HISD and KIPP

Houston schools can certainly use the competition. With just over 200,000 students, the school district is the nation's seventh-largest. KIPP aims to expand its student body to around 10% of that number, which might be enough to exert pressure on district schools to improve or close down. Last year more than 50 district schools, or roughly one out of six, failed to make adequate yearly progress as mandated by the federal No Child Left Behind Act, and nearly half of the district's high schools were rated "academically unacceptable."

By contrast, KIPP students were acing state tests. At the KIPP Academy Middle School, 99% of eighth-graders scored "proficient" or "advanced" in math and reading. The corresponding results for their district counterparts were 57% and 79%. No wonder the current KIPP waiting list in Houston is 2,500 students long.

KIPP's accomplishments are all the more impressive when you consider that charter schools in Texas receive no public funding for buildings and $1,200 to $1,800 less than the $9,000 per student the state spends on other public schools. More evidence, we'd say, that what public schools need is not more tax dollars but more autonomy to utilize the ample resources they already have.

Democrats, Iraq and WMD

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