A group of elected officials trekked to visit a KIPP Charter school in Arkansas and came home very impressed. They saw black children in an almost all-black school engaged in their studies, and they want to replicate what they saw in Arkansas.
In the news article, however, they said repeatedly that no such schools were needed in DeSoto County. They are needed somewhere else in Mississippi, clearly for black kids.
And this was in the article as well:
“Lt. Governor Tate Reeves organized the trip because he believes this type of school could help improve Mississippi education system.
“If it can happen in Helena, Arkansas it can happen right across the river in Clarksdale, Mississippi and all up and down the Mississippi delta and quite frankly throughout our state. And so that is the message we are trying to convey to the members of the legislature. That is the message we are trying to convey to the people of our state. Because that is a message that is worth fighting for,” Reeves said.
Roughly 1-thousand kids attend KIPP, with nearly all graduating and scoring higher on standardized tests.
Reeves used trip to try and build support for expanding the Mississippi’s charter school law to make it easier for schools like KIPP to open.
The school sounds like one of those miracle schools that we hear about so often. I asked Gary Rubinstein if this was truly a miracle school and he checked it out. It’s not. It has very high attrition and many students repeating ninth grade.
Sixty-nine students are in ninth grade, but only 23 in grade 12.
The school is 95% black.
Back in another era, we would also say that it is a segregated school, but these days no one cares about that.
A few more facts about the model that Mississippi Republicans are eager to replicate:
Algebra passing KIPP 50%, State 77%
Bio KIPP 45%, State 43%
Geometry KIPP 77%, State 73%
Literacy KIPP 64%, State 65%
http://normessasweb.uark.edu/schoolperformance/beta/Sdash/index/5440703
In HS, 85 AP exams were taken, but only 13 passed.
19 on ACT is about 40th percentile
http://normessasweb.uark.edu/schoolperformance/beta/src/index/5440703
Remediation rate is 54% which is above state average.
In the HS ‘gains’ index, they are categorized as a ‘level 1 – school in need of immediate improvement’
http://normessasweb.uark.edu/schoolperformance/beta/Sdash/index/5440703
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Can you provide more information about the attrition rate and the percentage of students repeating 9th grade?
If this KIPP school follows the model that others do, they scaled up from only serving one grade (9th). If they started their first year with say 50 students, the attrition rate looks much different than what you imply. It doesn’t make sense to compare the size of this year’s 9th grade class to the 9th grade class from 3 years ago (today’s 12th graders), especially for a new school.
Additionally, they may have enrolled a larger 9th grade class this year than in the past, so you cannot discern that the larger 9th grade class is due to repeaters.
You may be right, but I’d like to see the facts.
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Check the links. This is not a 9-12 school. According to the article in the Mississippi paper, it has 1,000 students. It started in 2002.
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My apologies, but the link to the USNews profile clearly directs you to the KIPP Delta Collegiate High School, grades 9-12. It seems likely that this is multiple schools sharing one campus.
According to the school’s website, the high school did not open until 2006. http://www.kipp.org/school-content/kipp-delta-collegiate
Thank you for responding so quickly.
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2006 was six years ago.
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Dear people of Mississippi-Do Not Abrove Charters!!! They will not provide your child with a better education
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Thanks for sharing this information. There are so many Mississippians that are clueless when it comes to information on charter schools.
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The numbers don’t seem too bad to me. I know that they school I currently teach in would be ecstatic to have numbers like that.
A couple of points–the number of students testing advanced in geometry is 40%.
9th grade retention–Isn’t it about time that students who are way off track for grade level proficiency were held back? I wish that we were ‘allowed’ to hold back students in order to let them get caught up and keep from getting even further behind.
I’d rather that is was a public school following some of their methods, but the will for that seems incredibly low.
Nearly all student take AP, so having only 18 pass isn’t necessarily that bad.
What would really make the case one way or the other would be if we could see how those students tested in 8th grade. Otherwise, their scores don’t mean much without a before Kipp reading.
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Public schools can’t kick out kids with low scores, did you know that? Who will take them?
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I know well that we can’t kick kids out even for pretty high level violations. Only after numerous incidents is it even considered.
We also can’t hold students back, or it is highly frowned upon. We, individually and as a school, are blamed for too high of a failure rate, even when it is obvious to everyone that a student could not meet the grade level standards.
If the high number of 9th graders is because the were retained there until they are ready to go on, then it doesn’t seem wrong. Kicking students out because of scores does seem wrong.
Our school currently has several refugees from the high-performing charter school in Denver. In the cases where I’ve talked to kids, they were kicked out (or chose to leave) because they did not want to submit to the after school and weekend extra work that was required of students who are behind. While I sympathize with kids for not wanting to be in school longer, targeted direct instruction outside of the regular school day seems like a reasonable answer.
I do not think that charters are an answer. But, there are some methods and practices (like holding a much tougher line on behavior and performance) that i’d like to see implemented in other schools, mine included.
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