KIPP Insists Feds Hide Attrition Numbers: ED Complies

We know that KIPP's high attrition among students and teachers has been documented since 2008, even though KIPP has gone to great lengths to hide the facts that most teachers last less than three year and that the majority of entering 5th graders never reach 9th grade.

Their secrecy, however, took on new dimensions when the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) recently requested student enrollment and attrition information from the U. S. Department of Education.  

Since the U. S. Government handed over at least $40,000,000 in taxpayer money to KIPP over a two year period from 2013 through 2014, it would seem appropriate, would it not, that the federal government provide the requested information to public watchdog groups.  

But, then, KIPP is not just any corporate charter chain.  The KIPP Model of "no excuses"schools is the chosen model among white philanthropists and investors, hedge funds, and businessmen for a 21st Century indoctrination of the poor that is based on cultural/character scrubbing and neurological re-wiring of children to make them immune to effects of poverty.  It is an aggressive and profitable agenda that hopes to re-shape urban education into a tool of paternalistic exploitation.

When CMD requested student attrition information about KIPP schools, ED bowed to KIPP's request to redact all information related to student attrition.   Would any of those Congressmen who demand public school accountability interested in knowing why the U. S. Education Department will not release this information?  After all, these are public charter schools, right?

Click charts to enlarge, although there is not much to see.  

Debunking the charter school industry’s “lotteries prevent cherry picking” trope

A brief response to a charter school industry apologist encountered on Professor Ravitch's site:

A threadbare trope of the charter industry (profit and nonprofit alike), is that of “lotteries prevent cherry picking”. Cherry picking, or what we term selective enrollment in more learned circles, is far more easily achieved by attrition. High attrition is facilitated through push out policies (e.g. charter school disciplinary practices, onerous requirements for parents, etc.), through counseling out (a practice used by most Los Angeles charter chains for Students With Disabilities (cf. Office of the Independent Monitor. “Pilot Study of Charter Schools’ Compliance with the Modified Consent Decree and the LAUSD Special Education Policies and Procedures”., Los Angeles: Modified Consent Decree., 2009. Print.)), and a number of other practices. Moreover, students lost (a euphemism) through attrition are generally not replaced with students mid-year (revenue hungry charter operators call this not “backfilling”).

In addition to effectively selecting their student body through attrition (the de facto “cherry picking,” so to speak), charters frequently screen children out during pre-lottery enrollment through difficult to understand applications, and/or applications that require disclosure of information that discourage families from the process to being with. For example, in Los Angeles, so-called 501c3 “non-profit” charters were found to require parents “to indicate if their child had an IEP or received special education services. Of these, about two-thirds (64.77%) requested that a copy of the IEP be provided with the application. Similarly, 34.83% of the applications asked if a student had a 504 plan, with 79.03% of these requesting a copy with the application.” (Office of the Independent Monitor. “Findings of the Review of Charter Applications and Enrollment Forms”., Los Angeles: Report on the Progress and Effectiveness of the Los Angeles Unified School District's Implementation of the Modified Consent Decree During the 2010-2011 School Year., 2011. Print.)

Flawed Charter Attrition Comparisons from WNYC

I used to love public radio's WYNC.  When I lived in New York, I listened all the time that I was driving around Long Island looking for schools where I was supervising interns.  I found careful reporting and insightful hosts talking about important issues.  

That is why WYNC's most recent research raises such an alarm.  Could they be so careless as to compare attrition rates at NY charter schools and regular public schools, while leaving out grade 5 in their data collection?  After all, the Kipp Model middle school charters are grades 5-8, and that is where of the attrition happens as many low performers and troubled students are jettisoned.  And since there are more charter middle schools than any other level, what does do to skew the numbers in favor of charters??  

Is it any surprise, then, that WNYC finds attrition rates are lower for charters than public schools of New York??

This is such an awful example of skewed research it makes me wonder how much money WNYC is collecting from the corporate foundations, who have chosen No Excuses charter schools as the educational "choice" for parents trapped in malignantly neglected public schools.  

Hmm, here is the list of grants through 2013 from the Gates Foundation: