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How about looking at the difference in enrollment between a school’s lowest and highest grades? I’d probably leave off Kindergarten and look at 1st grade size compared to highest grade.

Gideon is right. The research I did on Bay Area KIPP schools three years ago (since confirmed by the pros) found very high attrition overall — and much higher among the demographic subgroup at each school most likely to be low academic achievers (African-American boys or Latino boys, depending on the school). But this was not the same as the stability or mobility in regular public schools, because KIPP was not replacing the students who left, the numbers confirmed. The 8th grade classes (these are all middle schools, grades 5-8) were much, much smaller than the same class had been in 5th and 6th grades. That shrinkage didn’t exist in regular public schools. Did your study address that?

Disclaimer that I’m not a statistician and could just manage to muster the skills to make little charts for myself of the figures on the California Dept. of Education websites…

That is what the data I studied showed, Kim — the number of African-American boys, not WHICH African-American boys. If the class started with 20 AA boys in grade 5 and there were 7 left in grade 8 (it was the fall of grade 8, BTW — I didn’t have access to information on how many FINISHED grade I had no way of knowing whether all 20 of the original AA boys left and 7 new AA boys enrolled, or whether there were cycles of churn along the way.
Just the numbers themselves seemed pretty revealing, though.

I think the situation is probably different with a middle school, even a 4-year one, as opposed to a K-5 or K-8 — they aren’t enrolling newcomers in the higher grades. It is interesting that KIPP can afford to leave those seats unfilled, though. In my kids’ public schools, empty seats mean panic about the lost funding.

If you’re referring to my KIPP data as opposed to Kim’s, no, I had no way of knowing about students held back to repeat a grade — only the hard numbers in each grade. But of course that wouldn’t impact the fact that the 8th grades are far smaller than the 5th and 6th grades. Here in San Francisco, the 6th grades at the two KIPP schools tend to be the largest, bigger than the 5th grades. Anecdotally, that’s because all the feeder schools are K-5s, and many/most students want to stay with their classes through 5th grade. The widely repeated claim that “all KIPP schools have long waiting lists” is not true when it comes to 5th grades here in San Francisco, by the way. The KIPP schools here have trouble filling their 5th grades.

That totally makes sense in theory, Peter, but in actual unassailable reality, the numbers resoundingly prove that the California KIPP schools DO NOT replace the students who leave — and we’re talking about 60% of the students. As studies show that the students who leave KIPP schools are the less successful students, it’s apparently worth it to them to keep only the higher achievers and forfeit the funding. And with California’s low-low education funding, that is quite a sacrifice.

Wow, Gideon, that’s quite striking! When I first did my research on KIPP and blogged it, it caught a lot of attention (I’m quoted in Jay Mathews’ KIPP-promoting book and everything). Somehow the many reporters and researchers who were all studying KIPP had “forgotten” to check those rather revealing figures, which are publicly available on the California Department of Education website, even to an amateur volunteer schlub like me. Researching something that reflected so poorly on KIPP must have just slipped their minds.

There was lots of pushback claiming: oh, it happens just like that in public schools too. So I pulled up some demographically comparable public schools, randomly, and studied their attrition too. No, it doesn’t — it just doesn’t. The public schools’ class size stayed the same or bumped up or down by a tiny number of students — I’m talking about middle schools here.
Of course I know that disadvantaged students tend to be “high-mobility” and move in and out of schools a lot. But the numbers prove that when a student moved out, another student moved in at public schools.

The charter schools (or at least the “it’s a miracle!” brand) clearly find it worth the loss of revenue to get rid of challenged kids and leave the seats empty, keeping the easier, more-successful students.

I used the data on the 09_10Enrollment tab on your spreadsheet so no it is not cohort data. That said, there are some pretty big differences between entry and exit years. Maybe the initial entering classes were significantly smaller than now, but it’s hard to imagine schools like Manhattan Charter School or Harlem Village Academy could have started with one class of 16 or 20 students respectively. Also, it’s hard to compare these stats to district-run schools, since for many of them their students have no choice but to attend whereas parents can remove their children from a charter school at any time.

Your cohort worksheet is interesting: I converted your difference columns to percentage of first year remaining in third year, and some of the same schools pop up as losing significant numbers of students, although without more years it’s hard to be sure. Is there a way to find out which schools enroll students in other than their entry grade?

“Maybe the initial entering classes were significantly smaller than now, ”

It’s a rare new charter school can start with as many students as it might be able to recruit after a few years’ track record.  So earlier cohorts are often going to be smaller.  In fact, it’s more “striking” that some of the charter schools listed have higher enrollment in the later grades.

In any event, looking at how many students are at a particular school right now does nothing to prove what you claim (“it’s clear that many schools lose kids over time and don’t replace them”).  You have to look at what happens “over time” to make such a claim.  

Numbers aren’t evidence for your story, Caroline, which is that kids are being deliberately pushed out rather than dropping out simply because they don’t find the program to their tastes.  

Charter schools live or die by their enrollment — if enrollment falls, funding falls too, and that means firing teachers, cutting salaries, possibly defaulting on mortgages (thanks to states that don’t provide facilities funds), and often being shut down by a state board of education for financial instability.  That’s why, in the real world, charter schools are constantly thinking about how to maintain and/or increase enrollment. 
I do agree that some charter schools’ programs (such as KIPP) turn out to be too hard for some students.  It takes a peculiar anti-academic outlook on the world, however, to view this as a negative for KIPP.  That’s like arguing that the P90X exercise program doesn’t really make people fit and healthy, because it’s such a hard program that a lot of people quit.  Well, yes, a lot of people do quit a hard exercise program, but it’s PRECISELY for that reason that such a program will make you fit and healthy if you have the willpower to stick with it.  In the world of exercise and sports, we applaud programs that push people to achieve at levels they might have never thought possible.  And if people do manage to complete heroic athletic feats, we marvel at them.  It’s only in academics that people come out of the woodwork to jeer at anything that’s too difficult. 

While I do believe that at KIPP “kids are being deliberately pushed out,” that’s not what I’m claiming the numbers show, Stuart. I think you’re assuming that I am making that claim because you know perfectly well that it’s true! We both know that it’s true that KIPP deliberately pushes out less-successful students. But — sit up, listen, track the speaker with your eyes and nod to show that you’re listening — I agree that the numbers in and of themselves don’t show that.

To clarify: My findings show that the KIPP schools I studied have very, very, very high attrition — and that attrition is far higher among the demographic subgroups that are most likely to be less successful in school (either African-American boys or Latino boys, depending on the school’s demographics). SRI International’s study confirmed that finding, and added info that was not available to me, showing that the less successful students were most likely to leave and the most successful students were most likely to remain at KIPP.

To restate: Neither my findings nor SRI International’s findings addressed why those students leave. I have no doubt that they’re pushed, but my findings in and of themselves don’t show that, and I don’t claim that they do.

Now, again, pay attention: It’s not inherently a bad thing if the KIPP program is too challenging for many of the students who enroll and so they leave. But there are two big questions:

1. If the public school down the street also could operate a program that was too challenging and by whatever means, the less successful students left, leaving only the highest-performing students, would the public school down the street be as successful as KIPP?

2. If weeding out the less successful students is a legitimate way to make the school successful, why do KIPP and its champions constantly deny that’s what’s happening — or rather change the story when confronted with the facts, as Stuart has done on this thread?

I’m not clear on this study counting KIPP dropouts. How long did the students have to remain in the KIPP school to be counted in the study?

I disagree that it’s specious to cite the “motivation” issue in those who apply for KIPP.

I don’t have EVIDENCE. I have plenty of information and anecdote — plus sheer logic — that make it clear that this pro-active weeding-out occurs.

You acknowledge it yourself:

“I do agree that some charter schools’ programs (such as KIPP) turn out to be too hard for some students…. it’s PRECISELY for that reason that such a program will make you fit and healthy if you have the willpower to stick with it. In the world of exercise and sports, we applaud programs that push people to achieve at levels they might have never thought possible. And if people do manage to complete heroic athletic feats, we marvel at them.”

(But we don’t try to claim that everyone can complete those feats while simultaneously marveling at the heroes who complete them — that’s the difference with a tough fitness training regimen.)

Actually, I’ve responded to this many times, including in conversations with you:

“… You still have no response to the point that the kids who do stay with KIPP end up doing much better than they would have in their original public schools. …”

I actually do believe that there’s truth to it. The point that I’ve made many times is that there’s a segment of at-risk kids who, removed from the low-functioning. oppositional and defiant kids — the pull of “the street,” as Elijah Anderson writes — will be more successful.

As I’ve said about 20 million times, the question is whether public schools couldn’t do the same thing if they too were selecting for successful, motivated achievers all along the way, and then kept those students apart from the influence of troubled peers. If there were actually any sincere commitment among charter school advocates to help support public education instead of dismantling it, those advocates would be putting KIPP’s practices under the microscope to see which were having what effect, and finding ways to implement the successful practices in public schools. Instead, they continuously distort and misrepresent what goes on at KIPP. It’s a puzzlement.

I want to add to my own words: “selecting for successful, motivated achievers” — really I should say “students with the POTENTIAL to be successful, motivated achievers.” I realize that some families seek out options like KIPP because their students are not doing well in other schools.
Among the factors giving those students the potential to be successful, motivated achievers would be parents/guardians who wanted them to succeed and were willing to make considerable effort to try to make it happen.

Because high schools and middle schools are entirely different when it comes to attrition. High school students can and do legally drop out of school at 16 (this used to be the accepted, approved and even expected norm for many/most working-class and poor young people not all that long ago).

By contrast, middle schoolers are required by law to be enrolled in school — some school. So they don’t leave KIPP to stop going to school; they leave KIPP to go to another school. Those are apples-and-oranges situations and are not comparable.

The conversation is about attrition in charter schools because that’s what this thread is about.

Stuart, MY comments are specifically about middle schools, so if you’re responding to me, you’re not making sense if you’re talking about high schools. Dismissing this as “a few KIPP middle schools in San Francisco — so what” is not a thoughtful response. I’ll be clear one more time.

I researched all the KIPP schools that were operating in California at the time. Not every one of them showed the high attrition pattern, but almost all did. SRI International studied all five of the KIPP schools in the San Francisco Bay Area, and their findings confirmed and amplified mine. Their findings were based on data that KIPP gave them access to, not just the publicly available data that I used. Interestingly, in one case (KIPP Heartwood in the Alum Rock school district, San Jose), my data didn’t show a pattern of attrition, but SRI’s did.

As far as I know (and obviously I pay attention), KIPP itself has never responded to say that the Bay Area schools are outliers and that most KIPP schools don’t suffer that high attrition, nor has KIPP released figures for other schools that would show otherwise.

1. I’m not attacking KIPP; I never have. I’ve pointed out that its attrition rate in the KIPP schools I’ve studied and the KIPP schools SRI International studied complicates its claims of success. KIPP has never tried to claim that those schools are outliers that have unusually high attrition rates compared to other KIPP schools, either. And the KIPP attrition raises the looming question of how traditional public schools’ achievement would look if the majority of their students — the lowest-performing ones — left and weren’t replaced, as is the case at those KIPP schools.

2. I have already responded to the claim that traditional public schools with comparable demographics have attrition that looks like KIPP’s. No, they don’t. I studied some for comparison. Yes, they have mobility, which tends to go along with serving a disadvantaged student population. But when students at traditional public middle schools leave, they are replaced. The class that enters at grade 6 (or 5 in unusual grade configurations) is the same size, give or take a tiny number, as the class that finishes grade 8.

I already responded to that frequently repeated claim earlier on this thread. I realize you didn’t try to make that specific claim but just made a wan effort to pretend you were making it, Stuart, by stating that traditional public schools “see some attrition” (or else that was a sly effort to minimize the facts about KIPP attrition by referring to it as “see(ing) some attrition.” But no, nothing remotely comparable to KIPP’s sky-high attrition of its lower-performing students occurs in traditional public middle schools, based on the sample I researched.