Charter preschools explode tenfold in DC
Deputy Education Secretary Tony Miller reads at a DC charter school
At LEAP Academy, a public charter school in Southeast Washington, a roomful of 4-year-olds hunched over tables, quietly practicing their writing skills. Most can’t actually write entire words yet, so they scrawled the first letter and supplemented their stories with pictures.
When one boy instead covered his page with fierce black scribbles, Principal Laura Bowen leaned over his shoulder and told him to stop. “I don’t want any more scribbles,” she said. “I want a story.”
Such encounters are part of the new frontier as D.C.’s thriving charter-school movement expands into early childhood programs, where per-pupil funding is higher and, advocates say, early intervention might lead to bigger gains in academic achievement.
LEAP is part of the nonprofit KIPP chain, which started with just one middle school in Houston 15
