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Gerald Coles Responds to Jonathan Schorr about KIPP

By dianeravitch
August 26, 2012 //
11

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?
  

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, KIPP Charter Schools, Poverty

Paul Thomas on KIPP Challenge

By dianeravitch
August 26, 2012 //
2

Paul Thomas of Furman University in South Carolina is so prolific and so well-informed (he taught high school for 18 years before he became a professor at Furman) that he has emerged as one of the most articulate voices in the education reform debates today.

This morning he posted an informative analysis of the ongoing discussion about KIPP on this blog and elsewhere. It is well worth reading.

I am aware that KIPP has a rapid response team, as noted in the first post. I don’t intend to keep this particular debate going. At a certain point, as a Monty Python skit once memorably said, back-and-forth becomes not a debate but a contradiction, and that’s not interesting.

But I will not shy away from asking questions in the future. I now have several years of experience with the so-called education reform movement, and I am aware that one of its tactics is to smear critics. Having been the target of reformers on several occasions, I can assure you that I am unbloodied, unbowed, and unimpressed. When I am groundlessly attacked, it makes me even more determined to speak up, not fearful. A word to the wise should be sufficient.

Categories Education Reform, KIPP Charter Schools

What Caroline Grannan Learned About KIPP

By dianeravitch
August 26, 2012 //
3

Caroline Grannan demonstrates what a parent activist can accomplish by diligence. Here she writes about her research on KIPP:
  I did the first known research on KIPP attrition in 2007 as an unpaid amateur blogger. I looked at attrition in all the then-nine California KIPP schools based on California Department of Education data. KIPP’s Oakland school had even more astronomical attrition than the other KIPP schools, and when broken down by demographics, the Oakland attrition was even more startling. By the beginning of 8th grade (which was the publicly available figure), almost every African-American boy who has been there in grades 5 or 6 had left the school.

      The Oakland Tribune should have been doing this research, but hmm … its education reporter left to take a job with KIPP. Funny how that happens.

      KIPP’s usual response to the attrition issue is that comparable public schools have comparable attrition. But that’s a lie. I checked a number of comparable Oakland middle schools, and they have no pattern of attrition at all. They have turnover, as low-income families tend to have unstable housing and move a lot, but students cycle in to replace those who cycle out. KIPP, on the other hand, doesn’t replace the students who leave. A study by SRI International that was released the following year (coincidentally) confirmed my findings, showing that the Bay Area KIPP schools “lost” 60% of their students and didn’t replace them. The SRI study added the information that the students who leave are consistently the less successful ones.

      After a happy KIPP parent posted on our local San Francisco Schools listserve that his daughter had “tested into” KIPP San Francisco Bay Academy, I also started the application process at that school for my then-7th-grader, to confirm whether it required a test, which it did.

      KIPP says the test is used to determine the applicant’s academic grade level, not to determine who gets in. But even if that’s true, the test requirement clearly selects for students who are compliant enough to sit for a test (at grades 5 and up, kids are quite capable of refusing); for families and students who aren’t traumatized by tests and feel capable enough to take one; and for families who are motivated enough to go through that multi-step application process. And, of course, the happy KIPP parent clearly felt that his child was admitted based on her test results.

      By the way, when an organization pays a research firm to study it, there is a negotiation process regarding how the results will be reported. (When RAND did a much-ballyhooed study of Edison Schools in the early 2000s, the results were released more than two years behind schedule for that reason.) The client has a fair amount of leverage as the research firm struggles to maintain its integrity. We have no way of knowing what those negotiations between KIPP and Mathematica looked like, but I would bet they got interesting.

Categories Charter Schools, KIPP Charter Schools

Ms. Katie Explains What KIPP Does Wrong

By dianeravitch
August 26, 2012 //
5

Katie Osgood blogs as Ms. Katie.

Check out her blog. It’s terrific.

She is fearless and articulate.

In one of my earliest posts, I reprinted a great piece she wrote.

Open it up here and read it.

She wrote this comment in response to Jonathan Schorr’s defense of KIPP:

I am sick of hearing the same old KIPP talking points. The issue about KIPP, as well as other “no excuses” charter schools, is that regardless of incoming scores, the kids with the toughest behaviors and often lowest scores are getting pushed out. And peer effects matter. As the “tough kids”, even a handful of them, are pushed out through inappropriate expectations and ridiculous zero tolerance codes of conduct, the class culture changes as the higher-performing students are left behind. And as for attrition rates, it matters whether or not or with whom the outgoing students are replaced. (And please don’t get me started on those disgusting “zero tolerance” policies. I do not understand how it is OK for any school to treat children like inmates in prison. I can’t even imagine the KIPP behavior system being implemented in an affluent school for the children of the elite. I do not understand how it is acceptable for low-income children of color. But that’s another long conversation.)

I work as a teacher at a psychiatric hospital in Chicago and before that I worked in a Chicago Public School. KIPP hides behind statistics about the kids which do not describe the realities of the school. For example, it is disingenuous to simply quote percentage numbers of students with special needs but rather you need to acknowledge the types of disabilities. My experience with students from the charters (I’ve worked with many) is that in the two years I’ve taught at the hospital, not one-NOT ONE-of the current charter school students had a disruptive behavior problem or a serious cognitive disability. The charter kids were the ones with mild learning difficulties or suffered from inward-focused anxiety or depression. They were the kids who needed just a little push to improve academically. On the other hand, I met plenty of kids with behavioral disabilities who were kicked out of the charters. And the toughest kids of all—such as the kids in foster care with truly debilitating disabilities and trauma—they were always at the neighborhood school. Only a small number made it to the limited spaces at the therapeutic day schools. Too many neighborhood schools are overwhelmed with the toughest kids with insufficient resources to help them.

The schools which do take in the toughest kids, those who suffer from the worst effects of poverty, are concentrated in the schools with the least resources. I worked in one of those schools and the lack of staff, supplies, access to books or even a library was criminal. And we had really tough kids thrown into classes of 32-37 kids with no books, science labs, and only enough money for one aide for the entire K-8 school. The neighborhood high schools in Chicago have only one counselor for up to 1,200 children. There are a total of 200 social workers for the entire 400,000 Chicago public school students (see more statistics here:http://www.ctunet.com/blog/text/SCSD_Report-02-16-2012-1.pdf) Meanwhile, in the last budget, neighborhood school budgets were cut even further while charters all received more funding than ever before. Compared to neighborhood schools, KIPP schools have so much more money available especially if you include real estate deals, tax exemptions, philanthropic giving, the Gates Compact, plus whatever else you raise. (See more here:http://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2012/05/07/no-excuses-really-another-look-at-our-nepc-charter-spending-figures/ ) And still you take fewer of the toughest kids. Stop lying about having more funding, just be up front and honest. Why is that so hard??

KIPP schools further the very un-American idea that only the deserving should get quality education. The answer cannot be to just give better-funded schools to the kids who “want to learn” because all kids want to learn. But too many of our children living in poverty are suffering from major mental health and subsequent learning and behavioral difficulties as a result of the conditions into which they were born. This is what we mean when we say poverty matters. (See Anthony Cody’s excellent overview:http://www.impatientoptimists.org/Posts/2012/08/Can-Schools-Defeat-Poverty-by-Ignoring-It ) And then, to add insult to injury, kids are being punished for having the mental health issues that come from growing up in unabated poverty (what we now call the school-to-prison-pipeline). KIPP and other “no excuses” charters place the full burden of not living up to the codes of conduct on the child and the family. KIPP is not the answer. It is part of the problem. It diverts money away from REAL equitable solutions we should be investing in. We need inclusive integrated fully-funded schools where every child is welcome while simultaneously seriously combating poverty to prevent the mental health and health conditions holding too many kids back.

The call from Diane Ravitch to take over a district or even one struggling school is to call KIPP on its bluff. KIPP is not impressive. And there is nothing miraculous about teaching an easier group of kids. Nothing. And the real damage of KIPP is that policy makers listen to your miracle rhetoric and then punish the struggling, underfunded, over-burdened neighborhood schools. Stop it. Your schools, and the charter movement as a whole, are seriously hurting my students with significant behavioral and mental health needs. Tell the truth about the kids you work with and then let’s have a real conversation minus your marketing talking points.
Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, KIPP Charter Schools

The KIPP Boast

By dianeravitch
August 25, 2012 //
11

I challenged KIPP to take over an impoverished district and to show how their methods could work for all children–the ELLs, the special ed, all kids–not just those whose parents entered a lottery. Jonathan Schorr responded by saying that would be abandoning their original mission. His snarky (and insulting) response appears as a comment on the original post. Schorr works for the billionaire-funded NewSchools Venture Fund.

This is a comment from Parents Across America activist Caroline Grannan in San Francisco, who has written extensively about the parent trigger:

As the blogger who did the first known research exposing KIPP’s eye-popping attrition, I think Linda has it right. It’s not an inherently bad way to operate, providing a setting for motivated and compliant young people from supportive families without the pull of what sociologist Elijah Anderson calls “the street.” What’s bad is the pretense, and KIPP’s constant touting of itself as superior to the public schools on which it dumps its rejects, and reaping of vast amounts of private funding from sources that are undoubtedly sold on the belief that KIPP is working miracles with all segments of low-income communities.

What is it with the offspring of principled people like Daniel Schorr and Marian Wright Edelman? I’ll never be famous or revered, but dammit, my kids are never going to sell their souls.

Categories KIPP Charter Schools

Will KIPP Take the Challenge?

By dianeravitch
August 25, 2012 //
19

A comment by Jonathan Schorr (son of the famous Dan Schorr, who was a fearless man of the left, opposed to plutocrats and billionaires and privatizers and their schemes in foreign nations) suggests that KIPP will NOT take the challenge. Jon says that KIPP would abandon their original purpose if they accepted responsibility for an entire impoverished district. Jon says it is wrong to expect KIPP to take on a district. That would betray their “original purpose.” Which, I guess, means to help the lucky few escape from poverty.

I say, if KIPP has the secret sauce for raising the achievement of poor minority youth, then demonstrate that it works in an entire district, not just for the lucky few.

Come on. The eyes of the nation are on you.

You can do it.

Take on a low-performing district and teach us the lessons of KIPP.

Don’t be afraid.

I have faith in you.

Show your stuff.

Carol Burris, principal of a high school in Long Island, agrees. She writes:

I think that what Diane Ravitch asks is more than reasonable. If KIPPs philosophy, pedagogy, leadership, teacher training and discipline practices are what makes KIPP great, then turnaround a failing school. I am sincere. Perhaps we public school folk will learn. Perhaps our state governments will change laws so that we can implement your discipline practices at KIPP and not get called on the carpet for high suspension rates. I do not think you cherry pick students, but the students who choose to go are different in motivation and peer effects do come in to play. The comments on Schorrs blog were helpful in revealing the KIPP mindset. I do hope that KIPP will take the challenge and turnaround a school and its teachers with their training. Kids might benefit and the world would have an open window into KIPP practices.

Categories Education Reform, KIPP Charter Schools

A Challenge to KIPP

By dianeravitch
August 23, 2012 //
48

Anyone who questions the slow–now rapid–advance of the charter school industry, anyone who wonders whether our nation is in process of developing (or re-creating) a dual school system, will sooner or later get the KIPP question: Doesn’t KIPP prove definitively that poverty doesn’t matter? Doesn’t KIPP prove that charter schools are superior to public schools? Doesn’t KIPP prove that any child, no matter what their circumstances, can excel?

I admit that I have not waded into this debate because I acknowledge that some charters get excellent results, some get abysmal results, but on average, charters do NOT get better results than public schools. (Results, in this case, meaning test scores, which seem to be the only thing that matters in these discussions.)

When I visited Houston in the fall of 2010 to lecture at Rice, KIPP and TFA were my hosts. Michael Feinberg gave me a tour of his leading school, which looked like any public school, and introduced me to his top staff at lunch. We had a down-home visit and I like Michael. When I gave my lecture, I chastised KIPP for encouraging the public perception that all charter schools are better than all public schools and for failing to denounce the growing numbers of incompetent, corrupt, and inept charter schools. I talked about the oft-heard complaint that KIPP cherry picks its students and has high attrition, which KIPP denies. I challenged KIPP to take over an entire inner city school district that was willing and show what it could do when no one was excluded.

Needless to say, KIPP has not taken my advice and continues to expand its brand from district to district, with only a few schools in each district.

A recent article by Gerald Coles reviews the research about KIPP and notes that KIPP has a rapid-response to any questioning of its accomplishments, which KIPP says are now well documented. Coles points out that the research KIPP relies on was funded by corporations and foundations that have previously given KIPP millions of dollars. He calls it the “KIPP-funders’ funded research.”  And he asks this question:

Can there be any bias in research bankrolled by the corporate contributors of the very company whose product the researchers were expected to validate? We are all familiar with the long history of industry-supported research, such as that of tobacco, drug, auto, and coal companies, all conducted by credentialed researchers, all of whom invariably produced findings that supposedly confirmed the value and safety of the products they were paid to investigate. This research on KIPP schools can be described in various ways, but “independent” surely has to take at least second place to “KIPP-funders funded research.”

Coles’ review of the research–both that conducted by the funders’ funding and that of independent researchers–is worth reading.

Whenever anyone says that KIPP schools spend more than neighborhood public schools, KIPP adamantly denies it. Coles reasonably asks how the many tens of millions raised by KIPP were spent if not on its schools.

Behind the back and forth about the research is a larger question. 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?

If that is the lesson they want to teach, then I reiterate my challenge of two years ago: KIPP should find an impoverished district that is so desperate that it is willing to put all its students into KIPP’s care. Take them all: the children with disabilities, the children who don’t speak English, the children who are homeless, the children just released from the juvenile justice system,  the children who are angry and apathetic, and everyone else. No dumping. No selection. No cherry picking.

Show us what you can do. Take them all.

Categories Charter Schools, Houston, KIPP Charter Schools

The Nation’s Largest Charter Chain

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2012 //
4

Most people think that KIPP is the nation’s largest charter chain, but that’s not correct. KIPP has 109 schools. The Gulen Movement has 135 charter schools.

I mentioned in my last post that the Gulen network is associated with a Turkish imam. One of my Twitter correspondents asked me to explain.

I am attaching two links. One is by Sharon Higgins, an independent researcher who has followed the growth of the Gulen Movement’s charters, the other is a page-one article from the New York Times about the imam Fethullah Gulen; it mentions his charters in passing.

There are legitimate questions to be raised about public dollars funding schools that are tied to a cleric, as well as questions about a charter chain that has close ties with another nation.

Public schools have a civic purpose: they are supposed to prepare young Americans for citizenship. That’s why the public supports them with its taxes.

(http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/largest-charter-network-in-us-schools-tied-to-turkey/2012/03/23/gIQAoaFzcS_blog.html); (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/25/world/middleeast/turkey-feels-sway-of-fethullah-gulen-a-reclusive-cleric.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all)

Diane

Categories Charter Schools, KIPP Charter Schools
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