Thursday, October 18, 2007

Does KIPP provide a solution to the problems of urban education?

On Monday, I asked whether KIPP has a positive effect on the students they serve; I concluded that KIPP schools likely have positive effects on their students, but they are not as large as one perceives them to be when one compares outcomes at KIPP and neighborhood schools.

Today, I want to write about a different question: is a KIPP education is likely to pay dividends for students who don't select into KIPP lotteries? In other words, let's imagine that we head over to a neighborhood school, pick every 10th student, and assign them to a KIPP school. What's likely to happen?

Richard Rothstein said it best in Class and Schools, when he wrote:

[KIPP students] are not typical lower-class students....KIPP's strategy works well for them but there is no evidence that it would be as successful for students whose parents are not motivated to choose such a school and help enforce its academic rules. In the Bronx KIPP school, 41% of students entered at or above grade level in reading, and 48% entered at or above grade level in math...If these schools are unusually effective (as they probably are), they can post even higher achievement. This is admirable, but it does not indicate that KIPP has shown how to get middle-class results from typical lower-class students without addressing the social and economic causes of failure.

As I wrote Tuesday, KIPP's own enrollment policies basically make this point; that the school requires families to meet with the school to discuss their expectations and to sign a contract indicates that KIPP knows that this approach won't work for everyone. This is not to say that KIPPsters don't benefit, but that we are going to have to look elsewhere for solutions that work for the majority of kids.

KIPP's own patterns of attrition also demonstrate that this is an approach that doesn't work consistently across the urban population. Ed Week wrote a long article about attrition earlier this year, and the tables below show that in some KIPP schools, there appears to be significant attrition. I pulled the enrollment data for the KIPP schools in Texas for both 2005-2006 and 2004-2005, and here's what I found:

2005-2006 Number Enrolled

Grade 5--

Grade 6--

Grade 7--

Grade 8--

Grade 9--

Grade 10--

KIPP Truth - Dallas

61

33

37

-

-

-

KIPP Academy-Houston

92

87

94

84

95

59

KIPP Aspire -San Antonio

83

90

66

-

-

-

KIPP - 3D - Houston

91

89

75

63

-

-

KIPP Austin College Prep

85

79

57

35

-

-


2004-2005 Number Enrolled

Grade 5

Grade 6

Grade 7

Grade 8

Grade 9

Grade 10

KIPP Truth - Dallas

43

48

-

-

-

-

KIPP Academy-Houston

85

86

87

74

60


KIPP Aspire -San Antonio

78

70

-

-

-

-

KIPP Austin College Prep

51

55

41

-

-

-


Because these numbers don't allow us to follow individual kids, it's difficult to know what to make of them. For example, that only 33 of the 43 KIPP Truth 5th graders in 2004-2005 progressed to 6th grade in 2005-2006 could mean that they left, or that KIPP retained a number of them in 5th grade. On the other hand, we don't know how many kids were there on the first day (these are October 31st numbers); KIPP Truth reports that they have 90 5th grade seats, so that there are only 61 5th graders by October 31st may represent significant student attrition. And if the lowest scoring kids are leaving, there may be large effects on test scores. Here are the test score data for these schools for each of these two years.

2005-2006 Percent Passing State Tests

G5 Read

G6 Read

G7 Read

G8 Read

G5 Math

G6 Math

G7 Math

G8 Math

KIPP Truth - Dallas

64

86

87

-

67

86

94

81

KIPP Academy-Houston

*

96

96

99

77

94

95

99

KIPP Aspire -San Antonio

88

99

85

-

88

97

92

-

KIPP - 3D - Houston

*

98

80

98

66

93

81

98

KIPP Austin College Prep

71

95

92

99

62

96

94

97










2004-2005
Percent Passing State Tests

G5 Read

G6 Read

G7 Read

G8 Read

G5 Math

G6 Math

G7 Math

G8 Math

KIPP Truth - Dallas

55

87

-

-

64

83

-

-

KIPP Academy-Houston

83

99

95

97

80

94

96

99

KIPP Aspire -San Antonio

70

90

-

-

89

94

-

-

KIPP Austin College Prep

51

85

93

-

78

75

83

-


(* means that Texas did not report their scores.)

To sum up, while KIPP offers a viable alternative for a subset of kids, it's not a reform strategy that can be brought to scale. However, as I will discuss tomorrow, there are a few important elements of the KIPP approach that public schools can successfully adopt.

1 comment:

OTAC said...

This is excellent. KIPP works very well for some of the kids; it's very unlikely to work for all of the kids, and you do a great job of telling why not. Thanks for giving your attention to this topic.

And thanks for deciding to blog. If I could only read one education blog, it would be yours.