KIPP alumni in college: the number, please?
In the current Newsweek, columnist Jonathan Alter earnestly claims that 12,800 alumni of KIPP schools have gone on to college. Here's what Alter wrote:
It's ironic that Alter made that rather significant error in a column mostly devoted to blasting and blaming teachers for troubled schools and calling for getting rid of problem teachers, along with eliminating tenure and increasing "accountability" for teachers. I wonder how he feels about more accountability for journalists.
Here's a memo from KIPP explaining the actual number. It went from a KIPP staffer named Debbie Fine to KIPP press spokesman Steve Mancini to Washington Post/Newsweek education writer Jay Mathews to me.
I'm not opposed to creating schools for motivated, high-functioning, compliant low-income students from motivated, high-functioning, compliant families. KIPP's target is a low-income, high-need, at-risk demographic, and it does seem to be working well with that subset of kids.
I just think the public discussion needs to be clear and honest about the fact that this is not a random cross-section of low-income, high-need, at-risk kids. KIPP misleads, and insufficiently questioning journalists with an overly shallow understanding of education issues eagerly accept and spread the misinformation.
At the 60 KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) schools, more than 80 percent of 16,000 randomly selected low-income students go to college, four times the national average for poor kids.The actual number, according to KIPP itself, is 447.
It's ironic that Alter made that rather significant error in a column mostly devoted to blasting and blaming teachers for troubled schools and calling for getting rid of problem teachers, along with eliminating tenure and increasing "accountability" for teachers. I wonder how he feels about more accountability for journalists.
Here's a memo from KIPP explaining the actual number. It went from a KIPP staffer named Debbie Fine to KIPP press spokesman Steve Mancini to Washington Post/Newsweek education writer Jay Mathews to me.
We have been tracking KIPP middle school alumni (i.e. KIPP students thatAlso, it's not truly fair or accurate to claim that KIPP students are "randomly selected," though they are presumably randomly selected from among those who pursue the application process all the way through. The KIPP application process, as has been extensively discussed here and elsewhere, aggressively self-selects for motivated, high-functioning and compliant students from motivated, high-functioning and compliant families. So the implication that KIPP students are a random sampling of low-income students is wildly off the mark.
completed the 8th grade at KIPP) since the fifth grade class that entered
KIPP in 1995. Since that time, 546 students have completed the eighth
grade at KIPP, and 447 of those students have matriculated to college for
an average college matriculation rate over five years of roughly 81
percent.
This number only includes students who attended the original two KIPP
schools in Houston and New York since those are the only KIPP schools that
have been in operation long enough to have kids progress from eighth grade
to college freshmen. Kids from the next generation of KIPP schools that
opened this decade will not matriculate to college until 2009.
I'm not opposed to creating schools for motivated, high-functioning, compliant low-income students from motivated, high-functioning, compliant families. KIPP's target is a low-income, high-need, at-risk demographic, and it does seem to be working well with that subset of kids.
I just think the public discussion needs to be clear and honest about the fact that this is not a random cross-section of low-income, high-need, at-risk kids. KIPP misleads, and insufficiently questioning journalists with an overly shallow understanding of education issues eagerly accept and spread the misinformation.
Labels: Charters
24 Comments:
Actually, it is a myth that the KIPP selection method is self-selective, but why let data get in the way of your accusations?
Data doesn't refute the observation that KIPP's application method is self-selective -- the implication that is does (or could) is inaccurate. And, of course, it's not only my observation; check out the Richard Rothstein book (among many other commentaries).
Also, it's not strictly an "accusation." It's not inherently a bad thing to have a student population self-selected for higher functioning. In an ideal world, I think all low-income, at-risk students should have an opportunity to be in a (free) school with a student population self-selected for higher functioning.
It's only a bad thing to be dishonest about it, and to dump the lower-functioning students on the traditional public school down the street and then proclaim oneself superior to the school that accepts your rejects, as KIPP does.
I understand that KIPP has to do that to win the large amounts of private funding it gets -- to convince the funders that it's working some magic. That's unfortunate, because both dishonesty and public-school-bashing are wrong and counterproductive in the long run.
Except that you have no evidence that your accusation is true. That's the only problem with making that accusation. And data KIPP has and publishes on their students' incoming schools sure doesn't support your reckless conclusion.
Um, you're saying that KIPP's own data is designed to make its schools look good? Stop the presses.
So Alter didn't actually say that 12,000+ KIPP kids have gone to college - you made that up. Alter said that 80% of KIPP kids go to college. And for the 2 schools where the kids have gotten to the college-going age, that's been true. And now there are 16,000 kids learning at that rate, so you can be pretty certain that somewhere in the neighborhood of 12,000 of those kids will go to college. Especially since KIPP has gotten better over time.
No, I didn't make that up. Alter said that 80% of KIPP's 16,000 students went to college. That quite clearly tells the reader. inaccurately, that KIPP has sent 12,800 alumni on to college. The press's job is to give accurate information that doesn't mislead; Alter misled his readers.
No he didn't. You're not so great with the quotes, are you? On the Examiner site, you misrepresented KIPP's quote about funding, and now you're mis-quoting Alter. I thought you had some sort of journalistic background.
Anyway, Alter said that 80% of KIPP students "go" to college, not "went" to college. This is not mere semantics: one is present-tense, and true (there are 16,000 KIPP students and 80% of KIPP students do go to college after finishing KIPP), the other is past-tense and would be false (though 80% of KIPP students have gone to college, there have not yet been 16,000 college-aged KIPP alum).
I really doubt that you are incapable of understanding simple quotes, so that makes me think that your misinterpretation is willful spinning. You know that Alter's point was not the raw number, since the raw number would still be a drop in the bucket. His point was that KIPP students go to college at a much higher rate than district students do. MUCH higher. And that is true. The percentage is what matters. He clearly only used the gross number of students to show people the size of the KIPP network - 12,800 college students would not be meaningful impact except that it represents a very high percentage of KIPP students. You, I imagine, understand that, and are grasping at straws to parse his words so that you can attempt to discredit his on-the-money opinion piece.
Sorry, hon. Alter misled his readers into believing that KIPP has sent 12,800 students to college.
(Actually, you're implying that Alter misled readers deliberately, using slippery wording on purpose. From my discussion with him, I don't believe he was intentionally dishonest and misleading; I give him more credit than you do. I think he read the information on the KIPP website a bit hastily and carelessly.)
I certainly am not implying that he misled on purpose, I'm asserting and even proving that you are misleading people, quite probably on purpose.
Alter knows that 80% of KIPP's college-aged kids go to college, and he also knows that most of KIPP's kids aren't college-aged. So his statement was factually accurate, and not misleading to anyone who can read and understand present vs. past tense. I'm pretty confident that most of his readers are adept enough to handle such nuance.
How would Alter know that? There's no evidence that he ever saw the reluctantly discovered memo explaing the %80 figure. And if he did, why did he say "from 60 KIPP schools" when the 80% figure relates to only two KIPP classes?
Furthermore, we know KIPP attrition rates are alarmingly high, so if Alter wants to talk about the "randomly selected" KIPP students, wouldn't it make sense to examine the graduation rate of the applicants and not the graduates? That would certainly drive the graduation rates way down.
KIPP attrition rates are in most cases lower than their district's mobility rates are. You call that "alarmingly high", rational people call it "doing a better job than the district".
KIPP attrition is a different situation from mobility at district schools, because when a high-mobility student leaves a district school, that student is routinely replaced with another high-mobility student.
But when a student leaves a KIPP school, that student isn't necessarily replaced (definitely not in the upper grades). So when I researched attrition rates at California's KIPP schools, I found staggeringly high attrition at 6 of the 9 KIPP schools. It's not comparable to mobility at district schools because it truly means the numbers dwindle.
KIPP itself responded to my research about this by starting to look more closely at its schools' attrition rates.
KIPP Bridge in Oakland (if that's still its name -- I think it may have changed) had truly spectacularly high attrition when I did my research, and in follow-ups, the principal did acknowledge that some of those students left because they couldn't or wouldn't get with the KIPP program.
However, since KIPP itself attributes its attrition to the high mobility that unfortunately tends to be part of the lives of low-income families -- rather than any fault of the school -- obviously blaming school districts ("doing a better job than the district") for THEIR high-mobility students would be pretty inconsistent.
OK, but I'm not KIPP, and thus am not too PC to bash the districts on this one. Obviously, it's a combination of factors - some attrition is due to voluntary moving or removing a kid from school that could be impacted by the quality of the school (or the experience in the school), while some attrition is related to general transience, losing a home, etc., which is harder for the school or district to impact.
KIPP schools are in districts with high transience. That's one reason their attrition is so high. The fact that it's lower than the district schools' attrition in many cases, though (assuming you're right about KIPP not taking in kids mid-year, we can just cut a district mobility rate roughly in half and get at their attrition per school for comparison purposes), means that for the attrition that can be impacted, they're doing a good job of keeping their kids. For the most part. Some schools like the one in Oakland have very high attrition for any school. KIPP also has schools in the single digits for attrition.
To clarify -- It's incorrect that KIPP schools' attrition is lower than district schools' attrition.
As a layperson, I don't have access to information about individual students, obviously, so what I have is access to the overall numbers in a grade. That's where we can see that in many KIPP schools, the number of students drops significantly grade by grade. That doesn't happen in the traditional public school down the street, because when a student leaves the traditional public school, another student is likely to arrive to fill the seat.
I'm not just saying KIPP doesn't fill seats midyear. KIPP often doesn't fill them AT ALL. Grade 8 of the class of students who will finish Grade 8 in 2009 is likely (based on the numbers) to have far fewer students than started Grade 5 . This pattern is true for six of California's nine KIPP schools. And in all six of those cases, the most academically challenged subgroup (statistically speaking) has far more attrition than the overall class.
It IS true that in most cities KIPP schools have lower attrition than the average district school. You can say over and over again that it's not, but that doesn't make you right.
Again, you're quoting anecdotal evidence. 9 schools all from one geographical area does not an adequate sample size make.
What's hilarious to me is that you could find a billion schools in the district with higher attrition, and other, bigger problems, but you choose to focus on some of the few schools that are actually doing good things for their students. That just makes it so obvious that this is a political issue for you, not an ethical or moral one.
No, I'm citing statistics from the California Department of Education website, Anon -- not anecdotal evidence at all. And my information is accurate regarding KIPP schools' higher attrition. No district school could AFFORD to keep all those seats vacant after the student leaves (how KIPP can is a mystery, but they do).
I can certainly find many district schools that have other, bigger problems. That I will acknowledge. But my information about the KIPP attrition is accurate and comes from data, not anecdote.
KIPP affords empty seats by being better with their money than the district. Hard to believe the district is being inefficient, I know.
Like I said, patterns from 9 schools do not prove your case, in a network of 60 schools. Especially when those schools aren't randomly sampled but are from one of the lowest-funded states in the country (for charters).
Your information does not, in the vast majority of cases, come from comprehensive data. Saying that most KIPP classrooms have decibel meters, when probably less than 10% of them do, is using anecdotal evidence. Saying that attrition is higher than in the district schools, when overall that is simply not true, is ignoring, not using, the data. Pretending there's a selection bias in the absence of any data whatsoever that would prove that, is not using data. Concluding that KIPP schools spend more than their district counterparts when they actually spend less? You got it: gross manipulation of data.
So what source do you have that shows KIPP to have a lower attrition rate?
Actually, what I said was not "patterns from nine schools." What I found (not my opinion but 100% from data) was that six of California's nine KIPP schools showed the same pattern -- extremely high attrition, and far, far higher in the most academically challenged (statistically likely on average) demographic subgroup than for the student population in that school overall.
I've never pretended that was representative of all KIPP schools all over the country, but seeing the same pattern in six of California's nine KIPP schools seemed to warrant comment. KIPP clearly agreed, as they began examining attrition patterns and publicly discussing them AFTER I blogged about this, and the Washington Post's Jay Mathews (education writer who is a big KIPP fan) wrote about my findings.
That's demonstrably far out of line, on its face, than attrition in schools in those districts. It simply is; there's no point complaining about it. Why waste your time and mine?
Because you're insisting that attrition is a major problem in KIPP. You can't say that when you only really know it's a problem in 10% of their schools. And whether it's really a problem in all of those schools is subject to debate as well.
KIPP itself (to its great credit) leaped on the numbers AFTER I posted them and started taking a closer look at attrition in its schools. So that would indicate KIPP thinks it might indicate a problem.
Or it means that KIPP didn't think they should keep taking hits from their knee-jerk detractors when they could easily refute their points with simple statistics.
No, KIPP hasn't refuted my pointsh -- which are accurate, backed up by statistics. To its credit, KIPP says it has started examining attrition at its schools.
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