New
KIPP Study Underestimates Attrition Effects
June 22, 2010
Comparison considers only half the equation
BOULDER, Colo. and TEMPE, Ariz. (June 22, 2010) - This
morning, the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) held a press conference to
announce the results of a new
study of KIPP middle school students. A key finding of the study is that
attrition at KIPP schools is not much different from attrition at comparable
conventional public schools. This finding is important because past research
about KIPP suggests that selective attrition - struggling students
disproportionately leaving, with more successful students staying and then
scoring well on tests - may give KIPP a substantial boost.
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 5th or 6th grade."
The KIPP study's description of attrition only considers half
the equation, when comparing KIPP schools to matched traditional public
schools. The researchers looked at the attrition rates, which they found to
be similar - in the sense of the number of students departing from schools.
But they never considered the receiving or intake rate. Even though the
researchers agree that the students who are mobile are lower performing, they
do not take into account the reality that KIPP schools do not generally receive
these students.
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.
While Miron's review questions about the validity of this
report's particular findings, this is solely because of this single problem.
In other ways, he found the study to be rigorous and high quality, promising
to be even better in subsequent years of the evaluation. Those future reports
can, and Miron hopes, will address the questions raised here and also about
students retained in grade.
Importantly, Miron is also not saying that the KIPP schools do
poorly. Those schools provide about 50% more instructional time and place
rigorous demands on students and their families. "We have every reason
to believe that KIPP likely does a great job with the low-income students of
color who wish to attend and who have relatively supportive parents who can
do things like drive them to Saturday school," Miron says. But he does
question whether this is a viable model for larger numbers of students, and
he also wonders whether the different departure and receiving policies may
make matters worse for students who are left behind or who later leave KIPP
schools. How would the KIPP model work if students who cannot handle the
rigorous KIPP demands could not move to conventional public schools?
Professor Miron conducted his initial analysis at the request
of the Think Tank Review Project, a collaboration of the Education and Public
Interest Center (EPIC) at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the
Education Policy Research Unit (EPRU) at Arizona State University add and is funded by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice.
CONTACT:
Gary Miron
(269) 599-7965
gary.miron@wmich.edu
Kevin Welner, Professor and Director
Education and the Public Interest Center
University of Colorado at Boulder
(303) 492-8370
kevin.welner@colorado.edu
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