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Ken,

Do you ever visit traditional public schools?

Hi Ken — I researched attrition in KIPP schools in my state, California, and blogged the results — which found very high attrition in most KIPP schools. The many journalists, commentators and researchers looking into KIPP schools had somehow neglected to do this research previously (which, yes, does make me wonder if they were avoiding looking into something that would not flatter KIPP). AFTER I did the research it got attention, and a subsequent study of San Francisco Bay Area KIPP schools by the research organization SRI International confirmed that a full 60 percent of students who start fifth grade in the Bay Area KIPP schools don’t make it to the end of eighth grade. SRI also found that the students who leave KIPP schools are overwhelmingly the lower achievers.

I was talking about this with one person who had just spent a day at KIPP San Francisco Bay Academy — he is a charter school principal and advocate — and he admitted that he had wondered why the eighth grade was so obviously smaller than the fifth grade.

So I’m curious if you noticed this, or have researched it, about KIPP Infinity. Perhaps you already have and have learned that the attrition is low to normal? Please let us know.

Oh, thanks. Since it’s only in its second year, it’s hard to tell. At least with the Bay Area KIPP schools, some have an enrollment jump at 6th grade, since the feeder elementary schools are K-5s. (I know the notion is that families are so desperate to leave their ravaged public schools that they’ll bail their kid after 4th to move them to KIPPland, but it’s not really like that in general. Kids want to “graduate” from 5th grade with their friends!)

I don’t think you could tell with Bay Area KIPP schools either if they were only in the second year. It’s over the four years that you see the mass exodus in the figures. And also, whatever is causing that mass exodus — reports vary, frankly — I think KIPP will be a little more wary about it now that the spotlight is on.

By the way, traditional public schools that serve low-income students also have high mobility, because low incomes tend to correlate with unstable living situations. But the huge difference is that KIPP schools largely don’t replace the kids who leave, and traditional public schools do. So the KIPP schools end up with streamlined classes with (overall) only the high achievers remaining.

Only two grades showed on the enrollment figures I was steered to — guess they’re from year before last.

Coincidentally since we’re speaking of the wonderfulness of KIPP, I was just minutes ago talking to a dad here in San Francisco, a PTSA officer at a non-charter public middle school. He told me that they had a bad problem with a serial bully, a new kid who started terrorizing and shaking down kids as soon as he arrived at the school. They learned he had been dumped on the non-charter public school by one of the two KIPP schools here (the ones with the 60% attrition rates). Now he has been expelled from the non-charter school too (and the family moved out of the district), but the parents at the dumpee school are clamoring to get to dump a problem kid back on the KIPP school as a fair exchange. Seems only fair, doesn’t it?

The non-charter school, by the way, replaced the expelled student with an incoming transfer. KIPP doesn’t do that. It would seem amazing that KIPP can afford not to replace students who leave (given that funding comes with each kid), but I guess those philanthropic multimillions make it possible.

KitchenSink,

I’ve heard at least one KIPP person talk about problem kids. And I’ve known countless traditional public schools people who would never use the term or the idea.

Frankly, if it doesn’t matter to me whether or not KIPP people use that term if their attrition rate is so high.

The argument for KIPP is that they they help kids to succeed whom others do not, that their scores and success rates are incredibly higher than other schools made of up kids from comparable backgrounds. This attrition problem undermines that entire argument.

Counseling kids out of your school because they are not a good fit — as opposed to because you affirmatively know that another school is actually a very good fit — is the best way to raise scores, improve results, and maximize outcomes for the ones who stay. That is, if you don’t care about the kids you counsel out. But traditional (i.e. non-charter) public schools are charged with educating every child, without the option of easily counseling them out.

I am not saying that there are not public school officials who encourage some kids to drop out of high school, but they should be fired. Moreover, I have never heard of a middle school with a 50% dropout rate.

I cannot even begin to tell out how much that offends me.

Except that you don’t have any evidence that KIPP does that. You especially don’t have any evidence that it’s widespread, even if you’ve found one school that does it. Out of 60+ KIPP schools, you’re analyzing the ones that are closest to your home, which is natural. Unfortunately for the accuracy of your extrapolations, those are among the lowest-performing schools in KIPP.

KIPP affords its schools much freedom, and there will therefore be much variation in how they achieve their outcomes. Many of them, like Infinity, achieve miraculous outcomes legitimately and have very low attrition. Some of them, perhaps including the SF schools (which I’m sure are among the lowest-funded KIPP schools – something for the status quo-oriented, funding-is-everything crowd to embrace!), have attrition impacting their results.

Caroline, you’ve said over and over again that you don’t have time to research adequately the achievement and attrition of KIPP schools around the country. That’s fine, but is belied by your constant posting on this very topic, using the very little (though self-serving, in your case) data you have chosen to accept. What bad luck it will be for you if the KIPP schools in SF turn themselves around, or if one of the more legitimate ones sprouts up in your midst!

Socrates, are you poorly informed or deliberately giving misinformation? That’s really insulting to the readers of this blog.

The evidence is clear and indisputable that the majority of California KIPP schools have very high attrition. There were nine at the time I first did the research, and six showed that pattern of very high attrition. We are not talking about “one school,” and several of them are in Los Angeles, 450 miles from my home, just for the record.

That finding is based on the hard enrollment numbers. A twist on this is the fact that this was “overlooked” by the multitudes of researchers and journalists looking into KIPP until an amateur volunteer unpaid blogger (moi), looked at the year-by-year enrollment figures, available to all on the California Department of Education website. This DOES imply a deliberate unwillingness to check into any information that might reflect poorly on KIPP, on the part of those multitudes of researchers and journalists, but that’s beside the point.

After those numbers WERE illuminated and got some attention, the research organization SRI International did a major study of the five KIPP schools in the San Francisco Bay Area, which did look into attrition. Their findings more than bore out my conclusion. SRI found that the five Bay Area KIPP schools lose 60% of their students between the start of fifth and the end of eighth grade. SRI also found something that I did not have the access to learn: That the students who leave are consistently the lwoer achievers.

KIPP folks themselves have by now acknowledged these findings and have begun discussing the problem. So you may discount the findings, but KIPP itself does not.

In addition, it’s flat-out incorrect that the KIPP schools in this situation are “among the lowest-performing schools in KIPP.” I would challenge you to show the achievement figures for the California KIPP schools. or even show that you know how to research achievement for California schools. To name two, KIPP San Francisco Bay Academy (the one that dumped the bully on Presidio Middle School) is one of the highest-scoring schools in San Francisco, and KIPP Heartwood in San Jose (Alum Rock School District) is similarly high-scoring.

It’s insulting to the rest of us and degrades the discussion when you just make **** up! Plus it obviously doesn’t work. What is the point?

Yes, M, that could be true, but the fact is that the professional SRI study, whose validity KIPP readily acknowledges, confirms that there IS 60% attrition in KIPP’s San Francisco Bay Area schools.

KIPP spokespeople say some of the attrition is due to parents who don’t want their kids to repeat a grade and leave when they’re told that’s the only way the child can stay.

There was a recent brouhaha in Fresno, Calif., where the principal of a KIPP school was accused of abusive behavior to students (as well as significant breaches with standardized testing). Dozens of complaints to the Fresno school district prompted the district to investigate, and KIPP removed the principal. But many parents at the school mounted public protests in DEFENSE of the fired principal. Those parents’ repeated claim was that disgruntled students who had been pushed out of the school, and/or their parents, were making up false charges against the principal. Well, if KIPP never pushes anyone out, how were there dozens of disgruntled students who had been expelled from the school? We seem to be hearing two conflicting stories here.

I would post links, but this site doesn’t really accept them (requires a very long delay while the post is moderated).

I’d pay good money to see a Caroline vs. Jay Matthews debate on the subject of how KIPP adds or takes away from the school system in general. I don’t think we’re going to see anyone leave their entrenched positions on this site.

I communicate with Jay often by e-mail, KitchenSink, and he quoted me in his new book about KIPP. Actually I have been asked to do that, but I refused for two reasons. First: Live debating is not my strength. If I could do a back-and-forth in writing, maybe. But second: Jay is the nation’s most prominent education journalist, paid to report for the Washington Post and Newsweek. He’s a recognized expert doing this on paid time. I’m an amateur volunteer unpaid mommy.

For that matter, if there WERE a debate, Jay would have the support of the eduphilanthrobillionaires (the Gates/Broad/Walton/Fisher crowd) and presumably their resources (research, prep, you name it). I’d be on my own.

Would YOU debate someone under those circumstances? No, I thought not. The fact that I’m even viewed as anywhere in the same league is a testament to how powerful the information I’ve researched is — and, frankly, how badly it weakens the boasts and hype about KIPP. It was low-hanging fruit; anyone could have found the same information.

Ken, nobody else noticed previously either, though as I said, one person did allow that he had observed that the 8th grade was much smaller than the 5th at KIPP SF Bay Academy. It didn’t occur to him to make anything of it, though.

Also, with the spotlight on the attrition now, there’s the question of whether KIPP will make sure it lessens — and whether that will impact achievement. KIPP SF Bay Academy’s attrition did slow in the most recently reported year — and its achievement dropped (though it’s still high). We don’t know if those things are connected or not.

Re KIPP SF Bay Academy, well, you put it in one possible way, Ken. Achievement did drop as attrition slowed, so was there a direct correlation? We don’t know. This is only a one-year change.

I don’t know about KIPP schools outside California and whether they replace the students who leave, but I also don’t know what they actual policy is — would they LIKE to replace the students who leave but are not doing so? I just know that the numbers show they aren’t replacing the students who leave.

Yes, I would have been posting links except that this blog requires moderation for any comments containing links, and that delays them for many hours.

I’ll do it this way. This is my own blog post about the study, linking to the study itself. So just replace the dots.

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

Ken,

The publicly available numbers for the NYC KIPP schools have every cohort being smaller than it was the year before, strongly implying that they do not replace their drop outs.

Even if they, however, it is not the same as what happens in the public schools. KIPP tries to recruit families who are willing to do the KIPP thing — higher parental involvement and support, valuing school/education. These are not a cross section of the general population.

A big reason (the main reason?) to drop out of KIPP is unwillingness or lack of ability to follow through on the additional demands that KIPP makes of students and families. Even if it did replace these kids, it would be with families whom the school believes will do so. That makes the replacements different than the dropouts.

As Caroline points out, when a kids moves away from from a traditional public school, s/he is likely going to be replaced with another kid who has moved in. Both are high mobility, so the reason the first kid left is exactly the reason the second kid comes in. But we know that the goal is for the new KIPP kid to be different than the original KIPP kid.

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KIPPs mission is to do the best with the kids it gets. The people work there believe that they can get better results for these kids than the regular public schools, in part because they demand more from them and their families. These greater demand are attractive to some families, but others find that they are too much. And if kids drop out of a KIPP school to return to a traditional public school, it doesn’t feel like the kid is actually dropping out of schools. S/he’s just transferring to another option. Morally, it feels different.

This is the sort of creaming that Skoolboy wrote about a few weeks ago.

Traditional public schools had a different mission, and when kids drop out to a less demanding option, it ain’t school. Traditional public schools don’t have the same ability to demand more from families, because there’s no implication of “If you don’t want to live up to your responsibilities, you can go elsewhere.”

I checked net attrition for ALL the middle schools in my district, when challenged by KIPP defenders (they keep stoutly declaring that this happens at all schools — it’s total bluster). The figures show that there is NO attrition pattern at the traditional public middle schools. It simply doesn’t happen. I mean, the class would be up or down a very few students (<10) — could be either up OR down.

The thing is, a traditional public school loses funding for every empty seat. If it’s a bunch of empty seats, it hurts! But maybe this is a California thing. Also, our school budgets are created and overseen by each school’s School Site Council, which includes parents, in an open process. The whole school community (or at least the aware parents) is likely to be aware of the funding lost because of open seats. So it’s a big deal to get them filled.

But under that same funding system, the KIPP schools (rolling in the philanthropy from Gates/Broad et al.) are apparently not too concerned about having the majority of the seats empty by the end of eighth grade. The financial cushion they must have that allows them to be so blithe about it boggles the mind — especially considering they and their advocates are constantly proclaiming that they work these miracles on the same or less money than public schools get.

Or a restatement of Ceolaf’s comment

(original comment): If KIPP kids are just like the other kids, then current and future KIPP schools can serve everyone, so we just need to expand KIPP.

KIPP proponents would have us believe that KIPP kids started out as a cross-section and that KIPP can make them all into KIPPsters. If that were true, Ceolaf is correct: Current and future KIPP schools can serve everyone, so we just need to expand KIPP.

So that’s a big policy question. At some times and in some places, KIPP spokespeople and advocates deny that there’s any creaming or pushing out of students who CAN’T successfully be made into KIPPsters. It seems likely that it’s on that assumption that the press swoons and the multimillion-dollar checks roll in. This isn’t a policy OR an analysis issue — it’s a PR/propaganda issue.

“Socrates, are you poorly informed or deliberately giving misinformation? That’s really insulting to the readers of this blog.”

Caroline, as a long time observer of Socrates, who at various times has claimed to be a long-time NYC public school teacher, then disappeared from the teacher bloggers who called him on it, count on the “deliberately giving misinformation” answer. Socrates, who has blogged under quite a few aliases (tracked by ip numbers) hides behind various personnas, clearly has a dog in the race, but refuses to tell anyone if it is a shnauzer or a pit bull. Does anyone think it beyond possibility that the corporate world spending millions on backing charters and privatization schemes wouldn’t hire professionals to troll the blogs offering misleading information?

Hi Ken — Hmm, I’m struggling with the question of how to address my concerns via government policy. It’s such an issue of hype and propaganda. You and I (and frankly, anyone with a clue) know that KIPP schools are not for everyone — that they are working with a select group of students predisposed to be higher-functioning and more motivated than many of their demographic counterparts. Yet this is vigorously and constantly disputed by advocates for KIPP. You have seen it on this very blog — KIPP advocates (dishonest or clueless, one or the other) sneering that any parent can fill out a form.

The general belief about KIPP, I am convinced, is that it can take any low-income child and make him or her a model KIPPster. And KIPP insiders don’t make a point of correcting this mistaken notion — rather, they make a point of NOT correcting it. (The need to hustle for private money, I’m convinced, tends to turn onetime committed idealists into conniving liars.)

Anyway, I believe that it’s on the basis of that mistaken notion — that KIPP can take any child and make him/her a model KIPPster — that the Gates/Broad billionaire crowd showers KIPP with millions of dollars.

I guess if I could I would somehow run a model experiment putting a group of KIPP students into a traditional public school without any other students, to see how they functioned with JUST the benefits of self-selection.

Perhaps one policy might be total transparency about how much the KIPP school was spending per student counting the private philanthropy (as far as I know this is completely murky) — and then give the laboratory traditional public school that much too, so that it had both the selected student population and the same money to spend.

I agree; it wouldn’t be productive to force parents. I just mean it would be enlightening if one could do such an experiment.

A colleague who is a better numbers researcher than I am is looking at the 990s for the donors to charter schools in Oakland, so that will give some view (she’s also an unpaid volunteer mommy, and the PAID RESEARCHERS AND PRESS SHOULD DO THIS! — why do they leave it to volunteers?). But I’m not sure it would clarify how much money each school was getting, would it?

CEOlaf,

Usually the 990s are compiled by CPAs, to my knowledge, and audited as part of a comprehensive annual audit process. So there is some level of oversight, though obviously audits can be imperfect.

In KIPP’s case, you may remember that NY State’s comptroller did a big additional audit of their books (and some other charters, too) a year or so ago (that’s when there was a big stink about the staff trip to the Bahamas or wherever). I’m sure that audit also analyzed their 990s and fundraised dollars, and is public information.