peterike,

Has KIPP ever gone to the Gates Foundation for funding?

Actually, the Gates Foundation has been very supportive of KIPP, and other PHILO schools. I don’t know what the national numbers are, but they gave $10M to KIPP:Houston’s growth plans, and have been working with us of late on developing some of our very creative financing ideas (don’t worry; they don’t involve either Fannie or Freddie .

I have found the Gates folks to be smart and hard working, and they really want to fix the educational system for all kids. They, like all of us, are occasionally overwhelmed by the scale of the problem, but they keep working it so I have a lot of respect for their commitment, and believe they are really making an impact.

BTW – if you haven’t seen Bill Gates’ TED speech, it’s worth seeing:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/bill_gates_unplugged.html

He spends half of his time (the latter half) talking about KIPP. Pretty cool stuff, considering he could have talked about anything he wanted…

Cheers,
L3