KIPP and retention; social promotion; 58% and 54% of black and Latino 4th graders nationwide are illiterate

In Jay Mathews' article about KIPP that I sent around last night, for the first time I read a sensible discussion about KIPP's retention issue:

At the KIPP Bridge College Preparatory school in Oakland, Calif., for instance, of the 87 students who enrolled in fifth grade in 2003, 32 later moved out of the area and 30 had parents who decided to remove them from KIPP for other reasons. Twenty-two went back to their regular public schools -- nine left because they did not like the long KIPP day and 13 because KIPP wanted their children to spend another year in fifth grade.

KIPP Bridge principal David Ling said when he told parents repeating the grade would help get their children up to grade level, they often said they thought their children were already excellent students, and would be stars back at their regular schools. I call this the American Idol syndrome, similar to the insistence of untrained singers and their parents on that show that they are great because everyone has been telling them that for years.

The retention issue has been a hot topic in KIPP conferences and email traffic. How can they help these students reach national standards if they quit because of wounded pride? The KIPP schools in Baltimore are now in their third year of a solution they call the Rapid Readers program. It serves all fifth-graders who test below the second grade level in reading. Their families are told from the beginning that it may take them five years to get to eighth grade level. There are no surprises. If they don't like that idea, they are free to withdraw, but most don't. During their first fifth grade year, they spend three hours a day on reading. By the end of their second year in fifth grade, they are ready for sixth grade. At most, only one or two of these dozen families each year, according to KIPP Baltimore executive director Jason Botel, have transferred their children back to the regular school system.

There is one blogger I've read who claims that a big reason for KIPP's big jumps in scores is that KIPP forces out underperforming students.  Nothing could be further from the truth -- I've never seen KIPP give up on a student for academic reasons.  That would be totally antithetical to KIPP's culture and, as Mathews' article makes clear, KIPP is very focused on improvement here. 

 

I haven't seen the data across all KIPP schools, but I don't think KIPP Bridge in Oakland is typical -- losing 62 of 87 students sounds extreme -- but let's examine this case study:

 

Regarding the 32 who moved out of the area, there's nothing KIPP can do about that and there's no reason I can think of why these students would be low performers, so this would not affect KIPP's scores.

 

As for the other 30, we have some data on 22.  9 left because the student or parents didn't like the extended school day and year.  Should KIPP change that to accommodate the students or parents who aren't willing to do what it takes?  Of course not.  Are these students likely to be underperforming?  Yes.

 

As for the other 13 who aren't happy about being held back a year (also obviously underperforming), I have the same attitude: KIPP shouldn't back down and should instead do what's working in Baltimore, combining extra help and setting appropriate expectations. 

 

In summary, despite KIPP's best efforts, some students and families aren't a good fit with KIPP's program -- in particular, there are no doubt some for whom education is not the most important thing to them and aren't willing to do what it takes to succeed academically and go to college, even after KIPP does everything to persuade them otherwise.  The fact that some of these students withdraw from KIPP no doubt helps improve some of KIPP's performance metrics like percentage of students testing at or above grade level. 

 

Does this mean that KIPP success is an illusion and that KIPP isn't adding value?  Of course not.  There are many other ways to cut the data that remove any effect from students who leave and the data here still shows that most KIPP schools are having enormous positive impact.

 

But it's important to note that KIPP is not for every student and family.  For example, my wife and I wouldn't want our children in any school with such long hours every day, plus Saturdays and summer school (unlike most families in neighborhoods in which KIPPs are located, we are fortunate enough to have our children in various enriching activities during these times).  KIPP is a very focused, intense program, and students and parents have to commit to it or there will be little benefit.  Given this, let's return to this comment that I dismissed in my last email (I said I wouldn't waste my time doing this -- but I lied!):

Caroline Grannan, a public school advocate and blogger who follows charter school issues, said "KIPP schools succeed for some students--but it's a select subset of students. KIPP is evidently not the solution to the challenges facing urban public education. It would be wonderful to see the vast private funding that's poured into the KIPP schools, which serve just that limited subset, benefiting a larger segment of high-need students."

Let's go through this, point by point:

 

1) "KIPP schools succeed for some students" -- indeed.  Given that these students, if there were no KIPP, would likely not be succeeding in a failing public school, why doesn't she celebrate KIPP's success?

 

2) "but it's a select subset of students."  If she simply made the point that KIPP does not work for every student, I would have no quarrel, but what does "a select subset" mean?  "Select" implies that KIPP is selecting only privileged, elite students -- utter nonsense -- and "subset" could mean 90%, but could also mean 10%.  Which does she mean?  It's clear from the context (and when she later says "limited subset"), that she means a really low number -- again, utter nonsense.  The facts are that KIPP works for the great majority of students -- and not carefully selected, high-performing, likely-to-succeed-anyway students, but students for whom maybe 10-20% would go to any type of college (vs. KIPP sending 80% to four-year colleges).

 

3) "KIPP is evidently not the solution to the challenges facing urban public education."  Of course KIPP is not THE solution -- there IS no ONE solution!  But is KIPP a powerful model with important lessons for anyone trying to reform schools serving the same demographic of students, and has KIPP had a major impact on the national debate about how best to educate these students and what they're capable of, given high-quality schools and teachers, hard work, high expectations and the right mental attitude?  YOU BET!

 

4) "It would be wonderful to see the vast private funding that's poured into the KIPP schools, which serve just that limited subset, benefiting a larger segment of high-need students."  I think Grannan has set a record for the number of foolish points that can be fit into one sentence -- four by my count:

 

a) The "vast private funding" she refers to is a tiny fraction of the truly vast public funding that's being poured into our inner-city schools -- with mostly widespread, horrifying failure to show for it.

 

b) She's back to the "limited subset" again -- WRONG!

 

c) "benefiting a larger segment of high-need students" -- the two implications here are both wrong:

i) that KIPP does not serve high-need students (90% are minority and 80% qualify for free and reduced lunch -- if these students aren't high-need, which are?!); and

 

ii) that the private money, if poured into regular public schools serving high-need students, would materially benefit them.  To see how unlikely this is, see my post on Newark's catastrophic schools, despite being the highest-spending school district in the country (http://edreform.blogspot.com/2007/04/horrifying-statistics-for-newarks-high.html), my comments on spending at http://edreform.blogspot.com/2007/04/memo-about-school-funding-arguments.html, and my slides on the Spending Myth at: www.tilsonfunds.com/Personal/Spendingmyth.pdf.

One final point: KIPP is losing some students because it refuses to promote them to the next grade until they are proficient at the current grade level, which raises the larger issue: why should any school be promoting any student at to the next grade level if they haven't even learned the basics of the current grade level?!?!?  How dare a school fail to teach, say, a 4th grader to read, yet still pass this child along to the 5th grade.  We see a lot of these students entering KIPP -- children who are academically at the 1st or 2nd grade level (that's the "select subset" for you!) -- and, despite herculean efforts, it's sometimes impossible to get them up to the 5th grade level in one year.

 

It is so obvious that passing failing children along year after year is a massively stupid and immoral thing yet, believe it or not, there is a huge controversy about this.  I kid you not -- there are people who think it's better for kids, when a school fails to educate them, to simply pass them along to the next grade, where they're even further behind.  The result is a HUGE number of students many years below grade level.  Check out the slide at www.tilsonfunds.com/Personal/4thgradereading.pdf -- the single most stunningly horrifying data I've ever seen on this topic: 58% and 54% of black and Latino 4th graders nationwide -- not low-income ones who live in inner cities, but all of them -- are essentially illiterate.  They have trouble reading "see Spot run".  For perspective, my 4th grader (and every one of her classmates and friends) was cranking through 1,000-page Harry Potter books...

 

For more of my thoughts on ending social promotion, see: http://edreform.blogspot.com/2006/09/joel-klein-and-jay-greene-on-social.html