20 Years. 20,000 Strong.
Celebrating Our 2023 Impact
20 Years of
Joyful Excellence
We have established joyful, academically excellent charter public schools throughout Los Angeles & San Diego, preparing students for college, career and beyond to pursue their chosen paths—explore our journey!
Two Decades of Impact
Over the past twenty years, we’ve celebrated some momentous achievements and have remained committed to preparing our KIPPsters academically, socially, and emotionally so they can achieve anything they desire. By learning together from our experiences, our voices are amplified in our active pursuit of realizing a more just world.
10K+
10,000+ college
acceptances
over 20 years
325K+
325,000+ sq.ft. of joyful
learning environments
over 20 years
$2.8M
$2,832,000 in
scholarships
over 20 years
Our 20 Year Story
What Defines Us
KIPP SoCal Public Schools is a network of 23 charter public elementary and middle schools within 20 Local Educational Agencies (LEAs), operating within Los Angeles, Compton, Montebello, and San Diego Unified School Districts. Together with families and communities, we create joyful, academically excellent schools that prepare students with the skills and confidence to pursue the paths they choose—college, career, and beyond—so they can lead fulfilling lives and create a more just world.
We remain committed to equity in public education, grounded in the belief that children are capable of achieving at the highest of levels when schools build strong, trusting relationships and are focused on each student’s limitless potential. We ensure students are supported in every step of their educational journey, fostering experiences that reflect high expectations for academic achievement, care for the whole-child through a strong sense of belonging, and readiness for college and career.
10,150
STUDENTS
8,300
ALUMNI
1,550
TEAM
Our StudentS
81%
Latinx
16%
Black
1%
AAPI
1%
Multi-Racial
1%
Other
90%
Free or Reduced-Price Meals
24%
English Language Learners
16%
Special Education Services
Our ACCOMPLISHMENTS
What Sets Us Apart
KIPP SoCal has a decades-long track record of exceptional results, working together with families and communities to create powerful, anti-racist learning environments where all students can thrive. We are proud of the core things we stand for that make us unique:
Rigorous, Well-Rounded Academics
Research has shown that KIPP SoCal charter public schools have provided stronger learning experiences and more instructional time in both reading and math, leading to long-term gains for our students. At KIPP SoCal, we believe in the unlimited potential of every single student and fostering experiences that reflect high expectations for academic achievement through a well-rounded, and rigorous curriculum.
Stronger Learning Environments
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Source: "As a Matter of Fact: The National Charter School Study III 2023," Center for Research on Education Outcomes, Stanford University. Based on state test scores from 2014-2019. Weighted average KIPP impact provided by CREDO upon request.
KIPP Students experience more annual academic growth than peers in traditional public schools
- 45 Additional Days of Learning in Reading
- 55 Additional Days of Learning in Math
Across all of our schools, we are focused on a strong grade-level curriculum in literacy, math, and exposure to STEAM experiences, laying the foundation for academic success and college and career preparedness. Our goal is that 100% of students can meet or exceed grade-level standards, or are in alignment with their individualized education plan every year they attend our public schools.
Mastering the Fundamentals
We work to meet the needs of all of our students through a personalized learning approach that begins with a focus on early literacy skills, data-driven assessments, and joyful enrichment experiences. This sets the foundation for a mastery of the fundamental skills in higher language, math, and social-emotional skills, ensuring students’ character growth and the academic progress necessary to achieve their full potential throughout their educational journey and beyond.
Laying the Foundation
Through KIPP Forward, we’re supporting students to choose and prepare for the educational and career path that best suits their goals and sense of purpose. We are committed to ensuring that each student has the skills and confidence to pursue any path they choose and that they leave us “ready for life.”
KIPP Students are 67% more likely to attend college & nearly twice as likely of graduating
Source: "Long-Term Impacts of KIPP Middle and High Schools on College Enrollment, Persistence, and Attainment," Mathematica, September 12, 2003.
Achieving Our Goals
To accomplish these goals, we are focused on three pillars:
Anti-Racist learning environments where all students can thrive.
Excellent quality of teaching, professional development and instructional coaching.
Data-driven instruction in service of student learning.
Before middle school, I really didn’t think about college. When I got to KIPP, they made me aware of college by naming classrooms after colleges and helped me see how college was an option for me. Take advantage of the opportunity to attend KIPP, because it is helpful in your [academic] journey.
Expanded Opportunities
We are committed to providing access to enriching, engaging, safe and nurturing expanded learning opportunities year-round for every KIPPster. Our students develop confidence and leadership skills in pursuit of their passions throughout the school day and after the bell rings; we provide year-round access to multi-layered after-school enrichment programs, visual and performing arts, field lessons, and academic tutoring support.
Expanded Learning Program
Our Expanded Learning team designs enrichment clubs to promote layering of skills, support mastery, and celebrate growth. Various opportunities are offered across our schools from art, robotics, dance and sports to music, science, cooking, debate and more!
23
23 school sites operating Expanded Learning programming
3,000
3,000 students in After-School programs, with 1,500 on the waitlist
1,200
1,200 students participated in day-long summer camps
Arts Education
We culminate each school year celebrating our students’ creativity in the visual, digital, and performing arts at The Museum of KIPP Art (MOKA), a beloved annual showcase and auction highlighting the importance of providing a well-rounded, immersive arts education.
Quality Tutoring Support
KIPP SoCal offers after-school academic support aligned with grade-level curriculum, incorporating individualized tutoring, DEAR (Drop Everything and Read), and homework assistance in various subjects to help students succeed academically. To bolster post-pandemic recovery, we also partner with Step Up Tutoring across to provide bi-weekly, one-on-one, high-dosage tutoring aligned with California standards.
Field Lessons
Through visiting science/art museums, sporting events, theater shows, and even local farms, we offer a multi-faceted educational experience that goes beyond the classroom. These excursions provide unique hands-on learning that helps connect the dots between knowledge and the real world, sparking KIPPsters’ curiosity and imagination. This summer students participated in over 110 educational field-trips.
Expanded Opportunities In Action
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A Look Inside KIPP Scholar’s Musical Community
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Exploring Passions & Building Character in Art Class
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KIPP Comienza Folklórico Honors Mariachi Legend
College, Career & Beyond
Our KIPP Forward team supports students and alumni with individual, personalized counseling, helping them navigate any path they choose honoring their purpose, passions, and plans. We are beside our KIPPsters every step of the way to and through college, career and beyond, following every culminating student on their journeys in high school, college, and life!
Personalized
Support
Our counselors provide extensive support to help alumni keep moving forward, tackling academic, social and financial challenges on their path to pursuing their dreams. Once on their way after eighth grade, our KIPP Alumni Network helps to create powerful connections, and works together with our alumni through networking, mentorship, leadership training, and more.
Support in Middle School
Our counselors introduce families to a variety of high school options, providing support throughout the high school placement process and transition into high school.
Support in High School
While in high school, our counselors work with alumni to successfully transition into high school, explore potential career interests, and create a postsecondary plan.
Support in College
Once in college, our counselors provide extensive support to ensure alumni persist on the path to college graduation and explore career opportunities.
Support in Career
At any point in their journey, our counselors provide career-oriented services and resources to support alumni as they navigate their chosen career paths.
KIPP Forward In Action
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College-Bound Alum on KIPP's College-Going Culture
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Ambition & Inspiration Abound for KIPP Alum
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KIPP SoCal’s Career & Technical Education Exploration
I don’t think I would be attending John Hopkins University had I not attended KIPP. My counselor really built a connection with me. As a KIPPster, you have an advantage. If you’re passionate about pursuing higher education as a first-generation college student, KIPP will help you succeed.
Identity Affirming Development
KIPP SoCal creates safe, inclusive, and joyful learning experiences that cater to the development of the whole child. This whole-child approach focus goes beyond rigorous academics and enrichment activities, additionally providing character development, identity affirmation, social-emotional learning, and mental health programs to ensure that we holistically nurture purpose and pathways.
Our Systems & Structures
We cultivate a space where diverse identities are affirmed, voices are heard, and our students’ life experiences shape and inform a powerful anti-racist, learning environment. Our beliefs around student culture and behavior are centered in anti-oppression, anti-disability, anti-racism, pro-Black, pro-immigrant, and pro-LGBTQIA+ principles.
School-Wide Positive Behavior System
Sets, teaches and reinforces clear behavior expectations.
Trauma-Informed Practices
We understand the impact stress & trauma have on a child’s body, focusing on their ability to regulate emotions, behavior and ultimately learn.
Restorative Practices
We aim to help our students learn, respond, and heal from incidents.
Social-Emotional Learning
We equip KIPPsters with coping strategies for current and future feelings/events.
Strong Developmental Relationships
We believe that high-quality relationships are fundamental to growth, learning, and ability to thrive in school and in life.
Meeting Students' Needs
KIPP SoCal believes in providing personalized support that responds to the needs of each student so that they can thrive in school and life. We offer a continuum of mental health and specialized student support services to address the ever-changing needs of our every KIPPster. Current key support initiatives include:
Homeless &
Foster Youth
LGBTQ+
Youth
Special
Education
Trauma-Informed
Classrooms
Suicide &
Bullying Prevention
Identity Affirmation In Action
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KIPP Communities Tap Into Power of Mindfulness
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Creating Safe Spaces for LGBTQIA+ Students
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Creative Approaches to Bolster Student Attendance
I feel really passionate and proud to be a part of a community that helps reflect and mirror all of our students' identities in the classroom and gives other students windows into other ways of living and being. I feel proud I can see this kind of growth in my students and their comfort in discussing these different topics.
Educator Development
Teachers are the bedrock of our success. KIPP SoCal fosters our educators' passion, skills, and determination for growth by providing them the tools they need to be effective in their ability and desire to transform students’ lives. We support our teachers from the moment they join our team through:
Instructional
Coaching
Real-time coaching from mentors to develop new teachers’ individual growth with tried-and-tested resources for lesson planning and classroom management
Professional Development
An investment in continuous learning through on-going coaching and relationship-building, school and regional trainings, and national conferences/retreats
Continuous Assessment
Regular observation feedback aligned to our Teacher Practice Rubric, to support a positive, productive learning environment while optimizing instructional time
With the challenges plaguing California's schools, strong teachers are essential to our post-pandemic recovery. We must elevate the profession of teaching, giving educators the respect they are due and finding and supporting the qualified, dedicated, and representative teachers who positively shape and teach our students every day.
New Teacher Training
KIPP SoCal’s Teacher Residency Program at Alder Graduate School of Education generates a pipeline of highly qualified teachers, specifically within high-need content areas and from the communities our schools serve. Residents earn a California teaching credential and masters degree in one-year through a powerful apprenticeship within a highly effective, hands-on, mentored learning environment.
100% Success Rate
All graduated residents stay in teaching profession
From Cohort to Community
76% of graduated residents stay to teach at a KIPP SoCal school
Diverse Educators
80% identify as BIPOC, 69% identify as first-generation college students, and 69% are bilingual
Investing in Teachers
Residents are eligible to receive up to $69,000 in financial aid lowering barrier of entry by covering tuition, testing, and life
School Leader Fellow Program
We develop our leaders through a one-year project-based program aligned to the school year, addressing academic and cultural priorities through school placements. Fellows prepare for leadership within KIPP SoCal by gaining instructive and adaptive skills with a 70/20/10 residency model—70% on-the-job learning planning, implementing, and progress monitoring school-wide priority initiatives to drive student results and outcomes; 20% coaching and mentoring; and 10% formal learning.
As a teacher, my love for my students is manifested in what I do day to day from the simplicity of being present every day to the challenge of holding and keeping students accountable. Love is what motivates me to continue moving forward to do whatever it takes to ensure my students are in a space where they feel valued, respected, loved, safe, heard, and seen.
Our Purpose: Education for Liberation
At KIPP SoCal, we envision education as a powerful tool for liberating both individuals and our society toward a more just and equitable world. We have adopted Anti-Racist Policy & Standards that acknowledge our power and responsibility to take a leading stance against systemic racism, discrimination, bias, and educational injustice.
Becoming an
Anti-Racist Organization
We believe anti-racist practices should happen at every touchpoint within and across the organization. The formal adoption of anti-racist policies and standards grounds our organizational thinking, decision-making, procedures, and programs to remove internal and external academic barriers for our students. It is a collective vision for what anti-racism education looks like at KIPP SoCal, what we hope our students experience, and what we will work towards.
Culture & Climate:
Power & Family Engagement
We create a joyful, anti-racist culture & climate by celebrating our communities' diversity, and actively involving all stakeholders in the decision-making process.
Student Supports & Experience
We equip schools with resources to help students experience an affirming learning environment rooted in their culture, community, and educational equity.
Content, Pedagogy & Assessment
We develop student agency where students are seen as co-creators of knowledge, through authentic, evidence-based educational and liberatory practices.
Leadership, Workforce & Professional Development
We support our team to engage in liberatory, transformative, and restorative work practices that are culturally relevant, value-aligned, accessible, and equitable.
Partnerships, Data Systems & Technology
We use data to address educational inequity and create solutions that reflect the individual needs of students.
Anti-Racism is a state of doing, not a state of being. Anti-racism is the action of dismantling racism in our systems, our organizations, our relationships, and our minds. We are only anti-racist when we are actively dismantling racism. We can’t claim that attribute for ourselves at any other time. We must PRACTICE anti-racism daily, moment by moment.
The Standards In Action
Anti-racism is a verb. Here is how we are putting our beliefs into action organization-wide.
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Building Community Through Restoration
2.2F: Student Supports
Since 2018, KIPP Corazón has prided itself on being a restorative community that frequently uses individual and collective voices to uplift, connect, and empower one another.
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Culturally Grounding Learning Opportunity
4.1E: Professional Development
KIPP Compton educators connected with Compton Unified Board President Denzell Jordan-Perry & Compton City Councilman Andre Spicer to ground themselves in the city’s rich history.
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Powerful Community Advocacy
5.3A: Partnerships
KIPP Empower & KIPP Academy of Opportunity joined the Community Coalition’s Free the Land March to bring urgency and awareness to trafficking on the Figueroa corridor in South LA.
Our Vision
We believe every child should grow up free to create the future they want for themselves, their families, and their communities. We commit to our students by fostering spaces where they feel safe and supported to be their authentic selves.
Our Commitment to Fulfilling Lives
College, Career, & Beyond
We are committed to supporting our KIPPsters to and through their post-secondary journeys to ensure they are academically and socially prepared to thrive in college, career, and life.
KIPP Comienza's
Middle School Campus
We have secured a location in Huntington Park and broke ground on the new campus in October 2023.
KIPP Ignite's
Permanent Campus
We have secured a location in the Florence-Firestone neighborhood and broke ground on the new campus in August 2023.
KIPP Scholar's
New Home
KIPP Scholar is expected to move into their new home on S. Hoover St. by Fall 2023.
Our Commitment to Joy
325,000+ Sq. Ft. of Joyful Excellence
We are committed to creating joyful and restorative learning environments where students feel seen, heard, and valued. Over the past decade, we have built 13 beautiful, state-of-the-art campuses in SoCal. In the next few years, we are expected to open three additional permanent homes in Los Angeles and plan to expand our footprint in San Diego.
Our Commitment to Holistic Learning
Identity Affirming Development
We are committed to achieving academic excellence through high expectations, character development, identity affirmation, enrichment activities, social-emotional learning, and mental health programs.
As Seen on Good Morning America: KIPP Sol Mariachi made their national TV debut for a Hispanic Heritage Month segment that celebrated our students’ rich cultural heritage.
Keep Our South LA Community Safe
After years of on-the-ground work, our collective community efforts resulted in the demolition of the Palms Motel, a crime-ridden motel that resided on South LA’s infamous Figueroa corridor between KIPP Empower and KIPP Academy of Opportunity.
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The Promise of Tomorrow
Following the demolition of the Palms Motel, we have been actively working alongside community partners to create a long-term plan that repurposes the space into a safe community haven.
Free the Land March
We mobilized to join the Community Coalition’s Free the Land march, which focused on bringing urgency and awareness to the historic disinvestment plaguing the Figueroa corridor.
Our Commitment to a Just World
The Promise of Tomorrow
We are committed to celebrating the rich history and legacies of our communities. We believe in the power of advocacy and civic engagement as we work together to fight historical inequities. Take a look at a powerful example of how we worked alongside our South LA community to advocate for a safer Figueroa Corridor.
Your Generosity In Action
Through the generosity of our donors, we are able to expand our impact in key operations and programing:
College & Career
Support
Safe, Nurturing
Campuses
Our Team's
Development
Innovation
& Advocacy
Promise of
Tomorrow
YoUR SUPPORT MAKES OUR IMPACT POSSIBLE
A contribution of any size truly makes a difference in supporting the KIPP SoCal community.
$25
Support Expanded Opportunities
Supplies for Expanded Learning Program
$100
Support Educator Development
Credentialing Fees for One Teacher
$250
Support
Identity Affirmation
Social-Emotional
Professional Development
$1,000
Support Alumni
Success
KIPP Forward College & Career Scholarship
Our Gratitude
We are proud to honor our volunteers, community members, campaign supporters and annual donors who make our work possible everyday.
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