The New York Times and KIPP

The New York Times Sunday Magazine explored the issue of closing the achievement gap in Paul Tough's 11/26/06 article, "What it Takes to Make a Student." It focused partly on KIPP and the factors behind its schools' success. That prompts me to recount, again, my amateur volunteer research on KIPP.

A dad at San Francisco's KIPP Bayview Academy mentioned proudly on the sfschools listserve that his daughter had "tested into" the KIPP school. My question about what he meant by "tested into" got no response. I decided to see if KIPP was telling applicants they had to "test into" the schools. I took my 7th-grader to drop by a San Francisco KIPP school (KIPP SF Bay Academy, because we were nearby) and ask about applying. They said she did not have to "test into" the school itself, but were very clear that she would have to be tested to determine what grade she's in. I've visited many schools as a prospective applicant, and that's the only time I've even been given the message "don't assume that she'll be in her current grade, because only our tests will determine her grade level" (my interpretation, not a direct quote).

That raises the question of whether many incoming KIPP students are moved back a grade level. This seems feasible, as the KIPP schools are grades 5-8 and generally all the feeder schools are grades K-5. I don't know of any way to know that if KIPP isn't announcing it. It seems like a very legitimate way to help students catch up, but if so, shouldn't KIPP be discussing it publicly as one of its strategies? That wasn't mentioned in the New York Times magazine article.

I went fishing through demographics of California's KIPP schools on the Dataquest section of the California Department of Education website. There are several patterns at the majority of California's KIPP schools:

• Most of them show changes in the number of African-American students, especially boys, from grade to grade, that seem to indicate that a large number are held back in the higher KIPP grades. The numbers show reductions in one grade and corresponding bumps in the grade behind.
• The numbers at most of those schools also show significant attrition among African-American students, especially boys. Many who enter the KIPP schools do not finish.

Again, it's legitimate for KIPP schools to have high numbers of kids repeating grades, and it's legitimate for many students who start the school to leave before finishing. However, if those are strategies that help explain KIPP schools' successes — especially high attrition of unsuccessful students — they were not mentioned in the New York Times magazine article, and they have not been discussed in other commentaries on KIPP schools that I have seen. If those are successful strategies, they should be aired and explored so that all educators can learn from them.

A few other points from my unscientific research:

• I learned in my visit to a KIPP school and from other research that KIPP schools have discipline policies built around a "shunning" system that to my middle-class eye is shockingly draconian. This might help explain the schools' high attrition.
• The KIPP schools rely on a strategy of ongoing material rewards to students, who receive regular "pay" in KIPP dollars to spend on goods at a KIPP store. Again, if that is a significant part of the schools' successful strategy, it should be aired and discussed.
• The numbers as gleaned from the California Department of Education website do not appear to bear out the unattributed claim in the New York Times magazine article that "all (KIPP schools) have long waiting lists." Incoming class sizes in most California KIPP schools vary in a manner indicating that they are not all full. As an aside, I also learned in my visit that KIPP rewards students and families for aggressively recruiting to the schools. They get KIPP dollars for bringing in an inquiry and Gap/Old Navy gift certificates for bringing in a new enrolled student.

I think a report on KIPP is incomplete without these pieces of information, so I'm adding them to the discussion.

— Caroline