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:

KIPP San Francisco Bay, 8th-grade class that started as 5th-graders in fall 2003:
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.

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?

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:
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.

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.

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 started
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.

These 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.

— Caroline