New studies have shown that KIPP Charter Schools have two distinct advantages over public schools. They have received more federal funding in addition to high levels of private money, and they have a 30 percent drop out rate between grades 6 and 8.
From NPR:
KIPP Charter Schools Have Funding Edge, Study SaysOne of America's most successful charter-school networks receives more government money than it has previously admitted — and it's also not as successful as it has stated, according to a new study.
Researchers say that schools in the Knowledge Is Power Program have a much higher attrition rate than in the school systems from which they draw their students — especially among African-American children.
The NPR site links to the New York Times on the subject of the funding.
Study Says Charter Network Has Financial Advantages Over Public SchoolsBy analyzing Department of Education databases for the 2007-8 school year, the researchers calculated that the KIPP network received $12,731 in taxpayer money per student, compared with $11,960 at the average traditional public school and $9,579, on average, at charter schools nationwide.
In addition, KIPP generated $5,760 per student from private donors, the study said, based on a review of KIPP’s nonprofit filings with the Internal Revenue Service.
The study does not offer an explanation for why KIPP schools would get more government financing than regular public schools.
“We can’t explain it, but that’s what the data shows,” Dr. Miron said.
KIPP and other charters do not have to keep students who do not perform to their standards. They just let them leave, counsel them out...effectively returning them to their public school which has no choice but to keep them.
Here is more from the Baltimore Sun on the attrition rate:
High attrition, public funding fuel KIPP results, study findsHigh levels of attrition, selectivity and government funding have positioned Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) schools as academic leaders, according to a national report published Thursday, which found that the charter network’s lauded outcomes in recent years have been a result of serving a distinct population of students while receiving high amounts of public funding.
The report was published by Western Michigan University, and jointly released by Columbia University, in addition to the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education. The study looked at “What Makes KIPP Work: A study of student characteristics, attrition and school finance,” basing its conclusions on publically available federal and local data.
KIPP runs two schools in Baltimore. The Knowledge Is Power Program opened the Ujima Village Academy, a middle school, in 2002. In 2009, KIPP opened an elementary school, KIPP Harmony Academy. Both are located in Northwest Baltimore, serving very low-income populations, and are among the best schools in the city.
But nationally, the report found, on average about 15 percent of students drop from KIPP cohorts every year, compared to 3 percent in public schools. Moreover, between grades 6 and 8, about 30 percent of KIPP students drop off of the rolls. The attrition rates in the report, which did not compare KIPP's attrition to similar schools in the district, or in neighboring districts, showed a "tremendous drop off" said the report's lead researcher, Gary Miron.
A website called the Nonprofit Quarterly has more on this study.
A Charter School’s Performance Questioned in New StudyUnfortunately for this network of 99 charter schools – 24 elementary, 60 middle schools, and 15 high schools in 20 states plus D.C. – a new study from Western Michigan University raises important questions about the reasons for KIPP’s reputation of generally high performance.
One reason apparently is that 40 percent of black males enrolled in KIPP schools leave between the 6th and 8th grades. Gary Miron, the lead researcher on the study, called that figure “shocking.” The issue is not that so many black males leave. It is that the KIPP schools have annual attrition rates of 15 percent compared to roughly 3 percent in the comparable school districts.
The pupils who drop out tend to be the lower performing students who return to the public schools but are not replaced in the KIPP schools. The result is that attrition at KIPP removes the pupils who pull down academic performance scores, leaving typically the better performers and scorers (PDF).
The study finds KIPP typical of other charter schools, which tend not to educate as many disabled and English language-limited students compared to regular public schools that take responsibility for all comers.
But it is not just the KIPP schools that have attrition problems and claim success in spite of it. This of course makes public schools look bad because they have to take all comers.
Charter schools that boast high test scores should reveal their attrition rates as well.Here is another example.
Williamsburg Collegiate Charter School (WCCS), a member of the wildly successful Uncommon Schools charter network, has a clear mission: to prepare each student for college.
WCCS fits the mold associated with high performing urban charters: most students are African American and Hispanic (99 percent); the majority are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches (83 percent); students wear uniforms; classes are highly structured; and learning time is extended.
...."Sure enough, 11 out of the 13 charter schools showed significant shrinkage in the size of their testing cohorts. And the more the cohorts shrank over time, the higher the percentage of students achieving proficiency rose.
At Williamsburg, this trend was dramatic. Seventy-two 5th graders took the ELA test in 2006 with just under 60 percent achieving proficiency. Three years later, proficiency for that same cohort had skyrocketed to just below 95 percent, but only 44 students remained in the 8th grade cohort. That’s an attrition rate of 39 percent.
The blog EdWize had an article last year entitled
Vanishing Studies, Rising ScoresIt quotes similar statistics.
As it turns out, high-performing charter middle schools in the New York City also have extremely high rates of attrition in their testing cohorts :
Eight of the thirteen schools have enough data to allow us to examine cohort size between 5th grade, when students enter, and 8th grade, when they graduate.(2) In four of these schools, more than 25% of the students vanished from the cohort. Of these four schools, three saw cohort declines of 30%, and one lost nearly 40%. All of these charters have been nationally or locally acclaimed as great schools that are in high demand. The average attrition for this group of eight is 23%. (charts follow.)These attrition rates contrast starkly with what I found in regular public schools, where the size of cohorts tends to remain the same or rise. (charts follow.)
The remaining five of the thirteen schools are too new to have testing cohorts that span all grades. However, most have high attrition through the grades already completed. Taken as a whole, only two of the thirteen middle school charters show no shrinkage in the size of their testing cohort, thus approaching parity with public schools citywide.
..."Information is not made public regarding the academic proficiency of students who vanish from the cohort. What I do know is that dramatic rises in the percent proficient seem to parallel the rates of attrition in the testing cohorts . I have charted these in the latter part of this post.
Another charter group makes no secret of the fact that
they "counsel out" students with problems. At Harlem Success, disability is a dirty word. “I’m not a big believer in special ed,” Fucaloro says. For many children who arrive with individualized education programs, or IEPs, he goes on, the real issues are “maturity and undoing what the parents allow the kids to do in the house—usually mama—and I reverse that right away.” When remediation falls short, according to sources in and around the network, families are counseled out. “Eva told us that the school is not a social-service agency,” says the Harlem Success teacher. “That was an actual quote.”
It would be interesting to know in what other years KIPP received more money than public schools and other charters. It is odd that could happen at all.
We know that KIPP and TFA are among the largest recipients of federal education money. What is not so well known is that the founder of TFA is the wife of a head of the KIPP charters. And many do not realize that last year they each got 50 million from the DOE.
The term “990” refers to the IRS forms that tax-exempt organizations must file and that by law are available to the public. Included on a 990 is not just essential information on total revenue and total expenses, but a breakdown that includes the compensation of the highest paid employees.
Marcello Stroud sent me TFA’s 990 for fiscal 2008. It shows that TFA had revenues of $159 million in fiscal year 2008 and expenses of $124.5 million. CEO and founder Wendy Kopp made $265,585, with an additional $17,027 in benefits and deferred compensation. She also made an additional $71,021 in compensation and benefits through the TFA-related organization Teach for All. Seven other TFA staffers are listed as making more than $200,000 in pay and benefits, with another four approaching that amount.
It’s also interesting to look at the 990 for the KIPP Foundation, the charter school chain led by Richard Barth, a former Edison vice president and TFA staffer who also happens to be Kopp’s husband. Barth made more than $300,000 in pay and benefits, bringing the Kopp/Barth household income to almost $600,000 for their work with TFA and KIPP. (In a 2008 article, the New York Times dubbed Kopp and Barth as “a power couple in the world of education, emblematic of a new class of young social entrepreneurs seeking to reshape the United States’ educational landscape.”)TFA’s 990 lists its major contributors—some of the biggest names and players in the privatization of public education.
Looking Past the SpinAnd the New York Times points out that they were each given 50 million last year.
Education Department Deals Out Big AwardsTeach for America, the nonprofit group that recruits elite college students to teach in public schools, and the KIPP Foundation, which runs a nationwide network of charter schools, were big winners in a $650 million federal grant competition known as Investing in Innovation, the Department of Education said Wednesday.
Each group won $50 million. Two others won large awards for proposals the department said were backed by significant evidence of success with students.
All that money going to them while public school teachers are being laid off by the hundreds all over the country....many being replaced by TFA teachers.
The idea behind KIPP and other charters is that parents be required to be involved in their child's education. Trust me, I am all for that.
However when all is said and done, some of the parents don't meet those requirements. And that is where the bottom line comes in...charter schools do not have to keep the student. They send the student back to the public school, which must keep them no matter what.
There is all too often no guarantee that the thousands of dollars of public money that followed the student to the charter school will return with him to the public schools.
It's a dismantling of public education, and none of our leaders is sounding the alarm.
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