Katherine Kersten's column today is about the academic performance gap between minority and white students in Minneapolis K-12 schools — and what the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) is doing to erase the gap in a few schools across the country.
Her column, sparked by KIPP plans to open two middle schools in the Twin Cities, is largely drawn from a very comprehensive and though-provoking November New York Times article. She makes the KIPP approach sound promising — and Minneapolis schools dcertainly need any help they can get. The achievement gap is a disgrace, and it's one issue where conservatives and progressives ought to be able to find common cause. It's good Kersten is writing about it.
But don't look to Kersten for much insight into KIPP's model and how it really works. Instead, prepare yourself for another lecture on her favorite topic — instilling character. Of course! If we could only teach black kids how to act, and keep them in school longer, they'd do better.
The whole question of culture and expectations must be part of a frank discussion about failure in our public schools. But character education is far from the only factor.
Here's what an independent SRI study, "San Francisco Bay Area KIPP Schools: A Study of Early Implementation," said about it:
While building a school culture of hard work and good behavior is a primary goal of KIPP schools, only a small percentage of the school day is explicitly devoted to this, perhaps because efforts to build the culture are concentrated in the initial summer school and the early part of the school year, especially for fifth graders who are new to the school.
What else does Kersten's glowing account overlook about these schools where she says, "Some are achieving consistent, impressive results with the most challenging kids"?
For starters, the SRI study is more guarded about the results under the KIPP model.
Because the data are cross-sectional and school-level rather than student-level, we cannot draw conclusions about the impact of KIPP schools; that is, we cannot answer the question, Do students who attend KIPP schools perform better than they would have had they not attended a KIPP school?
Tracking aggregate school numbers versus individual student performance is one of the major flaws in the test-and-rank system encouraged by No Child Left Behind and used here in Minnesota. It can overstate differences between schools when some have more transient populations. The measure that matters is how much progress individuals make year after year.
Throughout the country, there are only 52 KIPP charter schools, educating about 12,000 students. (Yes, Kersten managed to write about KIPP without using the "C" word.) Because most of the KIPP students can't start until middle school, it's questionable how much lasting influence this character-building will have on kids who have been already shaped by 10 or more years of poverty and then may be thrown into traditional high schools. It's quite possible the students who enroll in KIPP, though from low-income, minority families, have parents who value education and play a more active role in the student's development.
Although KIPP schools do show some promise, the SRI report studying the Bay Area schools also noted concerns:
- There was considerable variation among the schools in how they implemented aspects of the KIPP regimen.
- School leaders "vary in their knowledge of curriculum and instruction and in the time they devote to academic leadership."
- Teachers, too, tend to be white and inexperienced and "are mostly on their own to develop their academic programs."
- The longer school day, higher homework loads and lack of curriculum support place an additional burden on these young teachers; three out of four "indicated that the demands of the job may limit their willingness to stay more than a few years." Both teachers and students find little time left for nonschool activities.
The next phase of the SRI study will look more closely at consistency of achievement test scores from one year to the next and try to isolate how much student achievement growth is associated with KIPP — particularly "contributions of extended instructional time and focus on culture in addition to the role of parent and teacher choice."
Public schools should pay attention to what's going on with initiatives like KIPP, but reforming an entire city district that must serve all kids is a much more complex undertaking. That's no excuse for sitting back, though. There's no more important challenge facing Minneapolis and many of America's schools.
[In my role as a Growth & Justice communications fellow, I'll be writing more about these issues in coming months as G&J's Rethinking Public Education project moves forward.]
