In the interest of fairness and balance (you know, those pesky journalism credos), I tried mighty hard to find substantiated criticism of the KIPP school network, which I profiled for November’s American School Board Journal.
Short for the Knowledge is Power Program, KIPP, the national chain of high-performing charter schools, has been the darling of many education researchers and foundations for its ability to turn around some of the most challenging students in some of the most challenging neighborhoods in the U.S.
For instance, despite serving students who, on average, enter the KIPP system two grade levels behind, roughly two-thirds of KIPP fifth-graders outperformed their local counterparts in the reading and math portion of state exams in 2007. By the time those same KIPP fifth-graders got to eighth grade, 100 percent of them outperformed the local district.
How do they do it? It’s a question critics and admirers have wondered about ever since Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin, two fifth-grade teachers, launched the model in 1994 and then began to expand it in 2001. As a result, KIPP has become one of the most scrutinized school franchises in the country. The latest study came out last week and focuses on five KIPP schools in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Researchers scoured the records of both the KIPP schools and their district counterparts and interview KIPP staff over a three year period. It is a comprehensive and detailed report that is far from damning, though it does give credence to suspicions I and others had about the model.
For example, researchers dismissed naysayers who claim KIPP’s success is due to cherry-picking the students; students with lower English language arts and math skills were more likely to enroll in a KIPP school than a higher performing student in the same area. Their finding is somewhat tampered, however, because their analyses also revealed KIPP student attrition is high; 60 percent of students who entered the fifth grade in 2003-2004 left before hitting eighth grade.
Turnover is also high for KIPP faculty, who reported working 65-hour-weeks. Within the three-year study, teacher turnover ranged from 18 to 49 percent. At the same time, the study found teachers are less encumbered with the paperwork and bureaucracy of traditional school systems and have plenty of opportunity for professional development and training. To read more, check out the report here.
Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor
