Jay Mathews with a column on the study of KIPP Lynn that I covered in a recent email:

Their students are doing better than regular public school students even though KIPP applicants have somewhat lower test scores than average Lynn students. Also note that KIPP Lynn teachers are much younger than counterparts in the regular school district (88 percent 40 or under compared to 29 percent in the Lynn Public Schools) and much less likely to be licensed in their teaching assignment (26 percent vs. 98 percent.)

The study contains an intriguing response to those who have suggested that KIPP's good results may derive from recruiting above average students and working them so hard that the weakest among them drop out and return to regular public schools. The paper quotes from a 2004 book, "Class and Schools," by Richard Rothstein. KIPP schools he studied "select from the top of the ability distribution those lower-class children with innate intelligence, well-motivated parents, or their own personal drives, and give these children educations they can use to succeed in life," according to the book.

The new KIPP study contends that "KIPP Lynn raises achievement more for weaker students." It looked at the lowest category of scores on the Massachusetts state test, called the warning level, and found that "a year at KIPP Lynn reduces the probability that students perform at the warning level by 10 percentage points for math, with an equal likelihood of reaching the advanced level. For ELA [English Language Arts], the table shows a five percent drop in the warning group. . . It is noteworthy that achievement gains in both subjects come from a shift out of the lowest group."

Some experts have suggested that the weakest of the KIPP students are more likely to leave KIPP schools because of the 9-and-a-half hour days and two hours of nightly homework. That would mean KIPP gains in average test scores are inflated by a growing proportion of strong students among those taking the tests.

The researchers noted the rise in scores of the weakest students as one answer to that argument. Then they looked at the percentage of KIPP Lynn students who do leave the school. "KIPP Lynn lottery winners were much less likely to change schools than those who lost the lottery," the study said.

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KIPP helps worst students, study says

Jay Mathews
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/class-struggle/2010/03/examining_kipp_dropout_theory.html