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.