Leading US education innovator to visit New Zealand

AOTEAROA FOUNDATION MEDIA RELEASE

20 September 2012

Leading US education innovator to visit New Zealand to share his experience of charter schools in the US

As part of building public understanding of Partnership Schools, Dr. Mike Feinberg, co-founder of the United States’ KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program), a public charter schools network, is to visit New Zealand.

While in New Zealand, Dr. Feinberg will give public lectures on the KIPP schools’ programme in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. These are an opportunity for parents and communities to hear about a high-quality charter school model in the US that has delivered outstanding results in terms of lifting educational achievement for disadvantaged students and providing new ways for parents and communities to be involved in their public schools.

The visit is being supported by the Aotearoa Foundation in an effort to share learnings from overseas, as New Zealand develops its own Partnership Schools model. Neither KIPP, nor the Aotearoa Foundation, has any plans to establish a network of Partnership Schools in New Zealand.

“As a relatively late adopter of charter schools as an option within the education system, New Zealand has the advantage of being able to learn from successes and failures of the model in other parts of the world to create something that works in the New Zealand context. In that spirit, we are pleased to support Mike Feinberg’s visit,” said Julian Robertson, Founder, Aotearoa Foundation.

Partnership Schools are one of a number of the New Zealand Government’s initiatives aimed at addressing the long tail of student underachievement in New Zealand, in which Māori and Pasifika students are over-represented. Common in the UK, US and Europe, charter schools are designed to provide greater flexibility for a school to innovate in order to engage with students and to have stronger accountability for achieving results.

KIPP is a network of 125 high-performing public charter schools serving nearly 40,000 students in 20 states across the US. More than 85% of students are from low-income families, 95% are Afro-American or Latino/Hispanic, 14% are English language learners, and 9% of students in the current school year are receiving special education services. The KIPP programme is widely regarded as a success, with over 90% of KIPP middle school students going on to graduate from high school, and over 80% of KIPP alumni going on to university/tertiary education.[1]

Dr. Feinberg is currently Executive Vice-Chair of KIPP Houston, which includes 21 public charter schools and serves on the board of KIPP Foundation, where he helps to oversee the national network of schools. He and fellow KIPP founder, Dave Levin, have won numerous awards for educational excellence and public service/social entrepreneurship.
He will meet with a range of academics, educators, Government and iwi representatives, and community leaders during his visit. His public lectures, which are free admission, will be held at:
• Victoria University on Tuesday 25 September at 5.45pm at Lecture Theatre 4, Victoria University Law School, Pipitea Campus, Lambton Quay.
• Canterbury University on Wednesday 26 September at 6.30pm at The Undercroft, basement level of the main University library.
• Auckland University on Thursday 27 September at 7.00pm at the Fisher & Paykel Auditorium, Owen G Glenn Building.

ENDS

Biography of Dr. Mike Feinberg
Dr. Feinberg co-founded KIPP (Knowledge is Power Programme) in 1994 with Dave Levin and established the KIPP Academy Houston a year later. Together they co-founded the KIPP Foundation in 2000, which now has a network of 125 high-performing public charter schools across 20 states in the US.

Dr. Feinberg is the Executive Vice-Chair of KIPP Houston, which includes 21 public charter schools: nine primary schools, nine middle schools, and three high schools. In 2005, he led the effort to start a public K-8 school in Houston for Hurricane Katrina evacuees from New Orleans. The school, NOW College Prep (New Orleans West), opened in 10 days.

In 2006, Dr. Feinberg and Levin were awarded The Thomas B. Fordham Prize for Excellence in Education, and the National Jefferson Award for Greatest Public Service by a Private Citizen. In 2008, they received the Presidential Citizen’s Medal at the White House. In 2009, they were the recipients of the Charles Bronfman Prize as well as the Manhattan Institute’s William E. Simon prize for Lifetime Achievement in Social Entrepreneurship. And in 2011, they were awarded the Guardian of the Human Spirit award by the Holocaust Museum Houston given to dedicated Houstonians who have worked to enhance the lives of others and to better humankind.

Dr. Feinberg received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Pennsylvania in 1991 and a Masters of Education from National-Louis University in 2005. After graduating from Penn, Dr. Feinberg joined Teach For America and taught fifth grade in Houston, Texas. In 2004, Dr. Feinberg was named as Ashoka Fellow, which is awarded to leading social entrepreneurs with innovative solutions and the potential to change patterns across society. In 2010, Yale University awarded Mike an honorary doctorate of Humane Letters.

He is married to Colleen Dippel and they have two children: Gus (7) and Abadit (2) whom they adopted from Ethiopia in 2011.

The Aotearoa Foundation

The Aotearoa Foundation is a private philanthropic foundation, founded by Julian Robertson and his late wife, Josie. The Foundation seeks to make large-scale, high-impact grants in three principal areas within New Zealand: 1) education 2) environment 3) medical research.

© Scoop Media