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KIPP Sunshine Peak Academy wins award

By Nancy Mitchell, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published November 20, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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A Denver charter school on Wednesday was named the year's top nonprofit and awarded $50,000 by the Colorado Springs-based El Pomar Foundation.

KIPP Sunshine Peak Academy, located in southwest Denver, was awarded the Spencer and Julie Penrose Award for the school's work with middle school students from socioeconomically disadvantaged families.

The school is part of the Knowledge Is Power Program, or KIPP, network of charter schools targeting mostly poor and mostly minority students.

"It's certainly an honor to win this award from the El Pomar Foundation, and this recognition will truly contribute to our students," said Kurt Pusch, principal at KIPP.

In Denver, KIPP Sunshine Peak Academy students attend longer school days and a longer school year.

They also typically outperform district averages.

On state tests given in spring 2008, 60 percent of the school's eighth-graders scored proficient or advanced in reading, compared to 45 percent of all DPS eighth-graders.

KIPP Sunshine Peak Academy is the only KIPP school in Colorado. School founder Richard Barrett has applied to Denver Public Schools to open a high school in fall 2009 and, in later years, to add a second middle school and two elementary schools.

The El Pomar Foundation, based in Colorado Springs, is one of the largest and oldest private foundations in the Rocky Mountain West, with assets totaling more than $550 million. It contributes almost $25 million annually to support Colorado nonprofits.

Comments

  • November 22, 2008

    9:26 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    WeloveDenverkids writes:

    I have a room full of graduates from KIPP Sunshine Peak Academy who will not work in school. Several of them have yet to turn in a single assignment this year. When I ask them why they do not do their work their answer is clear and simple. "Because Miss, you don't make us wear our shirts inside out and other students aren't told not to talk to me if I don't work." Message is loud and clear - education, in fact, is a result of fear of being punished. No self motivation, no love of learning, no connection to adults who are there to help.
    While everyone may see this as a successful method (so just give public school teachers the ability to do the same punitive things - I am sure you will see results similar to KIPP), I wonder about it's long term effects. Once they finish Middle school do we need to punish them again through high school? Once through high school do they get scholarships only to drop out their first semester of college? Or are these schools simply designed to staff our future service sector jobs?
    We are, pure and simple, becoming more and more a class based society with fewer and fewer opportunities for those at the bottom to have a shot at a different life, no matter how smart they may be.