Statements
Mission
KIPP Nashville's vision is that one day, every student in Nashville will have access to a high-quality, college-preparatory seat in a public school. We pursue this through our mission of cultivating in our students the academic and character skills needed to succeed in top colleges and life beyond. Our six schools are building a vibrant, college-going culture in Nashville, empowering students and communities to create opportunity-filled lives and build a better tomorrow.
Background
KIPP began in 1994 with a powerful idea: to help children develop the knowledge, skills, character, and habits they need to succeed in college and build a better tomorrow for their communities.Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin started KIPP in a Houston district classroom with 47 fifth-graders. As fifth grade teachers in Houston's Third Ward, Mike and Dave saw the need for high-quality college-preparatory instruction, and developed the KIPP model to help meet that need. The core of KIPP's model was the Five Pillars of High Expectations, Choice and Commitment, More Time, Power to Lead, and Focus on Results. The following year, Mike and Dave opened two KIPP middle schools serving grades 5-8, one in Houston and one in New York City. By 1999, these original KIPP public charter schools were among the highest-performing schools in their respective communities. In 2003, Randy Dowell began preparations to start a high-performing public charter school in Nashville and in July 2005, opened KIPP Academy Nashville, a non-profit charter middle school (grades 5 through 8) serving youth from economically disadvantaged neighborhoods in Nashville. In 2013, KIPP Nashville College Prep opened, which now educates grades 5-8. KIPP Nashville Collegiate High School opened in fall 2014. Collegiate High School will educate grades 9-12 when fully grown by the 2017-2018 school year. In fall 2015, KIPP Kirkpatrick Elementary School opened its doors in partnership with Metro Nashville Public Schools. In its first year, KIPP Kirkpatrick is educating students in kindergarten and first grade, and will grow to educate students through fourth grade. In August 2017, KIPP Nashville opened its newest elementary school: KIPP Nashville College Prep Elementary (KNCPE) in North Nashville. In its first year, KNCPE educates kindergarten and first grade, and will grow to educate students through fourth grade. By 2020, KIPP Nashville schools will educate approximately 3,000 students from kindergarten through college graduation.
Impact
KIPP, the Knowledge is Power Program, is part of a national network of over 200 public charter schools educating over 90,000 students and over 10,000 alumni in college. In Nashville, we are educating over 1,700 students from elementary through high school, and over 300 alums in colleges across the country. Our KIPPsters are on track to triple the college graduation rate of their peers.Our accomplishments for the past few years include: KIPP Nashville College Prep and KIPP Nashville Collegiate High School were recognized as Reward Schools for posting student growth in the top 5% of all public schools in Tennessee in the 2016-2017 school year.KIPP Nashville College Prep outperformed the district and state in Math and Science in the 2016-2017 school year. KIPP Academy Nashville outperformed the district and state in English Language Arts, Math and Science.KIPP Nashville Collegiate High School students scored an average 22 on the ACT- the highest in the KIPP network (44% scored a 24 or higher).KIPP Nashville Collegiate High School completed its first year of service in the 2014-15 school year. Collegiate was the highest-performing non-magnet high school in Nashville on the End of Course exams and posted the strongest student growth of any high school in the national KIPP network on the MAP test. The Collegiate Warriors ranked in the 99th percentile for all public schools in the state for growth in reading, and 98th percentile for growth in math.In 2015, for the third year in a row, our flagship school, KIPP Academy Nashville, was named a Reward school for posting student growth in the top 5% of all TN public schools, and earned its best performance ever in reading and science on the TCAP.At KIPP Nashville College Prep in 2015, students outperformed their peers in surrounding schools on the TCAP in both growth and achievement measures in reading and in math, and more than doubled "pre-KIPP" student performance in math by the end of 5th grade. KIPP Nashville's goals for the current school year include: Educating more students across Nashville by growing with focus and intentionality. Our goal is to educate approximately 3,000 students across 7 schools in grades K-12 by 2020. We will reach self-sustainability on state and local funds by 2020. Ensuring our alumni are prepared for, and supported to apply to and matriculate to colleges that are the best fit for them. Our ultimate goal is for 79% of our alumni to graduate from college with a bachelor's degree. Working towards vertical alignment across our region through shared curriculum and professional development priorities.
Needs
In our country, college-access is a proxy for having a choice-filled life. However, in 2014, less than 3 out of every 100 juniors in public school scored "college-ready" on all subjects on the ACT in East and North Nashville. As Nashville prospers, we must ensure that all of our students are prepared to seize the opportunities that this growth provides. To aid in our mission to create a vibrant, college-going culture, KIPP Nashville is focused on the following needs: Continuing to support a robust extracurricular program for our high school. KIPP is working to raise funding to continue support for programming including sports, such as basketball and soccer, as well as choir, student council, and key club, among others. We believe that the addition of high-quality extracurriculars will support a strong school culture and help our KIPPsters develop as well-rounded individuals.Raising funding for gap-filling scholarships for our rising high school juniors to attend pre-college summer programs.Growing to scale, adding one grade at a time, to educate over 3,000 students in grades kindergarten through twelfth grade at 7 schools, and establish financial self-sustainability by 2020.
CEO Statement
A few weeks ago, I stood before our staff of now over 200 big KIPPsters on the campus of Tennessee State University to kick off the year. Our team reflected on students like John Lewis who decades earlier congregated there to prepare to lead Sit-Ins and Freedom Rides. We also reflected on the words of Congressman Lewis shared with me last year on Capitol Hill when he urged me and the KIPP Nashville team to keep working to put more Nashville students on the path to and through college. As our team begins our 13th year, we have embraced Congressman Lewis' charge and are committed to growing stronger. We have reflected on the successes and lessons learned of the past year and enter 2017-2018 with a renewed sense of purpose. Over the past year we've experience amazing highs and saddening lows. We opened our second elementary school, KIPP Nashville College Prep Elementary. Our middle schools strengthened, with KIPP Nashville College Prep making dramatic improvements in student growth and KIPP Academy Nashville once again being named a SCORE prize finalist for top middle school in the state of Tennessee. Our high school continued to set the bar for excellence for similar schools across the country, and our oldest high school students are now beginning to build their college wish lists. And in the background of these exciting highs, our country has continued to wrestle with questions of race, equity and justice. The past year once again reminded us that the American Dream, and even the right to breathe, remains elusive for all too many, especially for children of color and those living in low-income communities. Most KIPP Nashville students are African American or Latino, and as the leader of this team, I see how police shootings of the last year and the public discourse about immigrant groups and religious minorities have impacted our students of color. The vast majority of the students in our schools are growing up in an America where they regularly see or hear negative words about people who look like them - or worst yet, violence against them - in and by our country's political leaders or public servants. So while we will continue to focus on teaching the fundamentals of math, reading, science and social studies, we will also continue to develop the character skills to equip our students to build a better tomorrow for themselves, their families, their communities and for all of us.
Service Categories |
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| Primary Category: | Education - Elementary & Secondary Schools |
| Secondary Category: | - |
| Tertiary Category: | - |
Areas Served
Davidson County. Students zoned to attend Metro Nashville Public Schools.
| TN - Davidson |
