Wed May 14, 2008 at 9:13 AMBy: Retired Principal Wednesday Morning News Dear regarding KIPP, according to the "ILLINOIS CHARTER SCHOOL ANNUAL REPORT-JANUARY 2008", KIPP Charter School for the 2006-2007 school year had 25% of their students leave for district public schools, out of district schools or did not return in 2006-2007!

Wed May 14, 2008 at 6:26 PMBy: re educator post Wednesday Morning News The comparison to local elementary schools with intake areas is bogus. KIPP has no bounary area so it should be transfering out fewer kids than other west side schools.

At any rate this is beside the issue. The real question is the article claims that KIPP is better than Oak Park schools for 8th graders, the truth could be that KIPP purges lower performing students, and problem children, hence it should be no surprise the 8th grade scores appear so good. On the other hand the school could be that good, if so why are all of these children transfering back to traditonal CPS schools?

Why is the data in the CPS charter report and the ISBE report so different? Does anyone know why?

Wed May 14, 2008 at 9:55 PMBy: DOC Wednesday Morning News Good for KIPP, and the Brooklyn Bridge has a for sale sign on it!
Land in Florida is half-off and Hillary will be president!

Thu May 15, 2008 at 1:54 PMBy: Rod Estvan on KIPP and Oak Park Schools Wednesday Morning News I found Mr. Crowe’s article in the Wednesday Journal “The gap: Schools that don’t work and schools that do” to be fundamentally confused. This is not because KIPP Ascend Charter School may not be working for numerous children attending it, nor because KIPP may very well be a better alternative for some African American children, the school is 96% Black, than many CPS elementary schools, rather it is because Mr. Crowe’s essay avoids the issue of disability and education.

Crowe compares only 8th grade scores rather than all four grades KIPP serves. That may be legitimate because 8th grade is the final stop before high school. He compares Oak Park and River Forest ISAT scores to KIPP’s for grade 8. Oak Park uses a traditional middle school system covering grades 6, 7, and 8. I have dealt with these middle schools in relation to special education issues and found them to be high performing for most students with disabilities. I have not had any relationship with River Forest middle schools so I can not comment on them.

Crowe in his article states that 8th graders in Oak Park are scoring at or above state standards 84% (reading) and 87% (math) and KIPP is scoring at or above state standards 94% (reading), 100% (math). This data is correct. But we must look a little deeper to understand another important issue using ISBE school report card data and CPS charter data.

Oak Park had two middle schools Gwedolyn Brooks which has 803 students, of whom 129 have disabilities, giving it 16% students with disabilities. The other middle school is Percy Jullian which has 824 students, of whom 143 have disabilities, giving it also 16% students with disabilities. According to CPS’s 2006-2007 charter school report (page 69) KIPP had only 7.3% students with disabilities, according to CPS reports filed with the US District Court KIPP had 21 students with disabilities in 2007. Now let us contemplate this for a moment, KIPP draws its students from largely lower income communities, all national data indicates that the prevalence of disabilities is higher in lower income communities than in an upper middle class suburb like Oak Park. How is it possible that KIPP has significantly fewer students with disabilities than do either of Oak Park’s two middle schools?

We know a few other things about KIPP, for example we know that the school does not even have ten students with disabilities at grade 8 because all of KIPP’s ISAT scores are suppressed and not publicly reported on the school’s report card due to an ISBE rule for schools with low numbers of students in subgroups. Again using Court records we know that of KIPP 21 students 14 require special education services for no more than one hour each school day, in other words they are not significantly disabled.

What does all of this have to do with Crowe’s original comparison, a lot actually. Both Oak Park Middle Schools appear to have more than 40 students with disabilities in their 8th grade classes. When we look at test data for these disabled students we learn both of these middle schools are doing outstanding work with these students, Gwedolyn Brooks has 50.7% of its 8th graders with disabilities reading at or above state standards and 35.1% at or above state standards in math. Percy Jullian has 50% of of its 8th graders with disabilities reading at or above state standards, and 50% at or above state standards in math.

I cannot think of any CPS elementary school , including charters, magnets, and gifted schools with publicly reported 8th grade test scores for students with disabilities as high as these two Oak Park middle schools have. This does not mean these schools are perfect for students with disabilities and that there are not parents of children with disabilities who do not think their children are getting all that they are due in Oak Park. But the data speaks well for these schools and there are far fewer dissatisfied parents of children with disabilities in Oak Park than there are in Chicago.

When you take into consideration there are at least 30 Oak Park 8th graders with disabilities who are not making standards in either math or reading you realize that in fact the 8th grade scores for Oak Park are every bit as good or better than those for KIPP. I do not know for sure what axe Mr. Crowe had to grind against Oak Park schools by making his comparison with KIPP, but I suspect it may have had something to do with high property taxes. Charter schools like KIPP are not the answer for tax relief in Oak Park, the real key Mr. Crowe is to keep more costly students with disabilities out of your schools or at least keep there number down like KIPP is doing. I know of several families that moved from Chicago to Oak Park just for better special education services, one family included a CPS teacher before the residency requirement was put in place. I do not think they want charter schools like KIPP in their town.

Rod Estvan
Access Living

Sun May 18, 2008 at 4:47 AMBy: George N. Schmidt Wednesday Morning News Mr. Crowe also missed the trick in the KIPP data sets he puts forward with such uncritical love.

One of the things KIPP has done in its relentless marketing has been to leave out the fact that during the years kids are in its schools, it systematically eliminated low scoring children from the "sample set" until the numbers shine like the ones that so bedazzled our suburban critic of Chicago's regular public schools. Every critical study of KIPP has noted this, with the most consistent critique coming out of California.

Maybe people in Oak Park want to believe the KIPP fairy tales, but the numbers deserve a very close second and third look -- and not just for special needs students (which, as Rod reports, KIPP basically excludes to the greatest extent possible). Even "regular" kids are weaned out of KIPP as the years go by, so that by the time those "8th grade" numbers are massaged, you have another telling of the KIPP miracle story.

This particular kind of "reporting" has been a mainstay of KIPP's marketing strategy for years now, and some people central to this blog have fallen for it as well, so we can't just blame the latest suburban mark to fall for it.

Go back over all the numbers and ask what happened to all the kids who once were there -- and where they are now -- before bashing the real public schools that takes the kids KIPP dumps.