co-founded the KIPP Foundation to help take KIPP to scale. Today, KIPP is a network of 183 high-performing public schools around the nation serving 70,000 children.

Feinberg's and Levin's efforts became the story told by Washington Post reporter, Jay Mathews, in his book "Work hard. Be nice." KIPP has been featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show, CBS 60 Minutes, ABC World News Tonight, and in The New York Times, Houston Chronicle, Washington Post, and more.