KIPP just keeps on losing students
The California Department of Education has just posted school-by-school enrollment figures for the current (06-07) school year, giving us an interesting new look at the KIPP schools right here in our district.
The pattern of attrition continues in both KIPP San Francisco Bay Academy and KIPP Bayview, raising questions. Both schools, which are grade 5-8 middle schools, are in their fourth year and have just expanded this year to 8th grade. At each school, the 5th-grade class that started there when they opened is in 8th grade now.
Here are their total numbers:
I had already been noting the pattern at those schools of extra-high attrition of African-American boys, who are statistically the most academically challenged subgroup. That pattern continues too:
The Washington Post's Jay Mathews writes: "I continue to look for programs that have done better than KIPP in raising the achievement level of low-income children, the central problem in American education today. I have not found any yet ..."
But is he comparing KIPP with other schools that shed more than half of their students? If not, he's not making a sound comparison.
The California KIPP school with the most striking attrition rate is Oakland's KIPP Bridge Academy, which opened in fall 2002 and thus had an 8th grade class finish last year (2006).
The posted enrollment figures on KIPP Bridge showed that the total enrollment in that grade fell from 87 students in 5th grade to 36 in 8th grade. Mathews interviewed the principal about that, and learned that the number who finished 8th grade was actually 24. That means 72.4% of the students who started in that grade left the school.
In the class behind that one, 82 students started grade 5 in 2003, and the number was down to 39 by the fall of 8th grade. Again, we don't know how many will graduate.
KIPP Bridge's numbers are startling for African-American boys:
— Caroline
The pattern of attrition continues in both KIPP San Francisco Bay Academy and KIPP Bayview, raising questions. Both schools, which are grade 5-8 middle schools, are in their fourth year and have just expanded this year to 8th grade. At each school, the 5th-grade class that started there when they opened is in 8th grade now.
Here are their total numbers:
KIPP San Francisco Bay, 8th-grade class that started as 5th-graders in fall 2003:Here's what's puzzling. If a traditional public school lost all those kids, it would have to replace them, because each kid brings funding, and no school in our district can afford to lose all that funding. Is this not a problem to KIPP, and if not, why not? Is the funding setup different for charters, or does the massive private funding they get make up for the lost funding so amply that it doesn't matter?
73 students (grade 5, 03-04)
78 students (grade 6, 04-05)
56 students (grade 7, 05-06)
33 students (grade 8, 06-07)
The class has lost 54.8% of the students who started. Note that this figure is from fall of 8th grade. It's unknown how many of those students will graduate from the school, of course.
KIPP Bayview Academy, 8th-grade class that started as 5th-graders in fall 2003:
81 students (grade 5, 03-04)
85 students (grade 6, 04-05)
55 students (grade 7, 05-06)
40 students (grade 8, 06-07)
The class has lost 50.6% of the students who started. Again, this figure is from fall of 8th grade and we don't know how many will be left by graduation.
I had already been noting the pattern at those schools of extra-high attrition of African-American boys, who are statistically the most academically challenged subgroup. That pattern continues too:
KIPP San Francisco Bay Academy, African-American boys in the 8th-grade class that started as 5th-graders in fall 2003:These schools are in our district -- KIPP is technically headquartered here -- and they're getting massive private funding along with public money. They are widely touted as the solution for low-income African-American and Latino students. Their success or failure directly affects us. This seems like an issue that deserves some attention.
13 (grade 5, 03-04)
20 (grade 6, 04-05)
10 (grade 7, 05-06)
3 (grade 8, 06-07)
KIPP SF Bay lost 77% of its African-American boys. Again, we don't know if all of the remaining 3 will graduate.
KIPP Bayview Academy, African-American boys in the 8th-grade class that started as 5th-graders in fall 2003:
24 (grade 5, 03-04)
18 (grade 6, 04-05)
12 (grade 7, 05-06)
8 (grade 8, 06-07)
KIPP Bayview lost 66.6% of its African-American boys. Again, we don't know if all of the remaining 8 will graduate.
The Washington Post's Jay Mathews writes: "I continue to look for programs that have done better than KIPP in raising the achievement level of low-income children, the central problem in American education today. I have not found any yet ..."
But is he comparing KIPP with other schools that shed more than half of their students? If not, he's not making a sound comparison.
The California KIPP school with the most striking attrition rate is Oakland's KIPP Bridge Academy, which opened in fall 2002 and thus had an 8th grade class finish last year (2006).
The posted enrollment figures on KIPP Bridge showed that the total enrollment in that grade fell from 87 students in 5th grade to 36 in 8th grade. Mathews interviewed the principal about that, and learned that the number who finished 8th grade was actually 24. That means 72.4% of the students who started in that grade left the school.
In the class behind that one, 82 students started grade 5 in 2003, and the number was down to 39 by the fall of 8th grade. Again, we don't know how many will graduate.
KIPP Bridge's numbers are startling for African-American boys:
KIPP Bridge, African-American boys in the 8th-grade class that startedThese numbers raise a lot of questions that aren't getting asked — certainly not by the private funders who are pouring money into KIPP. We do need to ask the questions about the KIPP schools in our own district, though.
as 5th-graders in fall 2002:
35 (grade 5, 02-03)
19 (grade 6, 03-04)
15 (grade 7, 04-05)
8 (grade 8, 05-06)
77.2% of the African-American males in the class left by the fall of 8th grade. It's unknown how many graduated -- Jay says he didn't ask how many finished 8th grade.
KIPP Bridge, African-American boys in the 8th-grade class that started as 5th-graders in fall 2003:
38 (grade 5, 03-04)
31 (grade 6, 04-05)
17 (grade 7, 05-06)
11 (grade 8, 06-07)
71.1% of the African-American males who started the class in 5th grade had left by fall of 8th grade. Again, we don't know how many will finish 8th grade.
— Caroline
Labels: Charters
5 Comments:
That's remarkable. I had no idea this was going on even as columnists nationwide sing the praises of KIPP.
I am veteran teacher from Houston seeking a dialogue with current and past Teach for America teachers regarding what appears to be a pattern of TFA leaders and alumni in school district leadership positions espousing conservative ideas and profiting from close relationships with reactionary corporations, while self-righteously proclaiming they are the new civil rights movement. I first became aware of this when a former local TFA Director, now a school board member, recently proposed to fire teachers based on test scores and opposed allowing us to vote to have a single union.
The conservative-TFA nexus began at the beginning, when Union Carbide sponsored Wendy Kopp's initial efforts to create Teach for America. A few years before, Union Carbide's negligence had caused the worst industrial accident in history, in Bhopal, India. The number of casualties was as large as 100,000, and Union Carbide did everything possible to minimize taking responsibility for the event. Not only did Union Carbide provide financial support for Ms. Kopp, it provided her with other corporate contacts and office space for her and her staff.
A few years later, when TFA faced severe financial difficulties, Ms. Kopp wrote in her book she nearly went to work for the Edison Project, and was all but saved by their managerial assistance. The Edison Project, founded by a Tennessee entrepreneur, was an effort to replace public schools run by elected school boards with for-profit, corporate-run schools.
In 2000, two brilliant TFA alumni, the founders of KIPP Academy, then joined the Bush's at the Republican National Convention in 2000. This was vital to Bush, since as Governor he did not really have any genuine education achievements, and he was trying to prove he was a different kind of Republican. And everyone knows about Michelle Rhee's prescription for improving education, close schools rather than improving them, and fire teachers rather than inspiring them.
Wendy Kopp's idea for Teach for America was a good one. TFA teachers do great work. But its leaders often seem to blame teachers, public schools and teachers' organizations for the achievement gap. By blaming teachers for some deep-seated social problems this nation has, they are not only providing an inaccurate critique, they feed conservatives more ammunition to use in their twenty-eight year war against using government as a problem solver.
Our achievement gap mirrors our country's level of economic inequality, the greatest among affluent nations. Better schools are only part of the solution. Stable families are more able to be ambitious for their children than insecure, overworked and struggling ones. Our society has failed our schools by permitting the middle class to shrink.(It's not the other way around.) As more people are starting to recognize, we need national health care, a stronger union movement, long-term unemployment benefits, generous college funding, immigration reform, trade policy, freedom for alternative lifestyles and reductions in military spending to bolster the middle class.
Ms. Kopp claims to be in the tradition of the civil rights movement, but Martin Luther King would take principled positions—against the Vietnam War and for the Poor Peoples March—even when it pissed off powerful people. His final speech, the night of his assassination, was on behalf of striking Memphis sanitation workers. In his last book, he argued for modifying American capitalism to include some measure of wealth distribution. I would like a dialogue about what I have written here. My e-mail is JesseAlred@yahoo.com. You as an individual TFA teacher has a responsibility here because your work alone gives TFA leaders credibility (its not the other way around.)
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As a Bay Area educator, I think it's important to point out that all of our under-served school populations have severe attrition rates and none are even close to competing with KIPP's test scores and college admissions. While I see that KIPP's scores and success are buoyed by a smaller population, I don't think that this article discussed that issue as much as it talked about the attrition rate, which is not a characteristic unique to KIPP Schools in SF.
I wish someone would do a new study on this topic. I think that the critics will be surprised. I have been a KIPP teacher for five years now, and in the beginning, yes, the school I work for (SF BAY) was losing students. There are many variables to consider, though, namely the commitment to the long hours (7:30 - 5:00). This can be a great hardship for many families. However, the success we have reached with many of our kids has been astonishing! Word is getting around as we move from the "start up" phase and push into the "sustainable" one. Our recent graduates started at 80 plus in 5th grade and we graduated 80 plus. Our current 8th graders started at 80 plus and we WILL be graduating 80 plus! BRAVO to KIPP and please look at recent statistics before judging the KIPP program.
-Peter
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