Jay Mathews’ seven myths about the KIPP charter schools

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February 2, 2009

Jay Mathews’ seven myths about the KIPP charter schools

by Elizabeth Green

: Jay Mathews’ new book on KIPP challenges the truth of some popular ideas about the school.

I’m working on a review of Jay Mathews’ new book about the KIPP charter school network, which I just devoured over the weekend. (Preview of my thoughts: Extremely readable, honest, and — best of all — contains excellent advice for how to force Dave Levin to return your phone calls. Apparently one must call twice in fast succession.)

While I finish that up, here’s an executive summary of the book’s take-aways according to Mathews, a list of seven myths about KIPP. Mathews shared the list at a book talk at Education Sector, the Washington D.C. think tank. You can listen to the talk here.

1. KIPP is militaristic. Mathews’ account describes schools that are strict about discipline, often denying privileges like annual trips to students who do not behave or perform well academically. But he concludes that teachers are also warm and supportive. The chants KIPP is famous for, by Mathews’ account, are more like songs shared around a camp fire than grunted military rites.

2. KIPP’s curriculum is characterized by “drill and kill.” Work Hard. Be Nice. tells the story of a 25-year-old teacher in D.C. who asked to use a different math curriculum than the one Levin, a math teacher, favors, and then won a teaching award for her results. Every KIPP school, Mathews writes, gets to pick its own teachers and curriculum.

3. “KIPP is just a lot of white people telling black people what to do,” is the next conception Mathews declared a myth. The book describes the major role played by two non-white educators who mentored Levin and Feinberg early on: Rafe Esquith and Harriet Ball, who came up with the characteristic chants that help students memorize math facts. “KIPP started with a black person telling two white people what to do,” Mathews said.

4- “KIPP always brags about how they are saving the inner-city,” is the next myth. “They don’t believe they are saving the inner city and they almost never say that,” Mathews said. “It is us starry-eyed education writers who sometimes get sloppy and make it seem like the KIPP people are bragging.”

5- KIPP resists outside analysis. “This is the most studied charter school network there ever was,” Mathews said, citing an ongoing randomized sample study by Mathematica, annual reports on the national network’s progress, and a recent report by Jeff Henig at Columbia that summarized the findings of seven studies.

6- KIPP kicks out misbehaving or low-performing students. The book describes student attrition that stems from parents who do not want their children to continue with the rigorous, time-consuming demands — not children pushed out by their teachers.

7 - KIPP students come from families that are more active in their lives than the families of traditional public school students. Mathews says the case on this so-called “creaming” effect is so far inconclusive. Though some data from the Bronx and Baltimore suggest students arrive with more family support, other data provided by KIPP disputes that conclusion. Mathews also argues that the reverse argument is possible. “KIPP I think draws some lazy parents who like having a free afternoon daycare,” he said.

80 Comments

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Ms. Miller
February 2nd, 2009 1:14 pm

Has Jay Mathews explained what lessons we should take to heart from the way each KIPP founder courted his wife? That’s in there, too.
Elizabeth Green
February 2nd, 2009 1:29 pm

Ha, true. I guess the advice was either speed-date (Levin) or relentless pursuit (Feinberg). Did you think those details were unnecessary?
Jasmin Johnson
February 2nd, 2009 11:48 pm

I attended KIPP Philadelphia charter School and it was one of the best experiences of my life. KIPP did change my mind personally about who I am. I felt like I needed to follow the stereotypes. Also, KIPP is not a bunch of white people telling black people what to do. I can name African-American teachers at that school that inspired me. If I could..I would go back to that school in a heartbeat..I love it.
Judy Goldstein
February 3rd, 2009 12:07 pm

To Jasmin Johnson,

Your tribute to KIPP is very meaningful. Hurray for teachers and a school culture who change their student’s lives emotionally as well as academically. Much of what is done at KIPP can be incorporated into all schools. I wish you the best. We need to hear from more of the KIPP students.
Caroline
February 3rd, 2009 12:38 pm

Elizabeth, you’re being naive, and Jay, though I like and admire him, is too. After all, there’s no material for a book if KIPP isn’t portrayed as an incredible breakthrough. (It appears to me that Jay and others only started renouncing the word “miracle” after I and the tiny number of other KIPP skeptics in existence started questioning it.)

Even if KIPP doesn’t tout itself as a miracle, the press does so pretty much constantly, and KIPP folks certainly aren’t discouraging that. I have “KIPP school” on Google alert, and the daily gushing from press around the country that lands in my inbox is unbelievable. The fawning coverage certainly benefits KIPP, including obviously inspiring yet more seven-figure checks from private philanthropists and yet more worshipful news coverage.

If KIPP is so heavily studied, how come I, an unpaid amateur layperson blogger, was the first person to look up the eye-popping attrition figures for the California KIPP schools? Yes, the press, researchers and KIPP insiders started paying attention AFTER I blogged those figures, but apparently nobody bothered to glance before I did, even though that’s an obvious question to ask. I agree that KIPP doesn’t resist outside analysis, but the outside analysis certainly is shallow, so it’s pretty safe to welcome it!

It’s unknowable whether KIPP pushes out the many students who leave (one outside analysis confirmed that it’s overwhelmingly the lower performers who leave, too) or if they leave on their own. There’s a huge gray area — if KIPP practices inherently encourage low-performing and challenging students to leave, is that “pushing out” or not?

The creaming effect is a no-brainer, except to someone who lives in a bubble and has absolutely no contact with high-need, at-risk communities. KIPP requires every family to be motivated enough to learn about the school and specifically apply to it, to agree to the required student and parent commitments and the longer hours, days and school year, and to follow through on the commitments. I maintain that in the community, KIPP is believed to require an entrance test, which would inherently discourage some potential applicants who might otherwise be interested. KIPP advocates will say “you can’t prove that.” Well, true, I can’t, but I still maintain it’s the case. One of those many entities paid to study KIPP could probably do a survey.

Of course, there are families in ALL communities who wouldn’t be willing or able jump through all the above hoops — quite evidently more in high-need, at-risk, challenged communities. It’s self-evident that the process of applying to and enrolling in KIPP schools self-selects for higher-functioning, more-motivated students from higher-functioning, more-motivated families. It’s simply naive or dishonest to insist that that’s not the case. (The standard response from KIPP fans when I’ve said this before is that I’m a racist for not believing that every low-income family of color IS high-functioning and more-motivated, so they don’t need to bother posting that response again.)
Caroline
February 3rd, 2009 12:46 pm

I should add that KIPP schools do require incoming students to take a test, to assess the student’s academic level. The question is whether it’s widely believed in the community to be a test that students must pass to be admitted.

I initially started taking a closer look at KIPP schools (as an education advocate/blogger) after a KIPP parent posted proudly on our local school discussion listserve here in San Francisco that his daughter had “tested into” KIPP San Francisco Bay Academy.

And the mom of a child with autism has discussed in the community how she applied to KIPP Bayview Academy for her son, who was required to take what the family believed to be the “entrance test” in a crowded, noisy area. The mom said that setting is particularly difficult for a child with autism, so she objected, and the principal ended up ordering her and the boy off the property. The fact that the mom believed the test to be an “entrance test,” as did the proud KIPP dad mentioned above, is a side issue in the greater story, of course. Just those two anecdotes illustrate my point, though.
Jasmin Johnson
February 3rd, 2009 4:45 pm

The test given is not a test that determines whether you will be admitted or not it is about what level you are at and where they will place you. I really dont understand why you feel the need to take a closer look at KIPP. Is our society that bad that we can’t believe that something this good can be true? KIPP was set on Broad and Lehigh in the middle of Philadelphia where kids have a lower chance in being successful in this world. I don’t see the problem with that. There is no tuition or any of that. I think it is a good thing that we all should actually take time to embrace. KIPP is not for any particular student. They don’t enroll you based on your intelligence that is not true. I didn’t have to take a test when I first began KIPP. My older brother who just graduated from KIPP two years ago says that he most likely wouldnt have made it into St Joe’s Prep without KIPP and it was a blessing. KIPP rarely kicks out any students based on their intellectual level. If you get into a fight then you get kicked out or if caught selling drugs then you get kicked out. So can we stop the abuse that people are having towards KIPP because with all due respect it is ridiculous.
KitchenSink
February 3rd, 2009 4:54 pm

Caroline,

What’s your answer to the problems that KIPP tries to tackle?

You seem to be pushing the point that there is a whole set of unmotivated, anti-intellectual, dysfunctional families out there in high-need communities. If I were KIPP, and forced to accept that narrative, I would probably say, “Well, then if those families are leaving our school in droves, then at least we are exposing their social problems.” Because all the commentators, anti-, pro- or indifferent to KIPP, seem to agree that these issues need to be addressed for schools to be successful. Or am I wrong on that point?

According to my reading of your words, Caroline, only Geoff Canada can save us with his soup-to-nuts, pre-natal-to-elderly, round-the-clock social services schools.
Caroline
February 3rd, 2009 7:07 pm

The information we get about KIPP clearly makes the claim that it accepts the full range of disadvantaged students and that it doesn’t “cream” — that there’s no self-screening going on.

Yet at the KIPP schools in my area, an astronomical number of students leave before finishing. Studies of KIPP show that those are consistently the lowest-achieving, most-struggling students. And at traditional public schools those students would be replaced with new incoming students, but at the KIPP schools they’re not replaced — so that simply leaves, overall, a fraction of the students who start KIPP, and they’re the higher performers.

In addition, as noted, the process required for admission clearly sorts for the high-functioning, highly motivated students from high-functioning, highly motivated families.

Now, I think that’s all fine so far. If low-income, high-need students do better in an atmosphere that selects for high-functioning, highly motivated students from high-functioning, highly motivated families, and one where the lower performers exit the school, leaving only the more-successful students — that’s an important lesson to learn But here are the problems I have with it:

– KIPP and its cheerleaders are not honest about that, as you can see from Elizabeth’s original post. They claim that KIPP doesn’t “cream” and that it enrolls a full range of disadvantaged students; and they “don’t notice” the sky-high number of students who don’t make it in KIPP schools. So we can’t learn from those schools if we don’t have an honest, clear picture.
– We don’t know what aspects of KIPP are successful if we can’t study it with full awareness of the impact of the high attrition and the self-screening factor. If the traditional public school down the street shared just those two characteristics with KIPP, would it do as well? Maybe it would — we don’t know. And that important information is concealed from us because those facts about KIPP are concealed, ignored and denied.
– The traditional public school down the street, which does not lose a high number of its students and does not cream for students who are more likely to succeed, gets blamed and bashed and loses support for not being like KIPP. Meanwhile, KIPP is showered with millions and millions of dollars in private philanthropy based on incomplete, dishonest information about why it’s successful.

So that’s why I object to those two characteristics.

Jasmin, as the original post and the book mention, everyone is looking at KIPP to see why it’s successful. My issue is that they’re often not asking the right questions and not digging deep enough. Just listening to “KIPP is great!” and “KIPP is a miracle!” comments does not tell us anything.

I recognize that KIPP says its tests aren’t admission tests, but I maintain that the”word” in the community is that they are — which is likely to discourage families who don’t think their kids will “pass” an admission test. I gave two examples of parents who believed the tests were admission tests.

Asking questions about KIPP — and even criticizing it — isn’t abuse. Those things are research and free speech.

KitchenSink, my first answer is that we need a clear and honest picture of what KIPP is doing to learn how its successes can be replicated in other schools. But we don’t have a clear and honest picture when we’re in denial about the fact that KIPP enrolls the students who are already more likely to succeed, and when we “don’t notice” the sky-high departure rate of unsuccessful students (at least at the KIPP schools in my area).

You actually said it pretty well:

The issues of “unmotivated, anti-intellectual, dysfunctional families out there in high-need communities” do need to be addressed for all schools to be successful, or rather for all students to be successful. KIPP is not addressing them. As long as we don’t pretend that it is, it’s great that it IS addressing the needs of many students — but it doesn’t solve the most intractable problems of public education, and it’s a mistake to believe that it does. So that’s my point.

I read and learned a lot from Canada’s “Fist Stick Knife Gun,” but I’m more influenced in my views by Elijah Anderson:

http://tinyurl.com/2robs3
KitchenSink
February 3rd, 2009 7:27 pm

Thanks for your comment. You have made your point clearly and I think it’s a good one!

Thanks for the link to Elijah, I will check him out. I noticed on your blog that all of the charter school posts since May 2008 are about KIPP. Not every charter school is a KIPP school - and some go out of the way to attract kids who are troubled.

I am not affiliated with Opportunity Charter School in Harlem in any way, but this is a school that practically trolls the streets looking for middle school and high school dropouts to enroll. They have abysmal test scores but an inspiring mission. This is an extreme example, but there are countless charter schools taking a proactive approach and a student population that is truly exemplar of, or even more disadvantaged than, the surrounding community.

Here’s another anecdote: in Harlem in particular, where there are now 23 charter schools, some parents sign up for charter schools without even knowing that it’s anything different than a regular public school! You can learn a lot about a charter school’s approach to the issue you point out by looking at its application–how many pages? Available in other languages? Small print? How much information is requested? Is special education info requested (this is probably illegal but may very well be practiced)?

I support the charter school movement, but a big side of the movement that too often gets ignored is accountability. If charter schools are doing bad things, they are supposed to be brought to light of day and stamped out. And there are mechanisms.

I would love to see someone collect a representative sample of charter school applications, for example, and try to draw conclusions based on my questions and others.

Thanks again for a thought provoking comment.
Jay Mathews
February 4th, 2009 12:31 am

Caroline is a great reporter and deserves congratulations for pointing out the large number of students leaving some of the Bay Area KIPP schools in their early years. But she diminishes the worth of her critique by remaining silent about the latest Bay Area KIPP retention figures, which are much better, and the retention figures from KIPP schools around the country, which are better still and appear to be more stable than the regular schools in their neighborhoods. She also makes no mention of the detailed respect I gave her critique in my new book, “Work Hard. Be Nice.” and the data from several schools that indicate KIPP students are NOT more advanced, academically or financially, than non-KIPP schools in their areas. The latest SRI and Henig reports are full of interesting material on this, reported in my online column, and much more recent than her data, but she does not mention it. She has also spent almost no time inside KIPP schools and failed to interview KIPP staff, the people who have the most contact with KIPP parents, about how KIPP parens compare to non-KIPP parents they knew when they worked in non-KIPP schools in similar neighborhoods. You cannot simply assume, as she does, that her theory of creaming is true on its face without considering alternative theories that seem, at least to me, just as reasonable. Many parents of the best inner city school kids, who are doing well in their regular schools, see no reason to switch to KIPP, whereas parents of kids who are doing poorly have a great incentive to switch, which would leave KIPP with more, not fewer, troubled students.
If she spent more time in regular schools she would also find many very motivated parents who, like her, prefer regular public schools over charters and will keep their kids in them even when they do not perform as well as they would like. They remain in those schools and try to make them better, both admirable and a further challenge to Caroline’s theory that such people are all jumping to KIPP.
As I said in the book, KIPP is cooperating with a massive Mathematica study that will compare equally motivated KIPP and non-KIPP students and their families (selected from those who were rejected in random KIPP admission lotteries) and see if the children of those well-motivated parents do as well when they remain in regular schools. This is the most extensive study ever done of a charter school network. There have been seven other studies of KIPP, all demanding the time and cooperation of KIPP staff, which seems to me to suggest that KIPP is, by that measure alone, the most cooperative of all charter networks in getting the details of its programs to interested readers, and reporters like Caroline and me. If she knows of a group of schools that are more cooperative and open, I would love to hear about them.
Caroline
February 4th, 2009 1:32 am

Thanks for your comments, Jay. I haven’t read the book yet (I think it’s only been out a week or so) and have it on order!

I’m an unpaid volunteer and a working mom, so unfortunately my ability to spend time and effort researching KIPP schools is limited. I did the research that I’ve cited by going over enrollment figures on the California Department of Education website, but I don’t know how to find equivalent figures for other states, and my time for doing this research is limited. As noted, I’ve visited a KIPP school only once, with my then-middle-schooler, in an undercover effort to get into about the entrance criteria.

I would hope that the Mathematica study and the seven other KIPP studies also researched attrition — I know one of them did (after I had already done it), but I’m not sure about the others. If they did, their findings on attrition never got any attention, while mine got quite a bit. It seems pretty lame of the other researchers not to have studied that, if indeed they didn’t.

Two points: Not all KIPP schools have lotteries, as not all of them get more applicants than they have openings. The San Francisco KIPP schools struggle to fill the fifth grade.

But that aside, the second point is that it would be key to compare students who apply to KIPP schools, and their families, to students and families in their communities who do not apply to KIPP schools. THAT would bear out or disprove the question of whether the application process creams for higher-functioning, more-motivated students and families.

Meanwhile, everyone discussing this should read Yale sociology professor Elijah Anderson’s “Code of the Streets.”
Leonie Haimson
February 4th, 2009 9:15 am

All I can say is that since it took one unpaid, volunteer, working Mom to first tackle the issue of student attrition at KIPP, that’s a pretty severe indictment of the investigative ability — and motivation –of our full-time educational journalist establishment, which seems quite willing to portray the story of unmitigated success that the KIPP folks are eager to provide.

And Jay, perhaps you might provide Caroline with an advance copy of your book — so she doesn’t have to wait for one on back-order and pay for a copy — esp. as you say you gave her critique such “detailed respect” in the book?
Caroline
February 4th, 2009 11:35 am

Some further response to Jay:

I haven’t checked whether new attrition/retention figures are available (again, being an unpaid working mom — however, the journalists and researchers who ARE paid to do this should be all over it and I shouldn’t have to do it, but I will). Why is it that all those paid researchers studying KIPP entirely failed to notice the attrition issue until I did the research?

Jay did interview me and sent me a draft of the chapter in which he quotes me, and I appreciate it. The reason I was responding to Elizabeth’s comments and not commenting on the book itself is, needless to say, because I haven’t read the book yet.

I also haven’t kept up on the latest studies (same reason; unpaid layperson working mom), except for the SRI study released in Sept. 2008 of Bay Area KIPP schools, which I blogged about here:

Study: Local KIPP schools lose 60% of their students
A new study of the five Bay Area KIPP schools by the respected research firm SRI International confirms what we already knew: KIPP students overall perform well academically, usually outperforming their peers in other schools.

But it also confirms what those who look beyond the test scores have found: Those KIPP (two in San Francisco, one in Oakland, one in San Jose, one in San Leandro) schools suffer from very high student attrition.

Sixty percent of the students who enter the Bay Area KIPP schools in fifth grade leave before the end of eighth grade (page ix of the study, repeated in several places throughout). And the study also confirms what some might suspect — it’s consistently the lower performers who leave:

http://www.sfschools.org/2008/09/study-local-kipp-schools-lose-60-of.html

Again, it’s true that I’ve only been to a KIPP school once and have not interviewed KIPP staff. But again, my research has focused on the attrition figures. It’s not really valid to point out gaps in my research since I’m an unpaid volunteer; my research was done to fill the gaps in the PAID researchers’ work, which are pretty glaring.

Jay, I have spent extensive time in regular schools, as my kids attend diverse urban public schools and I’m a regular volunteer. What I see in San Francisco is that as we are an all-choice district and families either choose a middle school or get assigned to one by default (whatever has openings after the families who chose are placed), the two KIPP schools are viewed as among the middle school options. There are some middle schools that get few requests and wind up with a disproportionate number of the students who were assigned by default — the lower-functioning, less-motivated kids from lower-functioning, less-motivated families. All traditional public middle schools wind up with some of those kids. Those are the families who would not wind up at KIPP schools. So I’m not saying that ALLl motivated families are jumping to KIPP, obviously. But I’m saying that the families who choose KIPP are all motivated, and the unmotivated families do not choose KIPP.

I’m completely ready to accept that the students from those more-motivated families will do better in KIPP schools than they might have in some traditional middle schools, for a number of reasons. (KIPP schools can afford a WHOLE lot more resources for them, which traditional public schools don’t have the funding for, for one thing!)

I don’t know of any schools that are more responsive to requests for info than KIPP. I researched Edison Schools in their heyday, and they refused my requests for info. The press was often kept out of Edison schools too — when I toured our local Edison school as a parent/community member, a Los Angeles Times reporter who had been turned away when she asked to visit came with me as a crasher. I also don’t know of any groups of schools that get as much positive, unquestioning publicity as KIPP. The San Francisco Chronicle’s entertainment editor, for example, has been pushing her staff (entertainment writers and columnists) to promote KIPP schools — I have no idea why that would make sense, but it is the case. The copy desk at the last minute struggled to insert a tiny bit of balance into a gushing entertainment feature on a KIPP spelling bee — written by an entertainment feature writer with no background in education — a friend who works there tells me. You get the picture.

On my one visit to a KIPP school — when I took my daughter to KIPP San Francisco Bay Academy in September 2007 to ask about the application process — the door was locked and there was no response to a bell, by the way. A passing student from the high school that shares the building eventually let us in.
KitchenSink
February 4th, 2009 11:50 am

Caroline (and this is not a critique, but a question), were you able to compare attrition rates at the KIPP schools you examined to their peer schools in the district?

What I’m getting at is, is it possible that low achieving kids simply have a high mobility rate (it was certainly my experience when a teacher)?

If that’s the case, then the critique of KIPP’s “innovation” becomes not creaming per se, but that by not accepting replacement students for those who leave, if they don’t, they are taking no chances with the academic/motivational status of newcomers.

And if THAT’s the case, it’s worth noting and giving them credit that they generally start in fifth grade when, presumably, many struggling students/families have already moved around from school to school. Many of those students are certainly among those highly mobile families. It would be easier to execute their possibly deceptive innovation if they started with kindergarten.
Caroline
February 4th, 2009 11:59 am

Yes, Kitchen Sink, I’ve addressed this question before. It’s definitely true that schools serving low-income students tend to have high mobility rates. But the difference is a crucial one: When students leave traditional public schools, they are replaced by other students (likely those with similarly high mobility rates, who tend to be the more-challenged students).

When those same students leave KIPP schools — at least the Bay Area KIPP schools that I researched, with SRI confirming my findings) they are NOT REPLACED. That’s why the 8th grades are much, much smaller than the 5th grades. (I mentioned this to a charter school principal who had just visited KIPP SF Bay Academy. He said, “I WONDERED why the 8th grade seemed so much smaller!”)

So, students who are likely to be low-achieving leave traditional public schools, but are replaced by other students who are likely to be low-achieving. Students who are likely to be low-achieving leave KIPP schools, but are not replaced, so the KIPP schools retain only the students who are more likely to be high-achieving. (The SRI study confirmed that the students who leave are more likely to be low achieving.) As you can see, that puts the KIPP schools in an entirely different and far more advantageous situation when they’re compared to traditional public schools.
Seth
February 9th, 2009 10:52 am

Jay and Caroline, This debate is an excellent one, and strikes at the heart of the charter debate. I’m the principal of Democracy Prep, a public charter school in Harlem and I have a few quick points:
1) Traditional Public Schools “cream” far more than charter schools throughout New York. I attended NYC Public schools from grade k-12, and I always took a test before being enrolled. The NYC middle school process evaluates students by their test scores, grades, attendance, and even has parent interviews for a number of traditional public schools. Whether it’s great traditional public schools like FDA, Bronx Science, or Anderson, that require specific entry requirements or G&T tests, or traditional schools that select based on other factors, traditional public schools are far more guilty of “creaming” (both in terms of agressiveness and quantity of students effected) than charters could ever be. We have a legal mandate to enroll by a random lottery.
Caroline
February 9th, 2009 11:59 am

Seth, I can only speak for San Francisco schools and the situation in California. San Francisco non-charter public schools do not require any of those processes for enrollment, and simply could not get away with it.

(There are two exceptions — Lowell High School, which OPENLY admits based on academic achievement criteria, and School of the Arts, a high school that both my children now attend, which OPENLY admits based on artistic criteria. Other than those, there are no selective admissions criteria for San Francisco public schools.)

Charter schools are mandated to admit by random lottery here too, but since they get essentially no effective oversight, they can do whatever they want if they so choose. However, I’m not claiming that the KIPP schools engage in improper selectivity in admissions. I’m saying that the admission process results in strong selection bias — this is self-evident.

The attrition figures for KIPP, meanwhile, are not debatable, and are in no way parallel to anything that occurs in traditional public schools here in San Francisco, or in Oakland either (since I’ve also researched the figures for KIPP’s Oakland school).

Here’s a new blog post addressing that issue, which quotes an actual professional academic researcher (I’m a volunteer layperson, as noted).

http://aplacetorespond.blogspot.com/2009/02/more-uncritical-adulation-of-kipp-in.html

A question is whether the New York schools you mention OPENLY engage in these selective admission process, or whether they pretend to admit by blind lottery while covertly picking-n-choosing. In either case, other New York public schools are obviously accepting their rejects. Then, are the public schools that accept the rejects being unfairly compared to the public schools that engage in selective admissions? Because that’s the case with KIPP schools and public schools, needless to say.
Seth
February 9th, 2009 12:01 pm

2) Some public charter schools like Democracy Prep, have a specific focus on serving high-needs students and families with a rigorous college-prep program similar in some ways to KIPP’s. 100% of our students are Black or Latino, 90% enter below grade level, 85% are identified low-income, 22% enter with identified Special Needs, and 12% enter as English Language Learners. Every one of these statistics demonstrates that our population is a more challenging one than even one of the lowest-performing districts in the city, CSD5. It is true, that as our students age, those challenging IEP and ELL numbers go down (as mis-diagnosed kids test-out of their IEP/ELL or are retained because they had been socially promoted for much of their lives) and our performance goes up. In fact, after 2 years, 90% of our kids pass the state math exams and beat even Westchester County.
3) While Democracy Prep and most charters do actually replace students who leave, it should be said that in our neighborhood in Harlem there is a tremendously high rate of transience, and that significant attrition is completely normal in most urban communities. One recent DOE report showed that in District five more than 20% of students in traditional schools were not the same students as just a year prior. We have seen a great deal of migration from Harlem to the South too, 10 kids alone out of our 200 last year alone moved out of state. There is probably some correlation with the families that are moving out-of-town and low student performance or behavior problems. For the record, Democracy Prep NEVER kicks a student out for academic reasons, though we will hold them back when need be, and there are families that would rather have their child in the 8th grade at a traditional school than the 7th again at Democracy Prep. We wish them well, and are glad that they have that choice. I wish all families were so lucky as to have a choice of where their child went to school.
4) Finally, we have an open-door policy at Democracy Prep. Mr. Mathews and Caroline, please do come visit when you’re next in New York. Talk to our parents and students, attend our parent orientation, come to our lottery or open houses, sit in on our classes. Once you do, you’ll understand that high performing charter schools with low-income students don’t require miracles or magic, just a whole lot of old-fashioned hard work.
Caroline
February 9th, 2009 12:16 pm

Yes, the difference is replacing students who leave vs. not replacing students who leave. The study cited in the blog post I linked to also found that at the San Francisco Bay Area KIPP schools, it’s consistently the lower-performing students who leave AND ARE NOT REPLACED.

As researcher Michael Martin says, quoted in that same post:

“It is fundamentally fraudulent to take any group of students to form a base level of test scores, remove the unsuccessful students, and then claim success on the basis of improved test scores …”
John
February 11th, 2009 3:59 pm

Caroline,
Just wondering if you’ve seen the Boston Charter School study? (http://www.tbf.org/utilitynavigation/multimedialibrary/newsdetail.aspx?id=9490)

It’s not about KIPP, but it does compare students who attend charter schools with students who entered the lottery but did not get chosen. I believe it shows that the self-selection argument, while rational, doesn’t seem to be accurate.
Also, re KIPP schools not replacing students: If all schools performed as well as KIPP schools, this wouldn’t be an issue. Transfers into a school dilute the measurement of how their program is performing, so I would posit that the KIPP data is more accurate, and that the regular public school data reflects the performance of the program to a lesser degree.
Caroline
February 11th, 2009 4:39 pm

Comparing the outcome for students who attend the school vs. those who entered the lottery but did not get selected will show the effect of the school on THOSE students — the subset who entered the lottery to begin with.

But the only way to determine self-selection/selection bias would be to compare the students who entered the lottery with those who didn’t enter it at all — see what I mean? So basically comparing the “winners” vs. the “losers” is irrelevant to the point at hand.

(This is a moot point regarding the San Francisco KIPP schools anyway, because they don’t get enough applicants to need to hold lotteries for their starting grade, fifth. So there are no “losers” and “winners” to compare. I know it is often said that “all KIPP schools have waiting lists, but it’s not true.)

I’ll quote researcher Michael Martin again on the impact of the KIPP attrition on test scores:

“It is fundamentally fraudulent to take any group of students to form a base level of test scores, remove the unsuccessful students, and then claim success on the basis of improved test scores…”

The SRI study also said that the impact of the KIPP program on individual students could not be measured because the high attrition so biased the sampling.
John
February 11th, 2009 9:09 pm

Thanks for the response, Caroline. I disagree about your first point. The Boston study doesn’t say anything about whether Charter families self-select, but it does show that Charters get better results with the same kids (all of which self-selected but only some of which went to a Charter).

Regarding your second point, I don’t disagree Michael Martin’s point. I’ve found the attrition in your area to be the exception rather than the rule for KIPP schools, and as Jay pointed out, the attrition has gone down quite a bit even there.
Caroline
February 12th, 2009 10:44 am

Well, regarding the first thing, we’re looking at different things. My point is that charters self-select, and that’s not addressed by your point. It’s self-evident that they do, in my opinion.

The second question that grows out of that is: If the same students do better in a charter than in a traditional public school, IS THAT BECAUSE OF THE SELF-SELECTED STUDENT POPULATION — would the effect be the same if the public school had the same student population as the charter?

The attrition at the Bay Area KIPP schools went down somewhat — not significantly — and that was after they were under sudden national scrutiny. It could be that they are outliers — I haven’t seen figures for other KIPP schools. Personally I think it’s suspiciously coincidental that the only schools I have the wherewithal to check on (after this issue has been ignored by academic researchers and the press) have such astounding attrition, and then the KIPP defenders all leap to insist that they’re outliers… maybe so, maybe so.
Socrates
February 12th, 2009 11:20 am

Caroline makes a good point. The KIPP schools nearest her have high attrition and no waiting lists, so KIPP is a sham. I’d like to make a similar point about the Phoenix Suns basketball team: They are terrible at shooting free throws. How do I know? I saw a Suns game one time and Shaquille O’Neal missed like 5 free throws - out of JUST TEN attempts! So, even though I’m a dad who has a job and doesn’t get paid for googling, I googled Shaq’s free throw percentage and it’s just as I expected - HE SUCKS AT FREE THROWS! This whole “Phoenix is a good team” rumor is such a ridiculous myth.

As a working dad who nobody pays to write good stuff about the Suns and who has only gotten attention and name recognition for my four million internet posts about how bad the Suns are at shooting free throws, I’m too busy to google “Phoenix Suns” and “team free throw percentage,” so forgive me if I don’t know how good (or bad, probably) the rest of the team is. I know there are some completely biased Suns fans out there who claim that other folks like Steve Nash are actually really good free throw shooters, and that the team as a whole shoots free throws WAY better than the average in the league, and I know I could read a book that has this information in it and that articles have been written that summarize all the data, but I’m really, really busy and finding those articles would take, like, forever. Not quite as long as posting four million articles about how bad the Phoenix Suns are at shooting free throws, but hey, I’ve got a reputation to protect.
Caroline
February 12th, 2009 11:27 am

Straw man, Socrates. I’ve never said KIPP is a sham.

But the attrition (once again, uncovered by an unpaid layperson after the press another professional researchers somehow forgot to check into it) raises questions about some aspects of how KIPP achieves success.
Krak
February 12th, 2009 3:42 pm

Tha attrition rate for teachers is significant, too. After all, teachers are on call through out the evening to help students with homework. They work a longer day and are under a great deal of pressure. Basically, it’s more like parenting than teaching. Check out how many jobs there are for KIPP teachers - you may be very surprised.
Sharon
February 14th, 2009 7:07 pm

Why avoid the truth? To enroll a child in a charter school definitely requires a degree of forethought, effort, research and consideration on the part of the parent. This pre-condition would undoubtedly make the population of charter school families a self-selected one.

The more enterprising inner-city parents move their kids out of the public schools and into charters because they think the charters provide more opportunity. They are the type of inner-city parent who monitors their children closely. Of course, one of the main opportunities charter schools offers is the ability for each subgroup to self-segregate, the impetus of which seems to be human nature.

The current mode is creating a situation where kids who don’t have anyone to advocate for them, because they have weaker educationally-minded parents, are ending up isolated together in the regular inner-city public schools, without peers from any other groups to associate with. Our nation is becoming more and more segregated along class lines. It’s almost time to order more of that razor wire and chain link fencing.

On the current course, the public schools will become exclusively filled with “untouchables” that nearly every other family doesn’t want to be around, or even bother to care about. This scenario has parallels to the incarceration situation for Blacks that currently exists.

So the obvious question for our nation one day soon will be, “What are we going to do with all those children next?”
KitchenSink
February 15th, 2009 9:18 pm

Dear Sharon,

“The more enterprising inner-city parents move their kids out of the public schools and into charters because they think the charters provide more opportunity. They are the type of inner-city parent who monitors their children closely. Of course, one of the main opportunities charter schools offers is the ability for each subgroup to self-segregate, the impetus of which seems to be human nature.”

Sorry to beat a dead horse, but please visit a charter school and eavesdrop in on some of the conversations about struggling students. “The parent is just not coming in to meet!” “What’s going on at home?” “Mom just doesn’t seem invested.” “Mom and grandma are at odds and neither one is advocating for the child right now.” Ask the school leaders, “So, are all of your parents on board? If not, how many are/are not?” I’m not sure you’ll hear much of a difference from the same questions being asked of district school principals sharing the same building.

In 2009, it takes no more effort, forethought or initiative to enroll a child in a charter school than it does a district school. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Go to the school, fill out a form. Go the district, fill out a form.

In 1999, I might have agreed with you. But there are now far more than the three charter school options there were in the city then, and in a neighborhood like Harlem, there are over a dozen.

What I’m finding increasingly incredible is that all of these voices that are supposedly defending the rights of the allegedly disinterested parents to not have to choose and be de facto segregated also seem interested in further limiting their choices. An obvious answer to the quandary might be, “Let’s make all the public schools charter schools. Then no disinterested parent can ‘hide.’” Mind you, I’m not proposing that to happen, clearly it would be an administrative and personnel nightmare on a number of levels, but the twinge of fear in some folks’ hearts might have more to do with their own potential accountability and current job security and less with their tender affection for the lackadaisical parent.
Caroline
February 15th, 2009 9:41 pm

Another straw man, Kitchen Sink. Nobody is doing this:

<<>>

You’re contradicting yourself here:

<<>>

…since you said that disinterested parents ARE putting their kids in charter schools.

Visiting a charter school will tell you zilch about the enrollment process or about the students who are NOT in a charter school. I did something that WILL give you that information, which is to visit a KIPP school and “try” to enroll my daughter. Your response is that this KIPP school works differently than other KIPP schools — gosh, I just happened to pick the unique one? I don’t think that’s a very valid response.
Caroline
February 15th, 2009 9:42 pm

Oh crud, my quotes from Kitchen Sink’s comment were wiped out, making my comment incomprehensible. I don’t know how to post without that happening.
Kate
February 16th, 2009 4:52 pm

I teach at a KIPP school, and there are some points about attrition rates that Caroline and the other posters don’t know about.

Our biggest time for attrition is between 6th grade and 7th grade, because students want to go to the neighborhood schools so they can play sports. (We don’t have much time at KIPP for afterschool sports programs.) However, we lost about 20 students last summer from 6th into 7th grade, but we gained 15 new students, who are at a variety of academic ability levels. So the issue of losing poor performing students and not replacing them doesn’t exist at my school.

Second, we have had some attrition during the school year as well. This year we’ve lost students because their families moved away, or they couldn’t work out the transportation to KIPP anymore, or they moved their student back to the neighborhood school. We have also asked a few students to leave because of behavioral or academic issues, although the majority of the students left for other reasons. Of the students who left in my grade level, at the time they left 2 had A’s, 1 had a B, 2 had C’s, 2 had D’s, and 1 had an F in my class. So we aren’t just losing poor performing students. And we have also gained several students mid-year.

I think that Caroline should either do some real research into why students leave KIPP schools or she should stop talking about things she doesn’t know about.
Caroline
February 16th, 2009 8:19 pm

It’s interesting, Kate, that you acknowledge that your KIPP school has asked students to leave because of “academic issues,” since KIPP management steadily insists that KIPP schools DO NOT ask students to leave because of low academic performance.

I myself haven’t speculated about why students leave KIPP schools. What I did was research the year-to-year enrollment figures, showing very high attrition. A major academic study of the San Francisco Bay Area KIPP schools (which was done after I initially researched the attrition figures and blogged them) found that it’s consistently the lower performing students who leave. The reasons WHY students leave have not been part of my conversation.

The issue of losing students and not replacing them DOES exist, very significantly, at the San Francisco Bay Area schools whose numbers I researched. And again, the organization SRI reported that it’s the low-performing students who leave at the Bay Area KIPP schools.

I don’t have enrollment/attrition information about KIPP schools outside California. I’ve just reported what’s happening at the ones that I researched, and that subsequently SRI researched as well.

It’s not really productive to tell a member of the public to “stop talking.”

***
I think that Caroline should either do some real research into why students leave KIPP schools or she should stop talking about things she doesn’t know about.
***

The numbers I researched revealed the very high attrition (but not the reasons why students leave). No one has disputed the attrition figures, including KIPP.

I’m an unpaid volunteer layperson who did this research after the press and previous academic researchers had neglected to look into KIPP attrition. I would hope that the numerous individuals who are being paid to research KIPP would be looking into this. If KIPP’s administration agrees with you that it’s important, they can presumably encourage the researchers and the press to do so and provide the necessary information.
Kate
February 17th, 2009 12:33 am

The “academic issues” in one case were that the student needed special services that our school didn’t provide but another public school did. In another case, the student was failing every class and had no intention of working hard enough to pass. The parents took the student out of KIPP rather than continuing to let him fail himself out. We do everything we can to get every student to learn, but we can’t force them to learn if they refuse.
Norm
February 19th, 2009 2:15 am

Public schools engaged in internal creaming by setting up classes based on reading scores - homogeneous grouping. Teachers when the contract was followed rotated into the top classes on alternate years. The differences in teaching experiences from one year to the next was often astounding. That’s why so many experienced teachers understand exactly what is going on. There are no miracles. 30-35% of the kids in my school were generally on grade level. so though you might classify it as a “failing” school, one third of the kids were doing ok. Almost all the kids were on free lunch but you could see the differences in the lower levels of poverty and the higher number of 2 parent homes in the top classes. You would get twice as many coming up open school night.

It is the parents from these classes who are taking their kids out of the public school and putting them in KIPP - we had 15 special ed classes in my school and the resources were drained from regular classes added to the difficulties experienced by the other 65-70% of the kids who were struggling. So I don’t blame them. Wow! Imagine a school consisting soley out of the top class kids!

Now given this environment, if you add a few of the stuggling kids to this mix where they still are a minority and surrounded by higher achievers, things might begin to stick. But when they dominate a school as they do the public schools, that is just impossible.

From reading about Elijah Anderson at the Perimeter Primate blog, it looks like he is on to some important clues on this issue.

You gotta love Socrates who spent many blogging hours trying to convince us he was a long-time NYC teacher but somehow had the time to leave comments on numerous blogs during school hours - we thought maybe it was Joel Klein’s way of rewarding one of the lone teachers who supported him. He even took down his blog that revealed links to TFA and KIPP. Now he is playing a parent who doesn’t blog for money (chuckle, chuckle) and comparing Shaq’s free throws to KIPP - or is to oranges? I say he’s really Zellig.
Norm
February 19th, 2009 3:09 pm

The Perimeter Primate
http://perimeterprimate.blogspot.com/

Dear Dr. Anderson,

I hope this note finds you well and staying warm enough!

Perhaps you remember our few exchanges by email last April. Since that time I have continued to spread the word about your work because of its extraordinary value.

Today I am writing to you to seek your opinion. I have been trying to process an idea, and I hope that you will give me your perspective.

For the past several years, I have become increasingly involved with trying to understand inner-city issues as they relate to the current education reform movement, as well as to the situation at my local public schools. From the research and thinking I have done, I have come to believe that the most recent reform approach, one of NCLB penalties and the installation of charter schools, will never be enough to get to the root of the problem for the young people in those communities.

In discussions about “what is wrong,” the profound impact of decades of underemployment, as well as the extent of the damage and suffering which it has caused to families, are nearly always ignored. The focus of the current crop of education “reformers” has been narrowed exclusively on the supposed inadequacies of inner-city public schools and their teachers, and this is where the blame is most often assigned. I have come to believe that teachers and schools are being made the scapegoats to avoid discussion or correction of the true, enormous underlying issues.

One reason “Code of the Street” was so fascinating to me was because of your insights about “decent” and “street” families. I recognized the two types immediately. Here in Oakland, I suspect the charter schools are being sought out by decent-oriented families in part in an attempt to provide their children an escape from street-oriented school mates and the havoc at school which they often cause. The resulting effect is the increasing stratification of students, school by school.

My notion is that the low-income Black parents who seek out charter schools for their children are a specific type, the type who is more likely to stress the importance of education to their children and to support the mission of the school in their homes (= “decent”). I believe that their children are more likely to end up with greater academic achievement than the children who happen to have been born to parents who lack enough of that focus.

To enroll a child in a charter school requires more forethought, effort, research and consideration on the part of the parent. This makes the population of charter school families a self-selected one. Charter schools prefer to deny this, but I know for certain it must be the case. I have learned from personal experience that some parents, through no fault of their own, have very extreme limitations in regard to supporting their children’s educations and complying with the mission of their children’s schools.

Once the parents who are willing to invest the energy in seeking out a charter school are separated from those who won’t, there are additional features about charter schools which separate the nature of their families even more. Many charter schools are permitted to have stricter policies which require minimum levels of parental involvement and compliant student behavior. Families must sign contracts and their obligations are monitored.

Also, some of the schools are known to place pressure on students with low-performance or problems with behavior, sometimes just before state testing. Sometimes this pressure is so great that students will leave the charter school, in which case it is justified as not being “a good fit.” Then those students arrive at the regular local public school to enroll. Those schools are required, by law, to accept every child despite any poor academic and/or behavior records.

There is no reciprocity between charter and regular public schools. The regular public schools must accept and serve all students, even the most-difficult-to-educate ones, but charter schools are not required to do the same. In addition, regular public schools cannot require parent involvement, and have no teeth for enforcing it either.

So, I am beginning to envision an inner-city school landscape where charter schools appear more and more successful simply because they collect and concentrate the children of “decent” families. Additionally, they become the recipients of large donations from philanthropists because they appear to be educating inner-city minority children more effectively than the regular public schools. It is rarely admitted that the charter schools and the regular schools have an increasingly different population of families.

While all this is happening, the regular public schools end up becoming less and less successful, because the concentration of the more challenging “street-oriented” kids is getting higher and higher. And as the percentage of challenging students grows, these schools appear to become worse and worse. Discipline problems and truancy percentages increase, and any remaining “decent” families who use the school begin to reject them. Community support for these schools languishes.

So, Dr. Anderson, these are my concerns. I greatly hope you will have time to respond to me, and confirm, rebut, or expand upon them from your point of view. Feel free to reach me by email or by phone.

Gratefully yours,
S. H.

—– —– —– —– —– —– —– —– —– —– —– —– —–

IMPORTANT UPDATE!!!

Within two hours I had received a call from Dr. Anderson. We talked on the phone for nearly an hour.

From his perspective as a sociologist who has spent a lifetime studying the inner-city Black community, he confirmed my notion on this post.

According to Anderson, it is the more enterprising parents who will move their kids out of the public schools and into charters because they think the charters provide more opportunity. They are parents who monitor their kids closely. Of course, one of the main opportunities charter schools also offer is the ability for each group to self-segregate, the impetus of which, he explains, seems to be human nature.

This is bound to create a situation where the kids who don’t have anyone to advocate for them – and who have weaker educationally-minded parents – will indeed all be stuck together in the regular inner-city public schools, without peers from any other groups to associate with. I described a potential situation caused by the current mode where the public schools will become filled with “untouchables” that nobody wants to be around or really cares about. We discussed how this scenario has parallels to the incarceration situation for Blacks that currently exists.

So it is obvious that one day, the question will be, “What is this nation going to do with all those children next?”

Anderson is so wise about these issues. He sees layers and layers of racial dynamics. By that I don’t mean just the usual ones that people generally talk about (black vs. white), but the many ranges of black group vs. black group dynamics in between.

He does see great hope with Obama being president, but also sees how everything Obama does is totally loaded with complex, and potentially politically-deadly racial booby traps. Obama has to proceed so very carefully.

I urged him to consider writing some of his thoughts about the way that racial and educational reform issues tie together, and if he does so, to please let me know.

(E.A.: If you read this, I hope it is okay. It is important to me to keep extending the conversation for everyone, so I wanted to reveal a few of the things we talked about.)
Caroline
February 21st, 2009 4:12 pm

Speaking of KIPP attrition, a news item from Fresno, Calif. (my blog post):

It seems to be getting little public attention that the principal of the KIPP school in Fresno has resigned after a lengthy school district report accused him of:

“… slamming students against the wall, placing trash cans over their heads, forcing kids to crawl on their hands and knees while barking, and enforcing unreasonably strict bathroom rules, resulting in students having accidents and vomiting on themselves inside the classroom.”

In keeping with the typical press swooning over the national charter-school chain, the press accounts (so far all very short and local to Fresno) mostly lead with the student protests calling on the principal, Chi Tschang, to stay in the job.The lead from KPMH Fox Ch. 26:

“Students and parents lined the streets outside the KIPP Academy in Fresno, outraged over the recent and sudden resignation of their principal Mr. Chi Tsichang (sic).”

If I were a journalist covering the protests, I think I would be asking a few more questions than the Fresno press seems inclined to about these students’ support for the principal.

KIPP is getting extra attention right now because of the publication of a high-profile new book about it, Work Hard. Be Nice. by Washington Post/Newsweek education columnist Jay Mathews, the nation’s most visible education journalist and an unabashed KIPP enthusiast.

The Post itself has quite an intelligent review of Mathews’ book, actually in tomorrow’s paper, by education researcher/author Richard D. Kahlenberg. The excerpt below struck me as particularly perceptive, especially compared to the unquestioning cheerleading KIPP generally gets in the press. Yet the description of the alleged abuse by the Fresno KIPP principal does belie the notion that KIPP schools are anything like middle-class schools.

“KIPP schools more closely resemble middle-class than high-poverty public schools. KIPP does not educate the typical low-income student but rather a subset fortunate enough to have striving parents who take the initiative to apply to a KIPP school and sign a contract agreeing to read to their children at night. More important, among those who attend KIPP, 60 percent leave, according to a new study of California schools, many because they find the program too rigorous. As KIPP’s reputation grew, it could select among the best teachers (who wish to be around high-performing colleagues), and it became funded at levels more like those of middle-class schools.”

Sorry I couldn’t merely link to my blog post and couldn’t include other links, but this blog doesn’t handle links well.
Bulldog
February 22nd, 2009 1:42 am

With regards to KIPP Fresno’s recent issues…

Caroline, why are you so sure that the district’s report is entirely factual? I am familiar with KIPP Fresno’s situation, and many items in that report are exaggerated or outright false. For instance, no student was ever forced to crawl and bark like a dog. When Mr. Tschang told a student to do that, he was using the phrase metaphorically to show how ridiculous the student’s behavior in the classroom was. As for why the students were protesting, to them Mr. Tschang was a wonderful principal, giving them educational opportunities that they never would have gotten at their neighborhood schools. KIPP Fresno really is about team and family. The students felt safer at KIPP and were thus able to learn more. Students have said that if they weren’t at KIPP, they would likely be gang members or drug dealers by now (at the age of 12). In addition, there isn’t a stigma to “being smart” at KIPP - everyone is expected to achieve.

As for why there were so many complaints against KIPP Fresno, I think Norm’s post above has the answer: charter schools generally get the most motivated parents. These parents found something to complain about at their old school, so they enrolled their children at KIPP. When everything isn’t perfect at KIPP, they complain again. And things definitely weren’t perfect at KIPP, but then, what school is perfect? I bet if the district investigated the other 20 or so middle schools in Fresno they would find even more examples of mistakes on the part of teachers and principals. KIPP Fresno is under fire because this particular school district doesn’t like schools that make waves and suggest that lower income students can achieve as much as middle class students if they are placed in a highly structured environment with dedicated teachers.

(When students enter KIPP Fresno, they are typically very low academically - the average 5th grader reads at a 2nd grade level. However, the students quickly come up to grade level at KIPP and continue to make progress through 8th grade. My point is that even though KIPP gets the more motivated parents, the neighborhood schools are still failing to educate these students to the level that they are educated at KIPP.)
Caroline
March 29th, 2009 3:21 pm

i just discovered Bulldog’s now-long-ago post, but thought I’d respond anyway.

“Caroline, why are you so sure that the district’s report is entirely factual?”

I covered the existence of the report without explicitly passing judgment on how much of it was factual, though with the assumption that it’s based in reality. It’s certainly possible that one or a small number of unhappy parents and/or students would make false reports. It’s hard to imagine that dozens of parents and students would band together to lie, but I suppose it could happen.

“As for why there were so many complaints against KIPP Fresno, I think Norm’s post above has the answer: charter schools generally get the most motivated parents.’

But this is what charter school skeptics like me say — charter defenders, especially the KIPP folks, heatedly deny it. It’s a new view that motivated parents are the ones more likely to make up baldface lies about their principal, though.

I don’t really have a response to the defenses that this just arose because the parents are chronic complainers; that stuff like this happens at other schools too; and that the school district is just picking on KIPP because it’s successful.
Socrates
March 29th, 2009 4:20 pm

Caroline,

Do you have an example (or examples) of KIPP people “heatedly” denying it? Also, can you offer evidence that they do get more motivated parents other than an old study of the SF schools?
Caroline
March 29th, 2009 4:44 pm

Socrates, if I waded back through the posts on this very thread, which I haven’t read in several weeks, I’d probably find examples of KIPP and charter advocates’ heatedly denying that KIPP and other charter schools tend to attract more motivated parents. Charter advocates overall deny it constantly and loudly. That’s like asking me if I can find evidence that Manhattan cab drivers sometimes blow their horns in traffic. But since you’re the one who asked, why don’t YOU do the wading through the posts?

The creaming factor is based on obvious logic. It’s such a no-brainer that it’s inane to try to argue it, but since charter and KIPP advocates DO argue it, constantly, I cited the quote from a KIPP parent.
Socrates
March 29th, 2009 4:54 pm

The sun going around the earth was “obvious logic,” too. I’m interested in seeing the data on KIPP schools’ overall incoming student population.

And I’ve never seen a KIPP person make any bold claims at all, so no, I won’t go hunting on a wild goose chase for the comments you claim are out there. I haven’t seen a KIPP employee post on this blog, to my recollection, so I know where you should NOT start in your search.

It’s strange for you to make an accusation about how “KIPP folks” talk about their students and then claim it’s up to me to disprove it. Does that mean that if someone comes on here and says that once, long ago, they saw a post wherein you claimed that pigs can fly, it’ll be up to you to disprove the existence of such a quote?
John
March 29th, 2009 5:57 pm

Caroline, it’s been my experience that most people who say that charter schools are “creaming” the best kids due to parental interest are saying that as an explanation for why charter school results are better than district school results. Is that your point?

If so, I think the Boston Charter School study (http://www.gse.harvard.edu/~pfpie/index.php/research/) provides compelling evidence that creaming (if it happens at all) does not account for the improved performance.

By comparing children that applied to charter schools but weren’t selected in the lottery to those who were selected and attended, the creaming argument is shown to be just another rationalization that charter critics haul out to “explain” charter schools better performance.
John
Caroline
March 29th, 2009 6:09 pm

OK, Soc, here are two points from the original post here. The first sentence after each number is portrayed as a “myth,” and the rest of the paragraph is the rebuttal from Jay Mathews’ book, as described by Elizabeth Green.

6. KIPP kicks out misbehaving or low-performing students. The book describes student attrition that stems from parents who do not want their children to continue with the rigorous, time-consuming demands — not children pushed out by their teachers.

7 - KIPP students come from families that are more active in their lives than the families of traditional public school students. Mathews says the case on this so-called “creaming” effect is so far inconclusive. Though some data from the Bronx and Baltimore suggest students arrive with more family support, other data provided by KIPP disputes that conclusion. Mathews also argues that the reverse argument is possible. “KIPP I think draws some lazy parents who like having a free afternoon daycare,” he said.

Caroline again — so, we can see that Mathews is disputing the creaming effect, though more mildly than some. That’s one example close at hand.

John, no, I know that charter schools do NOT show higher achievement overall than traditional public schools, despite the self-selection effect. But they still harm traditional public schools because of the effect of siphoning out students who are predisposed to be more motivated, from families that are by definition more focused on their kids education. KIPP schools do show higher achievement than traditional public schools, though, and a question I have is how much of that is due to the self-selection effect (and, where applicable, to the sky-high attrition).
Socrates
March 29th, 2009 6:46 pm

Yes, Mathews disputes it. And if by “KIPP folks” you meant “an assortment of KIPP supporters who don’t actually work for KIPP,” you’re undoubtedly right. I took “KIPP folks” to mean folks who are employed by KIPP. I’ve always been impressed by the modesty in the public statements issued by KIPP employees, which is why I questioned the attribution.

KIPP’s latest report card, which is online, has “matched” scores, Caroline. Which means that they take out the attrition effect by discounting the incoming scores of the students who left when showing academic gains, which are still massive in almost all of their schools.
Caroline
March 29th, 2009 6:52 pm

The September 2008 SRI International report on the San Francisco Bay Area KIPP schools — which I’ve mentioned before; it’s the one that showed that they have 60% attrition — found that the high attrition so confounded their research that it was impossible to study the “KIPP effect” on the few remaining students.

Here’s my blog post on that report, which links to the report itself.

http://www.sfschools.org/2008/09/study-local-kipp-schools-lose-60-of.html
Socrates
March 29th, 2009 7:52 pm

So a couple of their schools had high attrition - you’ve established this. But KIPP is marked by the autonomy it provides its leaders, and you haven’t bothered to check into the differences between schools, or the articles that have been written on the topic?
Norm
March 29th, 2009 8:18 pm

On creaming. As the Perimeter Primate points out, there is a self sorting mechanism at work. If i told me kids I would give every one who did all their homework for a month would get a prize, I didn’t cream but pre-set conditions as to which kids would get the prize.

I guess you “retired” from your 30 year NYC teaching job. Which one of your 10 ip addresses that you used to avoid detection are you using today?

Do they pay you for piece work on weekends Socrates or is this part of your regular gig?
Caroline
March 29th, 2009 11:36 pm

All five of KIPP’s San Francisco Bay Area schools have stratospheric attrition — scandalous attrition by any reasonable standard.

I “bother to” read everything I find about KIPP; I get Google News alerts daily.
Norm
March 30th, 2009 7:33 am

Caroline,
I think you’re starting to realize, as so many of us have over the years, that after accusing you of not reading enough on KIPP, you can expect Socrates to comment on the fact that you read everything about KIPP as being a sign of an obsession and that you must have an agenda. You never will win when you deal with people on the payroll.
Amy
March 30th, 2009 7:40 am

I finally figured out who Socrates really is.
He is Jay Mathews.
KitchenSink
March 30th, 2009 12:06 pm

Finally, I have company in the mole camp. Remember, I’m a mole for Joel. So Socrates is back from the dead, his name is Jay and he’s really a marketing consultant for KIPP disguised as a journalist.

Can someone please attack the cogent substance of his point about the diversity of KIPP school leadership models instead of attacking/accusing him, whoever he is?
Caroline
March 30th, 2009 12:43 pm

Norm, I’m certain that you’re right; I’m very used to this kind of surreal back-and-forth. Here’s the standard one, undoubtedly displayed in the string above.

Me: But charter schools self-select for more-motivated families.
Charter advocate: They do not and you’re a racist for saying so.
Me: (Present backup that is too clear-cut to refute).
Charter advocate: What’s wrong with self-selecting? Why would you complain about the fact that charter schools self-select?

I’m not an advocate of trying to ID posters or speculate on their motivations, personally. I don’t conceal my identity, but those folks are always trying to speculate on mine. (”Self-serving” — “pawn of teachers’ unions” — etc.) I would assume that the charter Mafia, since it has an excess of money and in my opinion a critical shortage of ethics, does have paid shills posting all over well-read blogs like this, but I’m not going to try to single anyone out.
Norm
March 30th, 2009 12:52 pm

Kitchen Sink,
We are beyond arguing how many angels can dance on the head of school deform or the details of what KIPP does on a daily basis. I’m sure there are good KIPP school leaders and those who are not.The broader issues of whether the entire concept of school deform in the image of Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, TFA, KIPP, Broad, etc is what is at stake. The entire package of ideas as to what is valid for urban schools (read people of color)- mayoral dictators, closing schools, charters, KIPPers, class size doesn’t matter as much as teacher quality etc and not for suburban (read white) schools which somehow manage with large schools, smaller classes without making the teacher quality issue the breaking point, no charters, without merit pay, elected school boards, strong teacher unions, etc is where we’re at. Since we have dealt with the misleading attempts of Socrates over many years to divert the discussion from these issues by nitpicking the details, yes we do feel free to attack the misdirecting propagandists.
Norm
March 30th, 2009 1:42 pm

Caroline,
I didn’t see your post before my last response. I’ll address this to Kitchen Sink too. We single out Socrates (and we have learned to recognize him in all his various configurations) because of his inherent dishonesty, claiming to be a long-time NYC teacher for many months and a pro-Klein at that. But it was immediately clear that his lack of interest in the class size issue and the obviously phony anecdotes like his outrage at the symbolic teacher who read the newspaper all day made his personna suspect. We tracked numerous ip addresses from different locations and the number of comments posted during the day when he was supposed to be teaching. Plus an obvious high end internet service that allowed for some deception.

Real teachers were incensed at the outrage of this level of deception as people on the net honestly responded to what appeared to be the deceptive experiences of a public school teacher. The comments section of my blog is littered with Socrates’ phony missives. A number of blogs banned him for his dishonesty, not for his views. You capture the level of discourse of the charter mafia which as expressed by Socrates, who by the way, had a brief blog which revealed the connections to the charter school mafia, but which he took down.

If I were to pretend to be a KIPP teacher miserable at the experience but in reality a paid KIPP basher, there would be a justifiable level of outrage. Lucky, most people we meet online, no matter where they come from politically, seem to be honest brokers, unlike Socrates.

I’ll close with this. At our conference on Saturday, a Harlem Success parent attended and told us all parents were required to attend Harlem Success rallies. Another parent brought along another charter school application for a school going into PS 150 in Brownsville which listed the things parents were required to do. Some list. All things we probably would like to see public school parents do but we had no way to enforce any of it. The contract implied that they were not welcome otherwise.
Caroline
March 30th, 2009 1:57 pm

But who would pay a KIPP basher? (The charter folks would say the teachers’ unions would, but it’s not like they’re rolling in money.)

While by contrast, the charter folks are DEFINITELY able to wield that power. I do freelance writing, and I know I lost one opportunity because I’m an outspoken charter school critic.

In my area, two former newspaper education reporters (one from the San Francisco Examiner and one from the Oakland Tribune) are now employed in the charter school world. With the newspaper business collapsing, this would seem likely to tempt other newspaper education reporters to puff-puff-puff KIPP and other charters so they too have a shot at that career path, wouldn’t it? It’s where the money is.
KitchenSink
March 31st, 2009 12:33 pm

OK Norm, attack away. But by just flinging invective you’ll get about as far with a real debate and a real contribution as Norm from Cheers: lots of welcomes and slaps on the back but in the end an empty beer mug to show for it.

Those of us who are engaged on the charter side of the debate (and I don’t want all your other baggage you’re flinging on my back, I couldn’t care less about Michelle Rhee or the Broad Foundation, I care about teacher quality and that’s what charter schools have allowed me to explore), we believe that our urban (yes: black students) schools are in a terrible crisis. Lots of things are wrong. I’m not interested in pointing fingers at Randi, Joel, Jay or Santa Claus. Charter people - some of them - put their heads down, focus on outcomes and try their hardest to deliver to some of the neediest families around. If you disagree with the outcomes, well then we can start having a real conversation. But if you’re just throwing mud then I’m going back to my beer mug.
Norm
March 31st, 2009 12:49 pm

“Charter people - some of them - put their heads down, focus on outcomes and try their hardest to deliver to some of the neediest families around.”

Therein lies the problem Kitchen Sink. Putting your head down. And focusing on outcomes without trying to improve the incomes (and i mean that both ways.)

Do you think we teachers who spent 30 years working in one of the poorest area of Brooklyn did not try to deliver for our neediest students, year after year after year? Most of my colleagues stayed in the same school, as I did for 27 years. Trying to improve the school and the lives of our kids instead of racing off.

Seeing our kids come back to visit years later, often from prison. And young teen age ladies bringing their kids in to see us? And former students drugged out on the corners, selling drugs? Not running off to be a supervisor or to find another career gives you just a bit of perspective.

And some of us also went to local school board meetings every month to fight for the political changes needed to deliver things like adequate supplies and lower class sizes, while we saw money spent on waste.

Your holier than thou attitude makes it seem you charter school people have discovered some deep secret formula. Believe me, you haven’t. Check your outcomes in 10 years and come back and talk.
KitchenSink
March 31st, 2009 12:57 pm

No secret formula, friend. Your work is admirable. It would be a lot easier with a lot fewer headaches in a charter school. The very things you’re complaining about (at the end of your post) is the motivation for a lot of charter school founders and teachers who have jumped to charters.
Norm
March 31st, 2009 2:12 pm

You’re missing the point. You’re barely making a dent. If you want to help the neediest kids stay in the public schools and fight for them. (and I’ll note that BloomKlein have had 7 years in charge to fix the bureaucratic problems, so if they are so successful, why the push for charters?)

We weren’t looking for easy. We all could have used the UFT transfer (now defunct unfortunately) to go to a middle class school. The people I knew who did couldn’t believe how much easier it was going from the ghetto to these schools. I was for the transfers because sometimes after years of working in tough conditions some people deserve a break.)

We also had teachers who remained but were top hangers - only wanting to teach the top classes (we were always homogeneously grouped) and they sucked up to the principal big time. I took my turn with a top class when it came (only twice) and the difference was astounding from the bottom performing classes. Same neighborhood, same school, same family at times - not often. And most important, same teachers. Want to talk teacher quality based on outcomes? Give me a break.

You don’t think I had kids on and above grade level? Or kids who became teachers and even a doctor? All were poor, but some had stable homes. Do you think I never had kids who rose 2 years in reading or math because something clicked? We held kids back and we faced pressure from administrators to get good test scores. We were accountable in lots of ways. How do you face a parent and tell them you have to leave their kid back? I call that real accountability.

The fact is you are getting the kids who were in our top classes into charter schools and the public schools are left with the most needy kids. It is there that the fight should be fought, not an escape to an easier place. I can understand people wanting to teach in better conditions and that’s fine, but let’s be clear that the overwhelming majority of the neediest kids are not being served by keeping our heads down and giving up the fight for the same equitable education enjoyed by suburban kids by lowering class size and using as an excuse the bogus teacher quality issue. Your use of the term “keeping our heads down” is just code for that kind of argument that says “throwing money at the problem doesn’t work.” When has this country thrown money at the problem - unless is is AIG?
a KIPPSTER
May 10th, 2009 4:17 pm

Hi,

I think that KIPP is a great school and i’m speaking from experience. I’m in my last year and I know that i’m going to miss all of my teachers including the founder and principel. I’ll always feel like if I hadn’t gone to kipp that i would probably not be as informed as I am now.

~ a KIPPSTER
Mom of kippster
August 6th, 2009 6:17 pm

I have a deep question… Do any of you critics have children? Well I do and i can honestly say that my child was failing public school. Not because he didnt know the work, but because the teachers were not doing their jobs. We as parents send our children to school to be taught and we as parents need to also do our job and be the teachers at home. It upsets me to hear all of this about KIPP. They are a very good school, reason I say this, because My child was held back his eighth grade year. GUESS WHAT CRITICS, he did his second year of 8th grade at KIPP.. Yes they do take trouble children. I cannot say it was he did not behave. But once again his public school kept passing him because he passed the state test, (which by the way they give the answers to the students during the test). My child did not adjust to KIPP right away, but his principal believed in him and gave him a second chance. My son was not motivated at all. I can honestly say he was not too mature for his age. But as a graduate of KIPP i can count on him to do things now on his own and have faith that he will do it right. He has his head on his shoulders now and Is excited about going to school. They have teachers who actually care about the kids not just the pay checks. Thats what public schools lack. When you dont have those motivated parents that want better for their children then thats when you run into drop-outs. I may not be rich but I make sure that my kids get better, even if they are not the smartest in their class. I am very proud of my son and i currently have one of my daughters attending and she was able to attend the annual trip to Atlanta. My son was not able to attend his trip to Washington, WHY You ask? Because I feel like KIPP, that needs to be earned. Are you just given trips to other states, no, we have to earn things such as that. Just like allowance, we earned as children, well that also is a privledge. So lets get on the real facts, if you do have children, what schools do they attend? and also in what neighborhoods? Well i can say this also, if your a victim of low-income i dont think you should speak on it. THANK YOU! This is only one opinion of one parent, but a mother that wants more for my children than what i have.
Dissenter
August 6th, 2009 10:22 pm

Amen to that Mom of KIPPSTER! The people on this site want to make up your mind for you. They think that minority parents are too stupid to make educational decisions for their children and so they want to make them for you, but forcing you to continue attending crappy neighborhood schools just to provide solace to their idea of “educational equality.” Thanks for providing a viewpoint to reality for these lost liberals.
Michael M.
August 7th, 2009 9:53 am

Ditto on the “amen” to Mom of Kippster.

I am sincerely glad the school is doing fantastic by you.

However… I am reluctant to see system-wide policy set based on individual schools, even if everyone in the school had the same positive outcome. Why?

1) Because it is clear that on a system-wide level, we don’t have the resoureces to provide the same for ALL kids. Further, the rising backlash against charters is due in part to parents IN CHARTER NEIGHBORHOODS seeing that charters are benefitting at the expense of non-charters.

2) I do not want to see education, the bedrock of the rise of the middle class in this country, taken over by corporate interests to the exclusion of parent input.

And yes, I have two kids in the system. Moreover, if I lived in your neighborhood and had your experience with the public schools, I might even see you at…. the KIPP PTA meeting.

P.S. Don’t mind those other commenters turning this topic, let alone your comment, into a racial prejudice issue. For shame.
Mom of kippster
August 7th, 2009 10:20 am

Mr. Michael M, If you read my comment correctly, My comment was not about the color of my child but his education. Is that not what we are talking about. Also, i do not live in a low income neighborhood anymore and my children STILL attend a charter school. Now that i have placed one of them in these schools,I have placed 2 more in them. I as a Parent have went to several PTA meetings in public school, and to see the turn out at these meetings is sad. You can not beg the parents to get involved there. Which at Charter schools, they make home visits, and they have at least 22 students in each class. Imagine that! They take the time to get to know the students. Can i say that for public schools, um no. The only time i receive a call from a public school teacher is when my child has done something bad? Why not good? My child has everyone of his teachers cell phone numbers to contact them in case he has questionsnow. Not to mention he has 7 teachers all together. Public schools do not offer that. Why not? If we had the same standards at every school that would be nice, but once again it falls back on the interest of the teachers. We all have to work together in this. We should not fight about it. If you come to the table with a problem, well, have a solution. Let’s make things better for our kids, not just lash out.
Michael M.
August 7th, 2009 12:45 pm

Mom of kippster,

I read your comments as you intended. And I respect you and your comments in full. I’m not trying to twist them or spin them — but I see them in a broader context.

“Lash out?” On what basis?

Again, as just one example of how charter and non-charters are in competition, I WISH we could provide class caps of 22 per class for ALL students. Don’t you?

Last, neither you nor I made race the topic. An OTHER commenter did. And that was indeed unfortunate.

Again, if faced with the school options you had to choose from — regardless of income, neighborhood, demographics, or anything — I’d make the same choice as you. But that’s NOT, in my opinion, the basis for sound public policy, or letting Klein off the hook for the state of the non-charters.

Society’s best interest may be defined as the sum of all individual interests, but not the celebration of SOME at the expense of OTHERS. The lifeboats are fine. But what of the ship?
Caroline
August 7th, 2009 2:09 pm

Michael M. sums up the issue with one sentence:

“Charters are benefitting at the expense of non-charters.”

And I agree with him here:

“I do not want to see education, the bedrock of the rise of the middle class in this country, taken over by corporate interests to the exclusion of parent input.”

Some responses to Mom of KIPPster:

“Do any of you critics have children?” Yes, two urban public school students.

***
I disagree with and object to the bashing of non-KIPP teachers that KIPP encourages. It’s wrong, unethical, harmful and ultimately suicidal (as it harms support for ALL schools) for KIPP to encourage the hostility and attacks that Mom of KIPPster engages in.

“the teachers were not doing their jobs … They have teachers who actually care about the kids not just the pay checks. Thats what public schools lack.”

That’s a mean, unfair and inaccurate generalization, and it’s really nasty of KIPP to encourage that kind of thinking. KIPP requires its teachers to work extra-long hours, be available by cellphone etc., placing superhuman demands on them that no one can live up to for more than a short time — which is why KIPP has extremely high teacher turnover.

Here’s what the organization Rethinking Schools has said about that concept:

“Reforms are bound to fail if they rely on the voluntarism of idealistic, overworked teachers who burn out and leave the school once they decide to have a family or want any semblance of a meaningful personal life.”

No one is saying that KIPP never takes troubled children. But KIPP does not take the MOST problematic students, the lowest-functioning and least-motivated. It only accepts students who have parents/guardians who care enough to seek out the school, apply, sign commitments, etc. etc. etc.

Mom of KIPPster understands that KIPP seeks out students with “motivated parents that want better for their children…”

Yes, those are the students who are likely to be ultimately more motivated and more successful; that’s how KIPP creams.
Dissenter
August 7th, 2009 2:17 pm

Caroline, if you say creaming, then I say cream away. Parents and children are not lab rats. They should not have to wait around for the latest fad of education reform (and there have been hundreds that have FAILED) to take hold. Mom of KIPPSTER wants and deserves a quality education for her child now. Why should she have to wait? There are hundreds of thousands of parents all over NYC and millions in the U.S. that ask for one thing: a high-functioning teacher in a quality school. And they should be able to use any means necessary, charters, vouchers, regular public schools AT THEIR SOLE DISCRETION, to get it. They shouldn’t have to wait for a monopolistic teachers’ union, foot-in-mouth politicians, ivory tower professors or skatter-brained “education advocates” the give them what their children need. Plain and simple.
Caroline
August 7th, 2009 2:31 pm

Dissenter, I agree that it seems to be effective and successful for low-income, at-risk kids to be educated in situations where they’re separated from the most-troubled of their peers. So that’s the impact of creaming. The most messed-up kids are in one place, and the kids who have higher-functioning, more-motivated parents are in another. Such a system doesn’t solve any problems or work any miracles for those most-messed-up kids, but it does seem to help the higher-functioning, more-motivated kids.

So here are my issues with that situation as it pertains to KIPP:

– KIPP and its supporters — including Jay Mathews, whose book was the subject of this post — often insist that KIPP does not cream; they say it accepts those most-messed-up kids to whom we are referring. But KIPP DOES cream and DOES NOT accept those most messed-up kids. Claiming otherwise is a misconception or a lie, depending on the degree of knowledge of the person perpetuating the misinformation. For a number of reasons, it’s really wrong to lie like that, and KIPP and its supporters need to cut that **** out.

– If the traditional public school down the street could ALSO exclude and/or get rid of those most-messed-up kids, could it do as well as the KIPP school? We don’t know, because there is not open acknowledgment that KIPP creams, so the impact of that creaming is not clear.

– It would be useful to all of public education if the different aspects of the KIPP program could be studied so it was clear what has the most impact. But it’s not possible to do that when there isn’t honest acknowledgment of the creaming factor.

– Teachers in traditional public schools unfairly get attacked, blamed and bashed (as we saw the KIPP mom do), while KIPP teachers unfairly get praised to the heavens, when the real difference is that the KIPP students have been through the creaming process. That’s wrong.

I’m really interesting in the creaming factor. Here’s a scenario I would suggest, perhaps as a pilot project, for low-income urban schools:

Figure out how to create a setup so that every student has a choice of two schools. School A is accessible only if the student/family specifically requests it. School B other is the default school — students who make no request and do nothing get that school. Perhaps School A might have some other admission requirements — students and family must sign commitments to good behavior, etc. Otherwise, continue to teach as before in both School A and School B. Then let’s see if School A suddenly becomes much more successful, and its students become higher achievers, with the more-troubled, lower-functioning kids having been removed and clustered together in School B. God help everyone involved with School B, but at least the kids in School A have benefited.
Michael M.
August 7th, 2009 3:20 pm

Caroline,

An alternative un-creamer:
Everyone who lives in a given geographic area is put through a lottery assigning numbers from 1 to whatever. In numerical order, parents get to choose which school they want they child to attend. (Applications would be filed simultaneously; many ways to automate the assigning process.)

This would eliminate the “creamer” of waiting for — or encouraging (through targeted mailings, etc.) — “motivated parents” to of their own volition approach the school first.

Sure, the more popular schools would fill up first. And heck, in the example under discussion, it may very well BE the KIPP school.

But at least it would fill up with a RANDOM cross-section of the community.

Let’s call it “Opt For” rather than “Opt In.” Otherwise, we’re back to… the strongest swimmers reach the lifeboats first.

Now then, if charter supporters object, I would be open to an alternative fair way to ration a finite, in-demand resource. And no, I don’t mean a lottery amongst walk-ups, the current method.

Or let’s just admit, as some commenters proudly do, that creaming is desirable. I dare say not everyone on the Titanic would be unanimous.
Caroline
August 7th, 2009 3:47 pm

That IS roughly the way enrollment works in my school district, San Francisco Unified. And that does mean that schools with more requests than openings get no default assignments of students who lacked parents/guardians motivated enough to participate in that request process. Our choice process is districtwide — students may apply to any school in the district. (San Francisco is a small, dense city, just 7×7 miles — so distances aren’t great.)

What disadvantaged families of color complain about, though, is that schools in disadvantaged neighborhoods are, almost without exception, the schools that don’t fill up by request and thus get those default assignments. So if a family in a disadvantaged neighborhood wants a school that has no students assigned by default, they must apply to a popular school elsewhere in the city (though there’s likely to a popular school not geographically that far away — just not quite in the same neighborhood), and enter a lottery in the hopes of winning a seat. That process deters some families. My concept would somehow GUARANTEE every student the request-only school he/she had applied for.

Charter folks are divided between those who openly agree that creaming is desirable and the others — misinformed or dishonest — who claim that no creaming goes on. My view is that if creaming is benefiting some low-income, at-risk students (those motivated enough to participate in the creaming process), perhaps we should institutionalize it.
Dissenter
August 7th, 2009 4:33 pm

Michael M. and Caroline, you are living in a dream world. Middle class parents get to send their children whereever they wish to send them, and it is always poor parents who become the subject of this “charter or not” debate. It’s very convenient to have a “wish for” discussion about how it would be great if all public schools got equivalent numbers of talented students, but that’s not the world we live in and no one should be telling any parent that they have to use any school as their first option. One cannot empower parents and then tell them that that empowerment means using only certain schools. In these United States, we tried assignment of students based on the idea of racial equality and we see how disastrous that was from an educational and public policy perspective. I dare say that here in NYC, one sure fire way to cause rioting in the streets to to tell middle class parents that their children will be bussed to Harlem, Bed Stuy and the South Bronx, where schools are generally undersubscribed (thus the appearance of charters) as a way to relieve overcrowding in more over-subscribed neighborhoods. If we don’t tell middle class parents they have to do this, no one should be limited poor parent’s school choices either. Children only get one shot at an education — they shouldn’t have prey to stupid social engineering under the guise of education reform.
John
August 7th, 2009 4:51 pm

Caroline, Creaming is one of the rationalizations used to explain charter success when one doesn’t want to acknowledge that hard work, longer hours, and the best teachers make the difference.

The Boston Charter School study released recently studied the differences in achievement between kids who applied to charters via random lottery and got in, vs. those who didn’t. It effectively defeats the argument that creaming is a factor.

http://www.gse.harvard.edu/blog/news_features_releases/2009/01/new-study-of-boston-charter-and-pilot-schools-finds-charter-schools-have-positive-effects-on-student.html
John
Michael M.
August 7th, 2009 5:16 pm

D,
Not a comment goes by that you don’t insult the previous commenters you might disagree with.

I fail to see how it’s “stupid social engineering” when a parent or a DOE comes up with an idea — but not when a charter-operator or corporation does.

I fail to see how it’s a “fad of education reform” if a non-charter operator comes up with an idea — but not when a charter-operator, or an enrolling parent does.

And with that, I have better things to do this sunny afternoon. I’ll parse the rest of later. Or not. Toodles.
Mom of kippster
August 7th, 2009 5:56 pm

Caroline, Sweetie I dont know why you are so upset that KIPP gets good praises. If and when my child or a friend of mines child went to a good public school, I would also give praises. Here in Dallas, we do have good public schools, but you have to be accepted in these schools also. Yes public schools. For example and i really hate to call names or even CREAM about this school, but TOWNVIEW, i’m sure you have heard of it. It is a very good PUBLIC SCHOOL NOT CHARTER. Let me use this as an example. If i go into a restaurant and I love the food, i am going to CREAM about it. So why knock KIPP down for the good progress it has made. Also let me apologize because i am not that type of mother that likes to bash others, its not my place to judge anyone, I am not GOD. But, my children have been in public schools for years not just a couple either. MOST of the teachers in public schools i have dealt with really dont show no concern for my childrens education. Now not all teachers are like that. Once again I apologize for that comment. Now I like the long hours and saturday schools, and summer school for my children. It helps them out alot. If you think its hard for the teachers, well think about the kids and parents also. But once again it helps them.
Caroline are you not listening to the kids that are also commenting on KIPP. It’s not CREAMING its just them trying to express how they feel. Dont knock a child for that, that’s what some public schools do and that makes children not even think of college. You have to remember these are children, they have feelings too. Don’t your children? If they believe this type of school is helping them, then why should you care who is funding it or who invented it or any of that? As my aunt once told me L.I.G. IT…. let it go. if it works, why fix it. One more thing Caroline, living around children that are not motivated and parents also, its hard to make them want better. Even when you try and go above and beyond for unmotivated people THEY have to want better for themselves. Do knock down the ones that are motivated. I have 6 children of my own, raised 3 brothers and 2 sisters, I still take on more children and help motivate them. But i can not help the world. Let’s take it one school at a time and once again COME WITH A SOLUTION. Don’t get mad at these men for trying to help some students and parents out, why don’t you as a person help someone else out, not knock them down. you made a comment, “But KIPP does not take the MOST problematic students, the lowest-functioning and least-motivated. It only accepts students who have parents/guardians who care enough to seek out the school, apply, sign commitments, etc. etc. etc.” I ask you this and please don’t be upset with it, how do you reach out to those parents who care if their child graduates or not? Just like world hunger, i get upset when i see starving children around me so i feel like how can we feed the rest of the country when we can not even feed the children in the united states. Well for me i try and do what i can for the ones i see struggling. So, please as a KIPP mother, help me to understand what it is that you want from all of this? I have a step-daughter that goes to school half day, because she doesn’t want to go a full day. Why? because she is lazy and wants to graduate faster, but does she has a mind set to want to go to college, um no. See caroline, i see this from both sides, I am not bashing public schools, I am telling you from experience. KIPP is not paying me to say none of this, nor the children, i happened to be looking for some info when i ran across the book and this website. These are all opinions, if everyone did not have one what kind of world would this be. So to say this, KIPP is not encouraging no one to say anything, we are speaking from positive experience. I am happy for you also that you have wonderful children that are doing so well in public schools. I am not a hostile person at all, I am just finally excited i found such a school that is able to help me and my children out and want more for them. So please dont take my words and turn as if i am angry. Let’s see what works for all schools. Oh and yes one of the districts here also has looked into KIPP and studied it. They really want to follow the same pattern as KIPP. It seems to be a growing thing to want the children to have extended days so they can shorten the class size show that they care more for the children. I love any school that helps children set goals and meet them, charter or non charter.
Pogue
August 7th, 2009 6:15 pm

Government has the capacity to help children with behavioral and language needs in tough public schools…they won’t do it. Government had the capacity to help bail Wall Street out…they did it. We understand where Arne Duncan, Paul Vallas, Michelle Rhee, and Mike Bloomberg’s intentions lie…and their rich friends are making a good deal of money with this direction.
Norm
August 7th, 2009 7:49 pm

I was reverse creamed once when they decided to add a 5th grade class in December because there were over 34 in each class. I was to be the teacher. The AP asked each teacher to pick 7 kids. And so they did. I taught that class fo 28 kids for the next year and a half through the 6th grade and it was tough. I spent a lot of time putting out fires.

To Mom of KIPP: You might have complained about me as a teacher for not being able to give your child the attention he needed in this situation. The point is, this group of particular children in a class of 28 was too much. The next year I had a more balanced class with the same numbers and the difference was significant.

The point is that if your son was in a class with many kids who are struggling even at KIPP there may have been the same issues. But KIPP through creaming makes sure that doesn’t happen. Great for you and your son. Not so great for the rest who remain in public school.

So the concept of a school like KIPP is not bad. But if the DOE set up a separate school with less problems they might have the same impact on your son.

My point is that no serious attempt has been made in the public schools to address these kinds of problems by creating small classes.

I agee that the arguments on the bigger issues mean nothing to a parent. But if all schools in your city were KIPP then you would see the same problems, one reason KIPP shuns the idea of taking over a bloc of schools in a contiguous area. Give them the Detroit school system which might very well happen and watch the results.

Do Middle class parents get to send their children whereever they wish to send them?

The overwhelming majority of middle class people in this country have 2 choices. The local public school or private school. In Long Island or Westchester. Or upstate NY. Are all suburban districts equal? No. It seems the richer districts spend more and their schools are considered “better.” Just check the class sizes.

In the city the middle class areas don’t have a lot of other choices either. Yet see what is happening when charters are trying to get a wedge. It is middle class parents who are protesting.

As for the rich, they really throw cash at their schools, mainly for the lower class sizes.
Michael M.
August 7th, 2009 7:59 pm

Dear Mom of K:

“Creaming” in this context, as in “skimming the cream,” not ooh-ing and ahh-ing, or “kvelling” as they say in these here parts.

All:
I would note that this topic has been joined by people from at least three cities (NYC, SF, and Dallas) , each of which has a different current school board or DOE type structure, and different catchment zone practices (school choice within the traditional public school roster), but ALL of which have similar issues with charters. Interesting.
Caroline
August 8th, 2009 1:49 pm

Wow, too many posts to respond to without a long period to spend on it. I’m singling out John’s comment, which indicates that he doesn’t get it:

John says: “The Boston Charter School study released recently studied the differences in achievement between kids who applied to charters via random lottery and got in, vs. those who didn’t. It effectively defeats the argument that creaming is a factor.”

No, that doesn’t make sense; you’re missing the point. The sound comparison would be between students who applied to charters vs. students who NEVER APPLIED TO CHARTERS, or otherwise exercised any options; students who simply went to the schools they were assigned by default.
Caroline
August 9th, 2009 11:28 am

Thanks, Michael M. for clarifying the definition of the term “creaming,” as I was using it.

Mom of KIPPster, I don’t criticize KIPP for accepting the more-motivated students from motivated families, and not the lower-functioning students from lower-functioning families. I just criticize them for not being honest about it, because KIPP and its supporters often deny that that’s what’s happening.

So my question is, if a regular public school also got rid of the lower-functioning, unmotivated, more-messed-up kids, would it improve a lot?

The reason I criticize KIPP is not for what it’s doing for its own students but because of the fact that it hurts other schools and the children in those other schools. That’s why I don’t let it go.

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Jay Mathews’ seven myths about the KIPP charter schools

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