Gary Rubinstein was one of the earliest members of Teach for America. He is today its most incisive critical friend or friendly critic. In this post, he remembers the days that Dave Levin and Michael Feinberg presented their KIPP plan to a TFA audience and were boed off the stage. Now, however, they are superstars.
Gary reviews KIPP’s current record. Currently, he says, KIPP has an attrition rate of 40%. Their college graduation rate is higher for low-income students than other schools.
However, he writes:
“Another thing I noticed in the annual report is that the SAT scores from their juniors are horrific. Now I’m not the one who says that test scores are everything, but reformers do, so when I see KIPP Newark, which has gotten a lot of attention lately, and KIPP Washington DC with SAT scores in the 1200s, that’s about 400 per section which you could get by answering about five questions per section and leaving the rest blank, I have to wonder how well those students will succeed in college.
“Funded, in part by the Waltons, KIPP is a bit like the Walmart of charter schools. And just like Walmart may have some good things about it — maybe prices there are low, I don’t know — KIPP might be good for the kids who are a ‘good fit’ for it. But also like Walmart, the negatives of KIPP seem to outweigh the positives. This is why the gut instinct of those 1996 corps members back in the day was correct.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
reference: Carol Burris Burris is the co-author of Detracking for Excellence and Equity, published in 2008 by ASCD. Her new book, On the Same Track: How Schools Can Join the 21st Century Struggle against Re-segregation Beacon Press. She regularly expresses her concerns about the misuse and unintended consequences of high-stakes testing on the Washington Post, The Answer Sheet blog.
E-mail Carol Burris at burriscarol@gmail.com
quote: ” KIPP has an attrition rate of 40%. Their college graduation rate is higher for low-income students than other schools.”
Programs and interventions have differential impact based on population and circumstances/contest and that is why one size doesn’t fit all. Helen Ladd looks at impact of NCLB; test scores from North Carolina.
quote: “Duke University’s Helen Ladd and Douglas L. Lauen of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill compared the effects of that state’s accountability policy, which uses a growth model, with the NCLB model.
In examining the math and reading test scores of North Carolina public school students from 1998 to 2007 using the growth model, Ms. Ladd and Mr. Lauen found relative gains for top-scoring students, with gains or no effects at the bottom.”
Also, look at Jack Hassards graphs on the Georgia test scores…. (he can be found at blog Art of Teaching…. Art of Teaching Science)
cs: context
and quoting Jack Hassard (Art of Teaching) “I’m pushing myself into these graphic analyses and have learned from Ed Johnson, a brilliant thinker and Deming scholar. He has used systems thinking to study education. I’ve written about him on my site….”
Jack’s graphs tell some of the details about the testing in Georgia.
But now, Kipp is rife with TFA cheap labor scab “teachers” – likely one of the reasons it is able to stay in business and profit – the pipeline of fresh, green TFA “teachers” who don’t have a option to say no – they are contracted to take the first assignment doled out to them.
What is the real kicker is that the deformers despise “ineffective young teachers, fresh out of school” “inexperienced” etc. – but they applaud the TFAs with 5 weeks of training. Those TFAers to the reformers are jewels in the reform crown. Up is down. Down is up.
I guess that back in 1996 TFA had not yet perfected its personality profile for recruiting and developing Stepford Teachers.
Gary works at one of the most difficult high schools in the country to get in. The United Federation of Teachers has urged a much broader method of selecting students. Gary has been quiet on this.
Meanwhile, the people he relentlessly criticizes have establish schools that don’t have admissions tests, and have helped thousands of students from low income families and students of color.
I’m sure Michelle Rhee and Wendy Kopp will take aim as you suggest…unless there is no money to be made there. Oh, snap.