Gary Rubinstein reports that KIPP has taken advantage of the coronavirus shutdown of schools to close two of its charters in the ill-fated “Achievement School District” in Tennessee. Once hailed as a model for other states to copy, the ASD has been a flop.
Rubinstein has followed the ASD from its early days, so filled with promise and boasting, to its collapse.
The Tennessee Achievement School District, or ASD, is the Edsel of school reform. Created with a Race To The Top Grant and developed by TFA alum Kevin Huffman, who was state education commissioner at the time, and TFA alum Chris Barbic, the first ASD superintendent, the ASD completely failed in it’s mission to ‘catapult’ schools from the bottom 5% into the top 25% in five years. It is now eight years into the experiment and hardly any of the 30 ASD schools even made it out of the bottom 5%. Not to worry, both Huffman and Barbic resigned and are doing very well with their new project called The City Fund.
Three of the 30 ASD schools are run by KIPP. Five days ago I read in Chalkbeat TN that two of those KIPP schools are shutting down at the end of this school year. On the KIPP Memphis website they explain to the families “While the community welcomed our network with open arms, we’ve been unable to fulfill our academic promise to our students, teachers and families at KIPP Memphis Preparatory Elementary and KIPP Memphis Preparatory Middle. We understand that these closures will have significant implications on our families. However, we strongly believe this decision is in the best interest of our entire KIPP Memphis community and is a step in the right direction to improve our organization’s ability to build a stronger network of schools.”
Tennessee is where the value-added and growth metrics were developed and these two schools ranked at the bottom of the state. Out of a 4 point scale, one of the schools got a 1 and the other got a 0.1 in growth.
Incidentally, KIPP currently has 13 schools in Tennessee. Of those 13 schools, only 11 have growth scores for 2018-2019, five of those (including the two that are now closing) had growth scores between 0 and 1 and two had growth scores between 1 and 2. So of the 11 schools with this rating, 7 had below to very below average ‘growth.’ Reformers are going to have to make up their minds: Is KIPP a fraud or are growth scores a fraud — they can’t have it both ways.
In other words, Kippsters, we are outta here! Sorry, kids, we just couldn’t help you!
But with tens of millions of federal dollars awarded by Betsy DeVos, there may soon be another KIPP, opening near you.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“we’ve been unable to fulfill our academic promise to our students, teachers and families”
That is just amazing. They’re shedding the less valuable parts of the portfolio.
I’ve been wondering what would happen to the “universal” in public education if ed reformers get their wish and privatize all the public systems and I think charters have answered my question- there isn’t any commitment to “universal”- in the new privatized systems there will be actual school “deserts”- places where they knocked out the public system and the privatized system just didn’t want to operate. We saw this happen in Michigan – they would come in, knock out the public system, and then have trouble shopping the contract to one of their providers.
Perhaps they’ll keep some public schools open but only to act as “safety net” schools for the private and charter schools they prefer. Our schools and kids are the afterthought- as usual.
it is exactly this, keeping a few schools open as a sort of “receiving grounds” for unwanted kids which should expose the entire set-up as outright abuse: they know that the kids they do not want have to attend somewhere, and could care less that they are setting up an “alternate” system to be toxically blamed and endlessly pushed into chaos
KIPP learned that students that live in abject poverty do not make good widgets. With market based education, the students are abandoned. Poor students require investment. These students would be much better off in a setting that provides wrap around services for students and outreach to their families. It is futile to send in another clueless entrepreneur. Test scores are a poor way to measure very poor students. A better way to measure would be to study students long term to see if these students have been able to function in the real world. If these students are holding jobs, joining the military or attending post secondary education, the school has done its job. Test scores are meaningless in the real world.
“Secretary Betsy DeVos
The disruption to our education system caused by #coronavirus reaffirms what I’ve said for years: we must #rethinkeducation to meet 21st Century demands. Our new $300M grant competition gives local leaders that chance in both K-12 and higher ed”
Having failed to provide any practical or useful help or assistance to existing public schools in this crisis, ed reformers launch a giant new publicly funded slush pile to deliver contracts to fellow echo chamber members.
Chances that any of this money gets to an actual public school once they pass it thru 15 ed reform contractors and consultants? Zero.
It’s the ed reform paycheck protection act- it ensures all the professional public school critics will continue to get grants.
None of it will land anywhere near a public school student, which is in keeping with the ed reform ethos of pretending public schools and public school students don’t exist.
Is the US Department of Education going to release the names of the people who are handing out 300 million to preferred contractors?
Bet you 50 dollars every single one comes out of the echo chamber. There won’t be a single public school supporter on that panel. It’ll be the same 150 “market based” folks who have completely captured federal education policy.
They just spent 300 million on paying the choir.
If KIPP selection cannot produce good growth scores, these scores must be worse than we thought. Economic selection seems to have some positive effect on scores for some reason. Is the real problem a lack of urban gentrification? Bankrupt testing logic? Maybe these KIPPs were not cruel enough to the students to run off enough of the riff-raff.
Let us all admit that it is difficult to teach folks who do not arrive at school with a readiness to learn and a good dose of parental support. Schools used to be places where only those students with those attributes were allowed. Others went away.
Then the laws that restricted dropout began, but no money poured in to help schools be parents as well. They just required that we teach children who did not want to be there. Then testing began, and shaming the school began. No money, no programs, just shame. It has not worked for anyone. Not the children, not the parents, not the community. Well, it seemed to work OK for charter administrators.
What on earth is a “growth score?”
I know about TVAAS and its origin story. The formulas were first used to cull heards of dairy cows to increase herd productivity. I imagine that someone took the value-added measures (VAM) which are really estimates, combined these for math and ELA into some average for every school, never mind that over 60% of teachers do not teach subjects for which there are standardized tests. The blather about “growth scores” is less important than the fact that US News and World Report had douwngraded KIPP’s brand.
In any case the KIPP franchise is all about money, money, money and looking after the bottom line. Tennessee has been victimized by too many deformers.
So much so that many administrators who are comfortable with that approach are now deeply embedded in the county schools. These people do not know they are ding as the reform movement desires. They are just doing as the state tells them.
“: Is KIPP a fraud or are growth scores a fraud ”
I think it’s entirely possible both ways: both of them are frauds.