New Yorker on Charters

Private Money for Public Education

NOTE In April 2011, Matthew McKnight was an intern at The New Republic, writing False Choice: How private school vouchers might harm minority students. In this New Yorker piece, good for him for highlighting Joanne Barkan's article. More questionable is his casual conclusion that KIPP produces "admirable results." This is still an open question.

by Matthew McKnight

For all the contention brought about by the O.W.S. protests, most observers and commenters agree that the movement’s one success has been to shift the national conversation—inasmuch as there is one—to words like “poverty” and "inequality." Still, since the early occupations, calls for the protesters to give specifics to underline their shouting have resounded. And in the months of occupation, the financial and political structures that created and support such drastic inequality have been widely reported on and scrutinized.

One, though—the privatization of public education, in the name of reform—has received less attention. On Monday, the Walton Family Foundation announced its plan to donate twenty-five and a half million dollars to the Knowledge is Power Program (K.I.P.P.), a national network of charter schools that many believe to be among the best in the nation. Surely, a lot of good can come from that amount of money. With its latest grant, the W.F.F. aims to "double the number of students attending K.I.P.P. public charter schools," reaching fifty-nine thousand students by 2015. More broadly, the foundation, according to its press release, seeks to help K.I.P.P. "transform public education in our nation."

But what is the nature of that transformation? In its Winter 2011 issue, Dissent magazine published an in-depth look into the control that three prominent foundations (Bill and Melinda Gates, Eli and Edythe Broad, and the Walton Family) exert over the substance, direction, and quality of education "reform."

In that article, Joanne Barkan writes:

Whatever nuances differentiate the motivations of the Big Three, their market-based goals for overhauling public education coincide: choice, competition, deregulation, accountability, and data-based decision-making. And they fund the same vehicles to achieve their goals: charter schools, high-stakes standardized testing for students, merit pay for teachers whose students improve their test scores, firing teachers and closing schools when scores don’t rise adequately, and longitudinal data collection on the performance of every student and teacher.

The education-reform methodology that Barkan describes can be seen in major school districts throughout the country, including New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. She concludes:
"The imperious overreaching of the Big Three undermines democracy just as surely as it damages public education.' As many school districts—and members of Congress--push to privatize public education, the money and foundations behind such crusades often gain considerable control and face little backlash if their plans fail.

More to the point, though, poverty poses difficult challenges for education in America, and as poverty figures grow, those challenges stand only to grow more complex. One wonders: Who are the nearly thirty thousand students that K.I.P.P and the Walton Family Foundation hope to attract? Already, nearly eighty per cent of students populating K.I.P.P. schools qualify for free- and reduced-price lunch (the education reform movement's euphemism for “poor”). A study conducted by Gary Miron, a professor at Western Michigan University, says that thirty per cent of K.I.P.P. students and forty per cent of its black male students leave the schools between grades six and eight. The study continues:

The departure of low-performing students helps K.I.P.P. improve its aggregate results. Unlike local school districts, K.I.P.P. is not replacing the students who are leaving. When a student returns to a traditional public school after the autumn head count, K.I.P.P. retains all or most of the money -- allocated for educating that student during that school year.

K.I.P.P. responded with its own pair of studies to rebut those findings: "Our impact estimates reflect the effect of ever having enrolled at K.I.P.P., even if a student subsequently withdraws" and "if struggling students who leave K.I.P.P. are replaced by incoming struggling students from other schools -- there will be no selection effects arising from attrition/retention." At the same time, the schools tend to admit fewer "late-entry" students than those who leave before graduating. The studies, commissioned by K.I.P.P. did not, however, respond to the claim that K.I.P.P. retains funds after a student leaves the school network.

Looking at charter schools in general, it is far from certain whether or not charters perform better than public schools. Studies by Stanford University (2009) and the Institute of Education Sciences (2010) have yielded mixed results when comparing the two. But, even such a comparison is too myopic. The better question: Why do some schools—or types of schools—perform better than others? Foundation grants—however much they might help one, or a particular set of schools—are neither sustainable nor scalable enough to address the growing inequalities in education.

So, at the very least, it's worth asking if, in doubling its student population in roughly three years (the network was founded in 1994), K.I.P.P. is biting off more than it can chew. But the dollars from the Walton Family Foundation don't only enable K.I.P.P.; they also contribute to the notion that private institutions--schools, hospitals, banks—universally perform better than public ones, an idea that feeds rhetoric and policies, but may ultimately make it more difficult for generations to climb out of poverty.

Update: K.I.P.P.'s public affairs director, Steve Mancini, points out that, based on a survey of all hundred and nine K.I.P.P. schools conducted yesterday, eighty per cent "lose funding immediately for students who leave during the school year," while the others only count students once a year and "would keep funding if students leave during the school year."

Second, K.I.P.P. schools receive public funds just as traditional neighborhood schools do and should not be considered to be "private schools." K.I.P.P. schools also receive philanthropic donations, and often in large sums, that help to fund professional development programs, building costs, and teachers’ salaries.

The broader issue, though, is that however well the K.I.P.P. model works--and they do produce admirable results--economic inequality reverberates through the American educational system. There are many more children in America who are unable to attend K.I.P.P. or other charter schools. The Walton Family Foundation donation aims to increase capacity, which may end up being wonderful for future K.I.P.P. students. But what is America to do with the other children?

— Matthew McKnight
New Yorker online blog
2011-11-17
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/11/private-money-for-public-education.html#ixzz1eRbbLKhR

Questions on KIPP Study

From Leonie:

Unfortunately, this report is not online yet; whether it was KIPP or Mathematica who leaked it in advance to the WaPost and Houston Chronicle before people could read it for themselves seems to me to be a rather questionable practice.

Excerpt from WaPost article: “By seventh grade, half of the KIPP schools studied showed growth in math scores equal to an additional 1.2 years of school.”

What about the other half? This is a weird way to present results.

But attrition rates at the KIPP schools, measuring the portion of students who failed to complete four years at the schools, varied widely. In a third of the schools studied, attrition was significantly higher than in other local public schools…

Did this third of schools overlap with the schools that hadbetter results?

In the Houston Chronicle story http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7067226.html the authors say:

"What we're finding is results that are positive," said Brian Gill, a senior social scientist with Mathematica Policy Research Inc., a Princeton, N.J.-based nonprofit research group. "They're statistically significant in most cases, and they're educationally big."

Statistically significant in most cases?

…. Researchers concede that KIPP schools enroll fewer special education students and non-English speakers. They also note that more lower-performing students end up withdrawing from KIPP.

"It is true that the ones who leave are lower achieving than average, but that tends to be true of kids leaving any school," Gill said. "Kids who are highly mobile tend to be lower performers."

Interesting way to report the push-out problem.

However, an initial analysis of the report by Professor Gary Miron of Western Michigan University concludes that this initial study report misrepresents the attrition data.

According to Miron, "While it may be true that attrition rates for KIPP schools and surrounding districts are similar, there is a big difference: KIPP does not generally fill empty places with the weaker students who are moving from school to school. Traditional public schools must receive all students who wish to attend, so the lower-performing students leaving KIPP schools receive a place in those schools."

In contrast, Miron explains, "The lower performing, transient students coming from traditional public schools are not given a place in KIPP, since those schools generally only take students in during the initial intake grade, whether this be 5^th or 6^th grade."….

Professor Miron conducted his own quick analysis, using the Common Core database, and concluded that there is a 19% drop in enrollment in KIPP schools between grades 6 and 7 and a 24% drop in enrollment between grades 7 and 8. (This analysis only included KIPP schools that had enrollments in all three grades). In comparison, traditional public schools in these grades maintain the same enrollment from year to year.

In addition, the study shows, KIPP does enroll fewer sped and ELL students.

I also have seen no response so far to the argument that much of the gains are due to peer effects; which in turn relies upon the ability of KIPP to weed out low-performing or poorly behaved students.

Report finds KIPP students outscore public school peers

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/22/AR2010062200009.html?wprss=rss_education

By Bill Turque

Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Middle school students in the Knowledge Is Power Program, a charter school network with a major footprint in the District and other cities, significantly outperform their public school peers on reading and math tests, according to a new study.

But the report, from Mathematica Policy Research, to be made public Tuesday, is unlikely to resolve debate over what is behind the network's success. Skeptics say that the program benefits from highly motivated parents seeking alternatives to ineffective public schools and that KIPP often winnows out students who don't fit its program.

The study, which KIPP commissioned, comes as the Obama administration is promoting the spread of strong charter schools as a strategy to improve urban education.

Founded in Houston in 1994 by two young alumni of Teach for America, KIPP has grown into a national network of 82 schools -- including seven in the District -- that serve children from low-income backgrounds. KIPP students put in a longer day than most of their public school counterparts, attending class from 7:30 a.m. until 5 p.m. on weekdays. Many are also in class every other Saturday and for three weeks over the summer. A rigorous incentive system penalizes students for poor behavior and missed assignments. "Work hard, be nice" is the credo.

KIPP schools routinely outscore many that serve middle-class students. Its three middle schools in the District -- KEY, WILL and AIM academies, with a combined enrollment of 960 -- are among the city's highest-performing on the DC-CAS standardized tests.

Mathematica studied 22 KIPP middle schools, including AIM and KEY, comparing test scores of charter students to scores of selected students in regular public schools who matched their academic and demographic backgrounds. Researchers examined test data starting in third grade. KIPP middle schools begin in fifth.

By seventh grade, half of the KIPP schools studied showed growth in math scores equal to an additional 1.2 years of school. Reading gains for KIPP were not as dramatic but still significant, the researchers reported, reflecting an additional three-quarters of a year of growth.

Mathematica said it found no evidence that KIPP schools were systematically drawing students with more economic advantages from surrounding school systems. But attrition rates at the KIPP schools, measuring the portion of students who failed to complete four years at the schools, varied widely. In a third of the schools studied, attrition was significantly higher than in other local public schools. In another third of the KIPP schools, the rate was lower. Skeptics say that students who can't function in the rigorous school culture are often pushed out -- a claim that KIPP rejects.

Richard Barth, chief executive of the KIPP Foundation, called the study "powerful affirmation" of the program's approach.

"It is really reassuring to us and our parents and teachers that the hard work pays off," said Susan Schaeffler, executive director of KIPP schools in the District. "But there's nothing in here that would surprise my teachers. They are on the front lines doing the hard work every day."

In subsequent studies, researchers plan to examine 50 KIPP schools and drill further into the question of parental influence on achievement. Future studies also will compare students who won KIPP admission by random lottery with those who sought admission but did not win.

In addition, Mathematica is completing a study for the U.S. Education Department of 40 charter schools in 16 states that use lotteries to determine admission. Results are expected this summer.

Paul Moore Comments on Jay Mathews KIPP Love: He's Got It Bad

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/28/AR2009062802327.html

Looks like poor Jay Mathews will be the one to turn out the lights on the failed corporate effort to destroy the public schools. Sad to see a learned man cling to conceptions so thoroughly discredited by real life.

The Business Roundtable, which led the attack on public education is now deeply enmeshed in an existential struggle to save itself and the global economy. The CEO's have turned their public schools campaign over to the US government and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. Duncan soldiers on with the corporate catechism. Charter schools are good, public school teachers are bad. He won't be able to do it but Duncan wants to use billions of the taxpayer's money to close inner-city public schools and make sure the bad teachers who work in them finally get their comeuppance.

But Duncan will fail just as the Business Roundtable, Gates, Broad, and the Waltons have failed because these forces have tried to hold back the tide of history. Ultimately, teachers will takeover the nation's public schools and dictate educational policy in the US. Those teachers will have to work through faux-unions like the WTU where figurehead George Parker simply carries out policies handed down by labor aristocrats like Randi Weingarten. But teachers will achieve that in time.

Ironically, when the teachers do run the schools, the "bad teachers" will be gone soon thereafter along with the standarized tests bad teachers love so. Their lips will have to be detached from administrators backsides across the country. The worst teachers love standardized testing and mindless data collection, they crave to be told what to do minute-by-minute in the classroom, they beg for rules to follow and rules to enforce. The worst teachers seek refuge from the classroom in administration. The worst teachers have a missionary mindset and spend a couple of years in an inner-city charter school like KIPP Ujima Village before they get on with their lives work.

The best teachers are in the classroom and in th eir unions by choice. They care for their students and want them to learn skills that will serve them in the real world, not useless test taking skills. They care for their fellow teachers and their own families and want good things for them. Concern for all the children causes good teachers to guide them away from becoming cannon fodder in wars for oil in Iraq or Afghanistan. Concern for all the children compels good teachers to guide them away from competition with Chinese children and Indian children and other children of the world to see who can work for less in sweatshops and farm fields. And good teachers do not lie to the children about success and a wonderful job in a failed global economy if they will just do well on some meaningless test. Good teachers do not lie to them, like they are lied to everyday now!

Slate: What the Knowledge Is Power Program has yet to prove.

Slate Magazine
books
The Educational Experiment We Really Need
What the Knowledge Is Power Program has yet to prove.
By Sara Mosle
Updated Monday, March 23, 2009, at 6:58 AM ET

In his new book, Work Hard. Be Nice., Jay Mathews claims that the Knowledge Is Power Program is the "best" program serving severely disadvantaged, minority-group students in America today. Let me begin—before I'm denounced as a traitor to the cause of educational reform—by saying that I'm inclined to agree. The improbable story of how KIPP was founded in 1994 by David Levin and Michael Feinberg, two young Teach for America alumni in Houston, is thrilling and worthy reading. KIPP's mission has been akin to putting the first man on the moon: an all-out education race, requiring extraordinary, round-the-clock dedication from parents, students, and teachers alike. But the program is not the proven, replicable model for eliminating the achievement gap in the inner city that Mathews imagines, and this distinction is crucial. KIPP may be something more important: a unique chance to test, once and for all, the alluring but suspect notion that there actually is an educational panacea for social inequality. As of yet, the evidence for such a thing doesn't exist.

There have always been model school programs that work. There have even been some that have been successfully replicated in different parts of the country. But no program has shown it can work for all, or even most, disadvantaged children within a single city or neighborhood. Instead, as critics point out, such model programs tend to skim off those kids who are already better positioned (thanks to better home environments, greater natural gifts, savvier or better-educated parents, etc.) to escape the ghetto. Meanwhile, regular public schools are left with a more distilled population of struggling students. Similarly, model programs tend to attract young, talented, and adventurous teachers, who are willing or able to work long hours for low pay. (Model schools also tend to attract the most philanthropic dollars, which effectively boost per-pupil expenditures, even as such programs can still brag they use no more tax dollars than traditional public schools.) Indeed, Mathews likens KIPP to a cult "without the dues or the weird robes." But by definition, a cult is a fringe movement. To date, no one—including such mighty players as the Gates Foundation—has figured out how to take an educational cult and make it the predominant religion within any urban system.

Mathews insists that KIPP has solved this riddle. It's true that perhaps no other model program has risen so far so fast, with such consistently strong test scores. KIPP now has 66 academies in 19 states. Still, 66 academies amount to just three schools, on average, per state. Houston has far and away the highest concentration with, currently, seven middle schools, three elementary schools, and one high school. But this is in a school system with 200,000 students, nearly 80 percent of whom qualify for reduced or free lunches. At the moment, like every other model program before it, KIPP serves only a tiny fraction of disadvantaged students within any given district. And as education researcher Richard Rothstein has rightly noted, comparing students from different schools, even within the same disadvantaged neighborhoods, is very difficult to do in a rigorous, scientific way. Just because KIPP uses a lottery for admissions, for example, does not tell us anything about the self-selecting nature of the pool from which this lottery is drawn. (Rothstein's own research—here and here—has shown that KIPP students come from families that are better off, or better educated, than their regular public school or special-education counterparts.)

What is more, KIPP's approach is implicitly, but obviously, not designed to suit all students—or, for that matter, all parents or teachers. For decades, educators argued that disadvantaged children could succeed if only they received the same education as more advantaged, middle-class students. Many, if not most, of the nation's best public and private schools are decidedly progressive, with less emphasis on test scores and more on critical thinking skills, with rich arts, music, sports, and other extracurricular programs. Why shouldn't poorer children enjoy the same?

But KIPP is not the same. The program has usefully changed the debate by acknowledging the obvious: Kids who grow up poor, with no books or with functionally illiterate parents, in crime-ridden neighborhoods, with destructive peer influences and without access to basic medical care (such as glasses to help them read), need something significantly more than—and different from—kids who grow up with every economic and educational advantage on which to build. For one, the academic program at KIPP is relentless in its back-to-basics focus: a boot camp that runs nearly 10 hours a day, from 7:30 a.m. until 5 p.m., not including transportation and homework, and half a day every other Saturday.

There is a lot of rote learning and test prep, born of the program's emphasis on demonstrable results. Enrichment programs exist (one Bronx school has a remarkable orchestra) but are necessarily limited, because precious time must also be devoted to teaching social skills that middle-class students take for granted—for example, how to follow a speaker with one's eyes and nod as one takes in information. In addition, KIPP includes an extended summer school. (Research has shown that middle-class students consolidate and even improve on their educational gains during the summer months, while underprivileged students slip backward, negating their progress during the academic year.)

As a result, KIPP teachers typically work 65-hour weeks and a longer school year. Recognizing that students need more out-of-school aid to supplement their educations, the program also requires its staff to be available to students by phone after hours for homework help and moral support. For this overtime (which represents 60 percent more time in the classroom alone, on average, than in regular public schools), teachers receive just 20 percent more pay. Unsurprisingly, turnover is high. The program has relied heavily on the ever-renewing supply of very young (and thus less expensive) Teach for America alums, whose numbers, while growing, are decidedly finite. Indeed, it's unclear whether KIPP would exist were it not for TFA (and its own philanthropic investment in recruitment and training, which has not come cheap).

For example, many of KIPP's now-lauded approaches were first developed not by Levin and Feinberg but by a career public-school teacher in Houston whose methods they admired back when they were TFAers. Levin and Feinberg tried to recruit their mentor to help launch KIPP, but as a middle-aged single mother, she felt she couldn't afford to join their revolution. If KIPP's success is ever to become widespread, it's going to have to find more room for such everyday heroes, who are not less talented than eager, young TFAers but who do have lives, families, and financial needs outside their jobs.

Parents or guardians, too, must be hardy souls at KIPP. They have to sign a contract saying they agree to KIPP's exacting schedule, which serves, intentionally or not, to eliminate kids from less involved or determined families. While KIPP does have outreach efforts to broaden its applicant pool, only the most determined parents are likely to respond to such overtures and sign KIPP's demanding contract. This dedication suggests a higher value on education within these families, and thus kids better able or willing to learn. And the weakest students, not surprisingly, get disproportionately winnowed. In KIPP's schools in the San Francisco Bay Area, for example, the worst-performing kids have dropped out (or been expelled) in greater numbers in the higher grades; the result has been to inflate the schools' grade-to-grade improvement.

Such a regimen isn't for everyone, but KIPP has shown that with the right underprivileged population, it can make a significant, consistent difference—which is a lot more than most charter programs can say. (A 2006 report by the Education Department—i.e., under a Republican administration—revealed that traditional public schools significantly outperform charter programs in reading and math.) Far from finding the boot-camp atmosphere dispiriting, kids—at least, those who stay—clearly adore KIPP. This may be the program's singular accomplishment: It's made "back to basics" fun. However, even Mathews, the KIPP champion, describes an approach to discipline that sometimes seems unduly harsh; in less expert hands, such an approach could easily deteriorate into something more disturbing, and if implemented on a wide scale, might well turn off as many students and parents as it helps. Finally, even with such gargantuan efforts, KIPP helps to close, but does not remotely eliminate, the achievement gap in the inner city. It is not the answer to urban ills that Mathews proposes.

But because KIPP has done so much better than so many other charter programs, it has earned the right to shoot not only for the moon but beyond. Given this, what mystifies me about KIPP is that it has scattered its resources across the country—opening just a few schools in any one state—instead of trying to concentrate its resources more fully in one community.

No doubt the strategy partly reflects practical hurdles. States may limit the number of charter programs (although this may change if President Obama gets his way with his new education plan). In addition, there may be union or administrative opposition, although until recently, KIPP and the teachers unions had peacefully coexisted. (Now, a dispute between one KIPP school in Brooklyn and New York's United Federation of Teachers threatens this détente.)

But since the biggest debate about KIPP, on both the ideological left and right, is whether or not its methods can work for all disadvantaged children (instead of just a handful of self-selecting families), why wouldn't it—and its financial, ideological, and media backers—have a strong interest in answering this question once and for all by taking on an entire urban area or even, for that matter, a single neighborhood as, say, Geoffrey Canada has tried to do in Harlem with his Harlem's Children's Zone?

There's something perversely evasive about KIPP's opening up just one school in Dallas, one school in Albany, N.Y., one school in Oakland, Calif., one school in Charlotte, N.C., one school in Nashville, Tenn., and so on—as if the program recognizes that its best chance at success is to be the exception rather than the rule in any city where it operates. Perhaps this approach made sense in the program's early years, when it needed to build credibility and attract financing. But now it has done both. Until KIPP tries to succeed within an entire, single community, it is, for all its remarkable rise and deserved praise, just another model program that has yet to prove it can succeed with all—or even most—disadvantaged children.
Sara Mosle, a former member of Teach for America in Upper Manhattan, writes frequently about educational issues and is finishing a book on the London Consolidated School explosion, which killed hundreds of children in the East Texas oil field in 1937.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2214253/

Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

Another Perspective on KIPP:

UPDATE: See alternative view of KIPP from a teacher in comment #1.

This email is from St. Louis.

---

Another Perspective on KIPP:

An Interview with Educator and Activist Peter Campbell

Over the past week, I have had several public school teachers in my classes ask me questions about KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program). I, like them, am faced with the media barrage celebrating the arrival of KIPP to St. Louis. On 2/3/08, The St. Louis Post Dispatch ran a story called "Corporate Leaders Welcome KIPP" written by David Hunn. The story, like much of the information that has been circulated, was one-sided in its praise of KIPP. Wanting to find answers to their questions that dig a little deeper than the flashy cover page stories, I brought their questions to Peter Campbell, educator and activist who has conducted extensive research on KIPP.

Rebecca Rogers: What is the background/history of KIPP?

Peter Campbell: Here's the official story:

"KIPP began in 1994 when two teachers, Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin, launched a fifth grade public school program in inner-city Houston, TX, after completing their commitment to Teach For America. In 1995, Feinberg remained in Houston to lead KIPP Academy Middle School, and Levin returned home to New York City to establish KIPP Academy in the South Bronx."

"In 2000, Doris and Donald Fisher, co-founders of Gap, Inc., formed a unique partnership with Feinberg and Levin to replicate the success of the two original KIPP Academies across the country through the non-profit KIPP Foundation. The KIPP Foundation focuses its efforts on recruiting, training, and supporting outstanding teachers to open new, locally-run KIPP schools in high-need communities."

"There are currently 57 KIPP public schools in 17 states and the District of Columbia enrolling more than 14,000 students. Across the KIPP network, 55 of the existing 57 schools are charter schools. The majority of KIPP schools, 48 of 57, are middle schools designed to serve fifth through eighth grade students. The remaining nine are five high schools, three pre-kindergarten/elementary schools, and one pre-kindergarten through eighth grade school."

"Over 90 percent of KIPP students are African American or Hispanic/Latino, and more than 80 percent of KIPP students are eligible for the federal free and reduced-price meals program. Students are accepted regardless of prior academic record, conduct, or socioeconomic background."

source - http://www.kipp.org/01/

My take on the KIPP origin story:

The story of the two bright, highly-educated, white male crusaders who went out of their ways to save poor minority children from the ravages of the failed system of public education too closely resembles tales of white missionaries, explorers, and anthropologists not to be noticeable. In darkest Africa at the turn of the twentieth century, white men descended into the jungles to convert, trade with, and study the savages they encountered. Implicit within all their encounters was the unquestioned axiom that defined these exchanges: the white people were civilized, the black people were uncivilized; the white people were advanced, the black people were behind. To this day, "Third World Debtor Nations" are looked down upon as drains upon the world economy, as incompetent at managing their own affairs, and in need of a good lesson or two.

The KIPP origin story is told with a great deal of pride, that the two young crusaders (both from Ivy League schools) displayed enormous courage and commitment to turn things around to produce "schools that work." I'm reminded of Kenneth Saltman's point from his book _The Edison Schools_:

"The two questions most asked about Edison by liberals and conservatives are whether it works to raise test scores and whether it works financially to decrease costs. Asking whether or not something "works" brackets out of consideration the broader goals, purposes, and underlying assumptions about what something works to do. The focus on test performance and finances has thoroughly eclipsed discussion of whether Edison facilitates democratic education and a democratic society. If one assumes that the democratic potential of public schools should be at the forefront of debate, then the question of whether or not Edison "works" may be the wrong way to approach the company and public schooling more generally." (p. 68)

So what do KIPP schools work at doing? What do they accomplish? What do they produce? Or, more precisely, who do they produce and by what means? And at what cost?

Foucault's chapter on discipline in Discipline and Punish keeps coming to mind, "the body as object and target of power" and the notion of "docile bodies" that are "subjected, used, transformed, and improved."

These docile bodies in KIPP schools are uniformly brown and black. No white body is subjected to this same kind of disciplined transformation. Indeed, the school motto is "Be nice, work hard." What white, suburban, middle-class parents would want this to be the goal of their child's education? It may be worthwhile to some to "tame the savages" and turn them into productive members of white-dominated society. But I worry about the costs of such "improvements."

Rebecca: Where does the money come from for KIPP?

Peter:

KIPP Foundation - http://www.kipp.org/01/whatisthekippfound.cfm

National partners - http://www.kipp.org/06/ourpartners.cfm

includes the Gates Foundation, Broad Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation

Rebecca: Many sources are reporting that KIPP schools individualize instruction to make sure that every child succeeds. How do they do this?

Peter: I've heard anecdotally that KIPP does this. But since a KIPP student spends about 70% more time in class than his/her regular school counterpart, it would only make sense that they would get more attention. I have not come across any hard evidence that shows that KIPP schools individualize instruction. But I could be wrong on this.

In addition, many of the opportunities for inclusion in extra-curricular activities is based not on student interest but on student behavior. "(KIPP co-founders) Feinberg and Levin say they want discipline, attention and steady, measurable progress that supplants the distractions of their students' homes and neighborhoods. Their secret is what they call 'the joy factor': excursions in Central Park, games, songs, trips to Disney World or Los Angeles, and music. The 180-piece orchestra at KIPP New York gives bewildered and frustrated preteens an incentive to go to school each morning. They must earn the right to play by being nice and working hard. . . At the end of each week, students receive up to $40 in virtual cash that can be redeemed for snacks and other favors at the student store, and also count toward day excursions like the trip to Central Park or what KIPP calls year-end 'field lessons' to Washington, D.C., California, New England, Utah, Florida or Tennessee. " (source - Washington Post, August 24, 2004)

Yes, KIPP might offer a trip to Central Park as a reward for good behavior, but middle-class white parents such as me cringe at the idea that our children would be taken on field trips only as a reward for good behavior. Middle-class whites assume that it is the duty of schools to provide our children with a high-quality education and that every child, regardless of whether he or she is deemed "good" or "bad," has a right to such an education. Student behavior might influence the kinds of options that white middle-class children are exposed to, but good or bad behavior is not the sole determinant of these options.

Why, then, should poor black and Hispanic parents not have the same assumptions? Why should poor black and Hispanic students not have the same rights and the same options? Ultimately, it appears that approved behavior is the key to success at KIPP. I can think of no middle-class white school that makes this kind of bargain with its students except for military academies.

Rebecca: How is KIPP different from/similar to other charters schools that exist in St. Louis?

Peter: KIPP makes heavy use of public shaming as a discipline tactic.

"Students must walk in quiet, single-file lines at all times. There is a contract for each student – a document signed by parent, principal and child attesting to their commitment to education. All KIPP kids learn chants and hand signals that teachers use for everything from teaching multiplication tables to getting them to recite their college ambitions....school hallways are decorated with posters bearing KIPP slogans such as 'There are No Shortcuts'....KIPPsters everywhere earn or lose weekly ‘paychecks' that can be spent in the student store. Miscreants are placed on the bench, must wear signs around their neck that say ‘BENCH,' eat at a quiet table and write letters of apology to each student before explaining to the class how they will change their behavior." (source - San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 29, 2003)

"(S)ending (students) to the principal's office or sending them on suspensions is what we don't want to do. So in its place, we've come up with the idea of the bench in terms of not being on the team. And on the bench what we've taken away is the social aspect which the kids at the middle school level so crave. So they're still in the classroom, they're still learning but they have to sit apart from their teammates and the only one they can talk to in that classroom is the teacher. They can't talk to their friends and their friends can't talk to them. So it applies not just to the classroom but the entire school day so when they go eat lunch, they have to sit at a separate table. Once again, they can't eat with their friends, they have to eat either in silence or they can work on their homework and reading when they're at the table. Then over the weekend, if they're on the bench, they have to do some deep reflection on the bad choices they made to go to the bench because that means they either weren't doing their work, or they weren't being nice and respectful to their teammates, they have to write letters of apology to their teammates explaining what they did wrong and what they're going to do the next week to get off the bench and contribute to the team again." - Mike Feinberg, co-founder of KIPP (source - http://www.pbs.org/makingschoolswork/sbs/kipp/feinberg.html)

Rebecca: Will KIPP take money away from public education?

Peter: Yes and no.

Yes - KIPP schools are public schools, so local, state, and federal funds are spent on these schools to organize them, market them, and run them; because of the work of its foundation and its ties to the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation, as well as to Teach for America, KIPP schools also attract lots of private funding, dollars that might otherwise be spent on regular public schools

No - most KIPP schools are charter schools, and charters typically are not funded by local education associations at the same level as their regular public school counter-parts

Rebecca: What does the curriculum look like at KIPP?

Peter: From what I've read, the curriculum of each school is designed by the principal; this is one of the few things I admire about KIPP, i.e., there is no one-size-fits-all, top-down instructional program that has to be implemented at every school in the same way; this, however, might be different now as KIPP grows and tries to replicate its "success"

Rebecca: Can teachers join a union if they work at a KIPP school?

Peter: Yes, they can. There is nothing preventing them from organizing. But, because most KIPP teachers come from TFA and have no prior experience in teaching or being a member of a union, they see no need to organize. And, since being a KIPP teacher is all about working 12 to 15 hours a day and on Saturday, who among them would raise work issues? If you join KIPP, you drink the Kool-Aid (so to speak).

Rebecca: What are the success rates with other KIPP schools?

Peter: KIPP will tell you this: "Since their founding, the original KIPP Academies have sustained track records of high student achievement. While fewer than one in five low-income students typically attend college nationally, KIPP's college matriculation rate stands at nearly 80 percent for students who complete the eighth grade at KIPP. In addition, KIPP alumni have earned over $12 million in college scholarships."

Here's why this is misleading: 80% of those that make it through KIPP go on to college. But how many make it through KIPP?

There were nine KIPP schools in California as of the 2005-2006 school year. Six of the nine schools saw decreases in enrollment as their 5th grade kids moved up from the 5th grade to the 7th grade (the 8th grade at one school).

* KIPP Academy Fresno went from 60 to 48 kids from 5th to 6th grade, a 20% decrease in enrollment.

* KIPP San Francisco Bay Academy in San Francisco went from 73 to 56 kids from 5th to 7th grade, a 23% decrease in enrollment.

* KIPP Academy of Opportunity in LA went from 88 to 66 kids from 5th to 7th grade, a 25% decrease in enrollment.

* KIPP Bayview Academy in San Francisco went from 81 to 55 kids from 5th to 7th grade, a 32% decrease in enrollment.

* KIPP Los Angeles College Preparatory in LA went from 88 to 57 kids from 5th to 7th grade, a 35% decrease in enrollment.

* KIPP Bridge College Preparatory in Oakland went from 87 to 36 kids from 5th to 8th grade, a whopping 59% decrease in enrollment.

These decreases in enrollment were especially noticeable for African-American boys at four of these schools. Enrollment of African-American boys went from 35 to 23 at KIPP Academy of Opportunity in LA, a 34% decrease in enrollment; 19 to 10 at KIPP Academy Fresno, a 47% decrease in enrollment; 24 to 12 at KIPP Bayview Academy in San Francisco, a 50% decrease in enrollment; and 35 to 8 at KIPP Bridge College Preparatory in Oakland, an extraordinary 77% decrease in enrollment.

Drop-outs, or at least transients, are a common phenomenon in low-income schools, even good ones. So these numbers would not be surprising if they were associated with your average public school. But KIPP is not your average public school. Many supporters of KIPP see it as the answer to the problems that vex inner-city schools. But it seems, at least from what we can tell from the California enrollment data, that even KIPP cannot solve the drop-out/transient problem.

But then you start to wonder: is KIPP causing this high drop-out rate? If it's not causing kids to drop out, then there might certainly be a correlation between KIPP's "unique approach to educating low-income kids" and the fact that so many of them, at least in California, don't make it out of KIPP.

Consider what we know about KIPP:

* KIPP students are required to go to school Monday to Friday from 7:30 in the morning until 5 in the afternoon.

* They go to school on Saturday from 9 in the morning until 1 in the afternoon.

* They are required to complete two hours of homework every night.

* They are required to attend an extra month of school in the summer.

* They are required to wear a uniform.

KIPP students are subject to a strict code of discipline that punishes offenders by forcing them to wear a sign around their neck that says "bench" or, according to one source, "miscreant." So it seems reasonable to ask this question: is KIPP contributing to this drop-out/transient problem? I doubt rather seriously that anyone at KIPP wants any of their students to drop out. But declining enrollments actually benefit KIPP by making their achievement data look better than it might actually be.

Now it gets even more complicated. According to a recent SRI report, Bay Area KIPP schools in California are attracting already high-performing students from local schools. Some KIPP principals expressed concern about "creaming" these already high-performing students from other schools when there remains a large number who are low-performing and underserved. One principal expressed dismay with the school's struggle to enroll Title I students, whom she considered to be her target population. (see p. 18 of the report)

So it seems reasonable to ask this other question: how much is KIPP actually contributing to the achievement of these already high-performing students? As class numbers decrease, the performance of these high-achievers shines brighter and brighter. Supporters claim this is due to KIPP's unique approach. They might be right, but not for the reasons they suspect. It might be possible that KIPP's unique approach forces enough of the low-achievers out to make the achievement of those that remain seem better than it really is.

For example, let's say there were 5 students taking a test. The scores (out of 100 possible points) were as follows: 45, 47, 52, 98, 99. The average of these five scores is 68.2 So you could truthfully and accurately say, "Student scores were near the 70th percentile." But how many students scored a 70? None. If you look at the scores, 3 out of the 5 did really badly. But 2 of the 5 did really, really well. The result? It looks like great things are happening when, in fact, they are not.

This is especially relevant to the issue I mention above, i.e., the ever-shrinking number of kids at KIPP as they move from 5th to 8th grade. For example, let's say there are 20 kids at KIPP in the 5th grade. Two of the kids score really high - 98 and 99 out of 100. But the other 18 score either 47, 45, or 52. This results in an average of 51.5. The next year, in the 6th grade, there are only 15 kids left -- 5 dropped out, were "counseled out," or simply are no longer there. Same scenario: two of the kids score really high - 98 and 99 out of 100. But the other 13 score either 47, 45, or 52. But this results in a slightly higher average of 53.4. In the 7th grade, only 8 kids are left. Same scenario: two of the kids score really high - 98 and 99 out of 100. But the other 6 score either 47, 45, or 52. But this results in yet another higher average: 59.75. And by the time they reach 8th grade, there are 5 kids left. Now the 2 high scorers really skew the average, all the way up to 68.2. But the other 3 are still scoring 47,45, and 52.

What's going on here? KIPP is getting statistically better because more kids are dropping out. So should we blame KIPP for pushing them out or praise them for raising the scores of the two that remain?

KIPP needs to come clean and reveal what actually happens to its enrollments and whether or not the scores are skewed by a small number of high achievers.

In part 1 of a Hedrick Smith piece on KIPP, a Latino boy named Ray, a 16-year-old 8th grader enrolled in KIPP 3D Academy in Houston, talks about his first experience at KIPP.

At 3 minutes, 14 seconds into this video segment, (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAKBnR-QSls) there is a glimpse into how KIPP achieves its results.

Here's the transcript:

Hedrick Smith (voiceover) - At the start of school, Ray had his first confrontation with 3D Academy's principal, Dan Caesar.

Ray: We were going over our chants, and -- just being myself, still trying to figure out how this school works and everything . . .

Dan Caesar - We say, "Is 3D in the house?!?!" and all the kids raise up their hands and say, "YES!" and Reynaldo raised up his hands and said "NO!"

Ray: I waved my hand. I said, "No." And then he looked at me and he said it a second time. And I said "No" again.

Dan Caesar - I knew right then, "Here's the first test, the first person testing our culture." So I let him know in front of everybody in the room that that's not going to be tolerated. We all want to be here. We chose to be here. If you don't want to be here, find the door.

So much for KIPP's motto, "No excuses."

Rebecca: Where should people go if they want to learn more about KIPP schools?

Peter: I have most of this stuff on my blog. Go to http://transformeducation.blogspot.com and enter "KIPP" in the search box.

Peter Campbell is an activist, educator, and parent. He volunteered as the Missouri State Coordinator for the Assessment Reform Network, part of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing (better known as FairTest). Peter holds a BA from Princeton University and an MA from New York University. He has been involved in education for 20 years and has taught a number of different subjects in different academic settings, ranging from English as a Second Language at a Japanese high school in Tokyo to compositional writing at the University of Missouri-Columbia to public speaking at Manhattan Community College in New York City. In the area of assessment, Peter worked for the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory in the Assessment and Evaluation division. Currently, Peter is the Lead Instructional Designer for the Office of Information Technology at Montclair State University, the second largest public institution of higher education in New Jersey. In this role at MSU, Peter leads workshops on assessment and helps instructors use technology to enhance teaching and learning.

Rebecca Rogers is an associate professor of literacy education in the College of Education at the University of Missouri St. Louis. She routinely teaches courses on literacy assessment and literacy instruction for teachers. She has written several books including: Critical Literacy/Critical Teaching: Tools for Preparing Responsive Teachers (with P. Johnston & C. Dozier, Teachers College Press, 2005), Adult Education Teachers Designing Critical Literacy Practices (w/ M.A. Kramer, Routledge, 2007), A Critical Discourse Analysis of Family Literacy Practices (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2003). She is co-founder of a grassroots professional development group, located in St. Louis, called The Literacy for Social Justice Teacher Group.