Excuses are not an option

Alan Borsuk:

There are casual days at Milwaukee College Preparatory School when it comes to what students can wear. Polo shirts (red for almost all the students and yellow for standouts who have earned privileges) are the uniform for those days. Other days, students have to wear blazers and ties.

But there are no casual days at the school when it comes to academics, even down to the kindergartners.

"Let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go," eighth-grade math teacher Edward Richerson exhorts his students as a half dozen head toward the blackboard to solve some equations. They're not moving fast enough for him.

A couple of them falter in their explanations. "What I've told you not to do is get lazy on these equations, which is what you've done," Richerson says. If you're not getting them, it's not because you're not smart enough, he says. "Since we are overachievers," he begins as he tells them why they have to be as picky about the details of the answers as he is.

In a 5-year-old kindergarten class, children do an exercise in counting and understanding sequences of shapes. Four-year-olds are expected to be on the verge of reading by Christmas.

In national education circles, phrases such as "no excuses" and names such as "KIPP" have come to stand for a hard-driving approach to educating low-income urban children, and that includes longer days, strict codes of conduct, an emphasis on mastering basics and a dedication among staff members approaching zeal. The Knowledge Is Power Program, or KIPP, operates 57 schools in cities around the country and has a record that is not perfect but is noteworthy for its success.

Milwaukee College Prep, 2449 N. 36th St., is the prime example in Milwaukee of a no-excuses school. The charter school, which is publicly funded and was chartered through the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, is not formally a KIPP school, although it is affiliated with the KIPP movement.

Milwaukee College Preparatory School's website.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at November 15, 2007 5:45 AM
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