In my initial post about KIPP, I described a critique of the KIPP charter school network by Gerald Coles, an educational psychologist.

Coles raised questions about the reliability of the research on KIPP and about the selection of students.

I suggested a challenge to KIPP, that it should take an entire impoverished district to test its theories, if such a district were willing.

Schorr responded with a post that rejected the challenge and questioned my objectivity and integrity.

Others have replied to Schorr, including Katie Osgood, Caroline Grannan, and Paul Thomas.

I hope that KIPP will give serious consideration to my challenge.

Gerald Coles responded to Schorr on his blog. Here is Coles’ remarks:

Jonathan Schorr objects to the suggestion that research on KIPP that is funded by the same corporations that help fund KIPP might be as biased as other corporation-funded research, such as by tobacco, drug, coal and companies, on the value and safety of the very products these corporations produced.

Consider these statements:

“KIPP is a *bold effort*  [my emphasis] to “transform and improve the educational opportunities available to low-income families.” 

“KIPP’S ‘Five Pillars’ *distinguish its approach* [my emphasis]: high expectations for all students to reach high academic achievement, regardless of students’ backgrounds.” 

“The promise seen in KIPP schools and other charter networks that use similar approaches is a prominent reason that the Obama administration is making the *expansion of high-quality charter schools a central component of its nationwide educational improvement agenda.* [my emphasis].”

No one would be surprised to read these cheerleading statements on the KIPP website.  Who would expect KIPP to do anything less than rah, rah, sis-boom-ba on its behalf?  But these quotes are not  from the KIPP website, rather, they come from the introduction of the very report of the “independent” research that supposedly, like all sound scientific investigations, is a disinterested, neutral investigation. 

Do cheerleading statements like these raise any skepticism for Mr. Schorr?   Given what Mr. Schorr surely must know about the history of industry-funded research, as well as about truly independent research at odds with results of the Mathematica study, how can he insist that any suggestion of “bias is both odd and easily disproven”?  

Had Mr. Schorr been an adult in the 1950s, would he have thought wholly credible the tobacco companies’ creation of the Tobacco Industry Research Council, staffed with credentialed researchers?  (After all, these companies were merely desirous of studying the outcomes of their products?)  Would he, in the 1960s, have thought credible this letter to an elementary school teacher from RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company assuring the teacher that: “medical science [funded by the tobacco industries] has been unable to establish that smoking has a direct causal link with any human disease”? 

Mr. Schorr issues “disclaimers,” noting that he “worked at KIPP for several years” and now works at a Fund that has supported KIPP schools.  What do such disclaimers mean?  Certainly they don’t necessarily mean independent thinking.  Yes, there’s no reason to question that the ideas he expresses on his blog are his own, as he says, but that’s not the same as saying that there’s any light between his ideas and those of his past and present employers.

With respect to the “accusation that KIPP’s performance is driven by selectivity in admissions,” far from what Mr. Schorr claims, it certainly does have a “place in responsible discussion.”   While it is true that KIPP does not “select” its students, it’s clear that KIPP’s “open enrollment” policy does not produce an equal playing field with the public schools: KIPP schools do have a “lower concentration of special education and limited English proficiency students than the public schools from which they draw.”  How did that happen?  Surely Mr. Schorr must know of this imbalance and he must also recognize that KIPP’s enrollment process is itself fostering a selective admission process, i.e., a self-selection (inherent cherry-picking self-selection) that tilts away from students with the most educational challenges .   As such, why would a discussion of this process be “irresponsible” and why is KIPP itself not critical of its “open enrollment” process? 

Regarding the issue of KIPP’s greater per-pupil spending, this finding has been duplicated, including in a  recent independent  study of KIPP in Texas, conducted by Julian Heilig.  That study found per student spending for KIPP Austin to be $17,286 vs. $10,667 for the Austin public schools; and $13,488 for KIPP Houston vs $10,127 for the Houston pubic schools.   (Heiig notes that the financial data are readily available online each year from the State of Texas.)

As for KIPP’s dropout rate for African-American students, the Heilig study concludes: “despite the claims that 88-90% of the children attending KIPP charters go on to college, their attrition rate for Black secondary students surpasses that of their peer urban districts.”  Why does Mr. Schorr seem not to pay attention to findings like these?

Mr. Schorr accused Diane Ravitch of positing a “silly” question” when she asks (actually she asks three questions):

“What is KIPP really trying to prove? Do they want the world to believe that poverty, homelessness, disabilities, extreme family circumstances, squalid living conditions have no effect on children’s readiness to learn? Doesn’t KIPP imply that schools can achieve 100% proficiency if they act like KIPP?”

Mr. Schorr describes these queries as “silly” because, he says, “Nobody at KIPP – indeed, nobody I know at all – believes poverty doesn’t matter.”   However, looking closely at his response explaining how “poverty” does “matter,” we see that in fact, in his mind poverty does not  matter, not in the way Ravitch means it (the obvious way, to anyone who gives her comments a fair reading!).  For Schorr (and, presumably, KIPP management), poverty matters because it creates the challenging personal qualities in KIPP students.  The students are hungry, traumatized, etc., all of which combine to make up “the realities of [poor] kids’ lives” that KIPP tries to address in a variety of instructional and ancillary service ways.  Give KIPP credit, Schorr urges, for responding in its “forthright and humble” ways to the “the difficulty of the challenge” of the personal qualities of poor children.

Let’s give Schorr credit for having a good heart, that is, I assume (& I’m saying this without cynicism) that he is genuinely concerned about the education and futures of poor kids.  However, in his concern, he echoes the “no excuses” mantra, that is, the insistence that poverty is no excuse for poor students’ educational failure.   Poor students can  go to school with the challenging personal qualities poverty creates, but in the right schools – “no excuses” schools — they will succeed.   Poverty can exist and continue to exist because “no excuses” schools like KIPP address and enable students to overcome poverty’s effects.  KIPP requires no national economic and social changes, no redistribution of wealth, etc. 

Ravitch’s point, which was obvious in the commentary to which Schorr replied, is that it is poverty itself that national policy must address directly.   When Ravitch asks, “What is KIPP trying to prove?,” she is asking, is KIPP trying to prove that in responding to the consequences of poverty there is not the foremost educational need to pursue the elimination (or at least a dramatic reduction) of the conditions of poverty?  Why does Mr. Schorr wholly contort and dismiss Ravitch’s point? 

Schorr is perplexed by Ravitch’s obdurate criticism of KIPP and appeals to her, explaining that KIPP is just “trying to build superb schools that give the kids who attend them terrific choices in life.”  Why Schorr wonders aloud, does “Dr. Ravitch finds that so disturbing?”  I wonder why is Mr. Schorr not paying more attention to the independent research on KIPP and other charters, and why did he completely misinterpret Ravitch’s very critical points about poverty?