Editorial: North Dakota should allow charter schools for Indian kids

Thursday, January 20, 2011  

"KIPP stands for the Knowledge Is Power Program, one of the most successful school-reform movements of the past decade. There now are KIPP schools in dozens of low-income neighborhoods across America. Their track record has drawn favorable attention from Oprah Winfrey and Bill Gates as well as “60 Minutes,” The New York Times and countless other media outlets. That’s because KIPP schools work. “While less than 40 percent of low-income students attend college nationally, KIPP’s college matriculation rate stands at more than 85 percent for students who complete the eighth grade at KIPP,” KIPP.org reports.

You might think KIPP schools would be perfect fits for North Dakota's American Indian reservations, among other places. And you'd be right, except for this:

KIPP schools are illegal in North Dakota. That's in part because of a single word in the opening paragraph of this editorial: "charter."

North Dakota law makes no provision for charter schools. But again, that's only part of the problem, because a great many teachers at KIPP schools are members of the Teach for America program.

And as noted in Monday's editorial, Teach for America teachers also can't teach in North Dakota under current law.

"I want every child in the country to have these kinds of opportunities, where there are such high expectations, where there's a college-going culture from day one," gushed one observer after a visit to a KIPP school in October."

Get the Story:
OUR OPINION: Change law to let KIPP schools open in N.D. (The Grand Forks Herald 1/20)
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