Good day, CharterFolk.
Today we are please to share a Contributor Column from Kelly Garrett, who is concluding a remarkable run as Executive Director of KIPP St. Louis.
We provide a bio for Kelly below.
Kelly Garrett is Executive Director of KIPP St. Louis, a high performing charter management organization serving over 2,100 students in grades PreK-12 on their mountain climb to and through college. KIPP St. Louis is part of the national Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP). Prior to joining KIPP, Kelly served as executive director of the Rainwater Charitable Foundation, where he helped grow the foundation’s giving by a factor of 20, and led a strategic initiative focusing on school leadership, early childhood education and project based learning. Kelly’s education career began as a 1992 Teach For America corps member in Houston. After three years in the classroom, Kelly co-founded Project Chrysalis Charter Middle School, which quickly became one the highest-performing middle schools in Texas. Kelly went on to found Perea Preschool in Memphis TN, and several years later served as director of business development for KC Distance Learning, a virtual charter high school program. He holds a BA from Rhodes College, an MBA from Harvard Business School, and is an Aspen Institute-New Schools (Pahara) Fellow. He lives in St. Louis with his wife and two sons.
Reflections on 30 Years of Charter Schools: A Case for Coopetition
In 1995, I co-founded one of Texas’s first three charter schools, Project Chrysalis Middle School. Like the other two new entrants, KIPP Academy and Project YES, Chrysalis served 5th–8th graders zoned to attend some of Houston’s lowest-performing middle schools. We ran an extended-day, extended-year program focused on exceptional school culture and prioritizing strong academic gains.
Unique to our design, Chrysalis was rooted in a project-based learning, Plan-Do-Review model. Mornings were for rigorous instruction; afternoons, our students boarded buses to “field lessons” across the city — shadowing the Houston Chronicle editorial board, planting gardens at senior homes, and painting murals with artists at the Museum of Fine Arts. We ended each day with journaling, reflection, and debating current events.
During my years leading Chrysalis, all three new charter schools ranked among Texas’s top academic performers. KIPP now spans 280+ schools across 30 regions. YES Prep serves 20,000+ students in over 40 schools. Chrysalis, a National Blue Ribbon School, chose to remain small and focused.
I share this early charter story as I prepare to step down from my current role as Executive Director of KIPP St. Louis (yes — I eventually joined KIPP. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!).
What made those early programs thrive? One key ingredient was something we proudly called “coopetition” — a blend of cooperation and competition.
The founders of the schools were all Teach For America alumni. We trained together, taught side by side, shared lesson plans and later business plans, and we dreamed big. We were collaborators — and fierce competitors. We chased the same grants, compared test scores, and inspired one another to raise the bar. KIPP’s trip to D.C.? It pushed us to do our own. Every breakthrough set off a chain reaction of improvement.
Coopetition was fuel. It still is. I want every student to attend a school that changes their life trajectory. That requires both collaboration and an urgent drive to outperform our past and push beyond the status quo.
Today, though, “competition” feels like a dirty word in education. I worry we’ve downplayed it too much. Yes, we should share best practices and build strong communities — but we must also compete: for students, for teachers, for ideas, and for results. In trying to avoid conflict, I fear we’ve sometimes lost our edge.
Competition in education has real benefits. Stanford’s 2023 CREDO study found that traditional districts often adopt practices pioneered by high-performing charters — like data-driven instruction, longer school days, and more teacher autonomy. When both sectors push each other, students win.
Charters must not shy away from the healthy tension of coopetition. We should lean into deep collaboration across schools, sharing tools and lessons to lift the sector. But we must also push ourselves to be the best — to deliver breakthrough outcomes for kids. When we embrace this dual commitment, we create the moral and political authority to do what is right for children: close failing schools — charter or district — and expand what works. That is how we honor the promise of public education and make real progress toward equity.
As I exit my role, I hope we’ll reclaim coopetition — fiercely collaborating, but also bravely competing. Our kids deserve both our generosity and our ambition to get better.
And while I don’t yet know what my next role will be, CharterFolk can count on me to keep showing up, advocating for, and practicing the spirit of coopetition — because I still believe it’s one of the best tools we have to drive change for kids.