Family Camp Ga

KIPP schools' get-tough rules, lessons get results

Now he is a Gates Millennium Scholar starting Georgia Tech this month with enough credits to be a sophomore. Allen says the Knowledge Is Power Program at KIPP South Fulton Academy in East Point was responsible his dramatic turnaround.

“KIPP taught me the importance of hard work and discipline, the things you need to succeed in life,” said Allen, 18. “They improved my character and made me believe in myself.”

The academic boot camp approach at KIPP schools nationwide is known for reforming thousands of wayward middle school students since 1995 with grueling 10-hour days, mandatory Saturday and summer classes and overwhelming loads of homework.

KIPP, a national charter school network educating 32,000 students, makes college a priority for students from low-income neighborhoods where the lure of the streets competes with classes. School leaders say they can turn around a student’s academic performance in fifth through eighth grades.

Gov. Nathan Deal announced this week that a KIPP initiative to train teachers for success at urban schools will receive $1 million in Race to the Top innovation funds. KIPP Metro Atlanta is partnering with Georgia State University and Mercer University College of Education in the project.

KIPP’s extended learning program provides kids with 1.2 years of additional growth in math and 0.9 years of growth in reading, according to a recent study by the independent firm Mathematica Policy Research.

KIPP alumni have a college completion rate four times higher than the national average for students in poverty finishing college by their mid-20s, which is 8 percent.

There are five KIPP schools in metro Atlanta with more than 1,230 students. (More than 720 are on waiting lists.) By 2012, KIPP will open two elementary schools in Atlanta.

KIPP officials said their students spend 50 percent more time in class than other Georgia public school students. The school day starts at 7:15 a.m. and includes core subjects, the arts, academic enrichment and built-in time for clubs.

About 98 percent of KIPP kids in metro Atlanta are black. KIPP Atlanta Collegiate, the network’s first Georgia high school (and its 100th campus nationwide), opened this summer near a dilapidated apartment building in a struggling west Atlanta community with a median household income of $19,000.

The school’s first field trip was to Emory University, where students stayed in dorms, ate in the cafeteria and learned from admissions officers what it would take to get there.

A LETTER FROM HOME TO CAMP HANCOCK, GA « Local History

In August, 1918 William Thies from Schaumburg Township received a letter from the President of the United States. The letter informed him that he should report to the Village Hall in Des Plaines for induction into the military service of the United States.  World War I was raging and the Allied Forces were successfully advancing.  To finish the effort, the United States was still enforcing the draft and Mr. Thies was one of a number of men from Schaumburg Township asked to serve.

After reporting on September 4, 1918, Mr. Thies and the other inductees boarded a train for Camp Grant in Rockford.  After a short stay there, the troops made their way to Camp Hancock, GA which was near the town of Augusta. 

While William was enthusiastically experiencing life outside of Schaumburg Township for the first time, his family was at home sorely missing him.  Yes, they missed his strength and his extra pair of hands but it was his warm, outgoing personality and ready conversation that was lacking in the family circle of his mother, brother and three sisters.

This letter from his brother, Henry, after victory was declared, details the family’s activities in William’s absence:

Monday December 23d 1918  8 P.M. in which you think that you won’t be home for a while.  Which we don’t believe.  As we read a statement from Baker in the Tribune the other day.  In which it says that they are going to bring the number of men to be discharged from every camp up to 1000 a day.  And we can’t understand why they would not do the same with your Camp.  Am also sending you that letter from Wash. D.C. back again.  And I hope that it will do you a lot of good.  Could hardly eat dinner when I read your letter.  But we still live in hopes of seeing you soon.  It is snowing here tonight so that the ground is white already and freezing too.  And I have got only one horse sharp.  Frank/have got Prins sharp too.  But can not use him for going to Church. He might drop.  So will have to call up Troyke tomorrow morning.  If he can shoe Tom for me.  So that if something should happen to me.  The girls can go to Church.  As you know there always something on the Farm that might keep a fellow from going to Church.  And as you know they can’t drive the Kicker.  Say we are striking it lucky this year.  We don’t have to haul milk on the holidays.  Did not haul on Thanksgiving either. Will have to haul milk tomorrow.  But if Troyke has time to take the milk to Rosselle.  We have some awful roads to Meacham.  Fred was down to Melrose with Potatoes.  Which he sold in the fall.  Was always waiting for good roads.  So he could take the Truck.  But now he went with the milk wagon.  Frank Quindel had a sale today.  He is moving to Ontarioville.  Richard Gerchefsky has rented the place.  Our Engine went wild the other day.  One of the Governor brackets came loose.  And one of springs was hitting the ground so hard it threw earth right against cow barn window.  This is about all I can think of tonight.  Probably I will know more Wed night.  Say You better take a picture of Your tree when You have it fixed up.  Well as this letter will reach You after Christmas I wish that You had a merry Christmas.  Hoping that good luck will come through this paper to You.