LEAP scores: KIPP schools and others?
I don’t know if it’s error, or if the error has had an effect on policy or law or trumpeting of success, or if it’s not exactly error, but I’ve been tipped off to a couple oddities in Spring 2008 and 2009 LEAP scores. I’m not assigning evil but asking Huh?
KIPP Believe College Prep reported 4th grade LEAP scores though they only had grades 5-7 in 2008 according to the New Orleans Parents’ Guide to Public Schools [NOPGPS]. Guste/KIPP Central City Academy in 2008 reported 4th grade LEAP scores though the school had no 4th grade, only 5-6.
LEAP scores Spring 2008
New Orleans Parents' Guide to Public Schools, Feb. 2008
New Orleans Parents' Guide to Public Schools Feb. 2008
Do schools usually report LEAP scores of kids who’ve come in? Am I misunderstanding something here?
Then in 2009, KIPP Believe College Prep reported LEAP scores for grade 4 though it had no grade 4 and reported no scores for 8th grade, which it did have. Kipp Believe’s site code is 398001 and it is missing from the document. Guste/KIPP Central City Academy again reported 4th grade scores when the school, according to NOPGPS, only had grades 5-7.
LEAP grade 4, 2009 scores
LEAP scores, grade 8, 2009
KIPP Believe, NOPGPS, Oct. 2009
(Guste) KIPP Central City Academy, NOPGPS, Oct. 2009
By contrast, KIPP McDonough 15 Elementary and Middle [site code 398002, with the same listed board president/chair] reported scores for 4th and 8th grades in 2008 and 2009 and had those grades as listed in the NOPGPS.
I’ve heard that Singleton Charter may have reported more scores than enrolled students. The scores I have are listed as percentages so it’s hard to tell about exact numbers.
Once my interns are done cross-checking documents and issue their reports, I’ll get back to you.
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My son attends KIPP Believe. I know that 4th grade scores were reported because the school had a few 4th graders who were allowed to enroll because they were siblings of a student in an upper grade. I also think these 4th graders were repeating 4th grade but attending 5th grade. In other words they would start 5th the following year. From what I understand it was less than 10 students.
Huh? Can this be confirmed? A fourth grade was created for KIPP siblings but not for open admission? And if these fewer “than 10″ students were “repeating 4th grade” they should not have been “attending 5th grade.” And if they were “attending 5th grade,” their scores should’ve been in the 5th grade scores, not a separate fourth grade they were not in. Were they in fourth grade? Or a 4.5? What on earth was going on?
I am an employee of KIPP New Orleans. Here’s the clarification:
KIPP Believe did not have 8th grade in 2009, so that’s why no 8th grade scores were reported. They were only 5-7 that school year. In the 2009-2010 school year their 8th grade scores will appear for the first time, as they are now a 5-8 school.
As for 4th grade, in the KIPP Believe charter they are able to enroll students who fail the 4th grade LEAP. These students DO NOT have to be siblings — it is completely open enrollment. These students are called “4.5ers” and are enrolled as regular 5th graders. The agreement is that because KIPP Believe follows an advanced curriculum, they will catch them up to grade level and prep them on the 5th grade material as well. At the end of their “5th grade” year, these 4.5ers take the 4th grade LEAP. If they pass, they are promoted to 6th grade. A number of charter schools in the area have this setup, and as you can see from scores (especially KIPP Central City), it has been fairly successful. This year KIPP Believe has approximately 20 such students out of 90 5th graders. Again, it is an option open to all students, not just siblings.
Hope that helps.
KIPPteacher, thanks for the explanation. But I take issue with saying any scores from LEAP testing show that any method, school, teacher, etc. is successful or not. [Tests are fallible, period. Treating them as infallible or as not prone to flaws doesn't change that.] A small section of students getting extra help proves nothing except that extra help works, to which one can answer, Well, duh. With many students in that 4.5 limbo…..Still, it’s near miraculous to take under-prepared kids and cram 2+ years of curriculum and skills into them. But KIPP schools do tend to draw and keep the most motivated of students and families so that explains much of the “success.”
Let me ask this—How do parents know about the 4.5 option at KIPP? Or at other charter schools? Do they apply for 5th grade? If the school lists its lowest grade as 5, how does a person know that a 4th grader who failed the LEAP will be accepted and accelerated to 6th grade by the end of the year?
Have you ever visited KIPP or spoken to a KIPP Parent? They do not tend to draw motivated kids at all. If anything they do the opposite, to help the underserved. Please do not undermine the success of the KIPP program by suggesting that they hand pick kids that are already great students. They certainly do not. Ask the parents of the many students that attend that were in danger of failing or having emotional or social problems, parents who saw their kids change right before their eyes due to the wonderful hardworking teachers and staff. You are free to attend any of the open enrollment lotteries to see that they take any child no matter what their motivation because they will get motivated at KIPP.
“Many ways of gaming the system are not outright illegal, yet they are usually not openly acknowledged. …A lottery for admission tends to eliminate unmotivated students from the pool of applicants because they are less likely to apply.” (Ravitch 155, 156)
Having a lottery is not the same, KIPPalltheway, as open admission, and “attending” a lottery reveals nothing about the enrollment process of any school. All the selective admission schools in Orleans resort at some point to a lottery [and did when they were magnet schools] yet that reveals nothing about why certain students end up in a desk and others don’t. Following up on the lottery—hell, applying so you can get into the lottery at all—introduces a step that does, like it or not KIPP supporters, eliminate some of the neediest students out there. Does that mean KIPP sucks? No. Does pointing that out mean I hate KIPP? No. It just means it’s not a miracle. It’s also not generally applicable. There are many students and parents who would not or will not fit into the KIPP system/ideology.
KIPP supporters, your cheerleading about KIPP does not nothing. Scores, reports, analyses, etc. deserve far more weight than a supporter’s rah-rah, or 435 supporters’ rah-rahs. If someone has a single perspective on an issue, it can only be assessed a limited value. Students in K-12 are supposed to learn argument, which relies on sources, facts, educated opinions, statistics, valued theories, etc. and not I-like or I-don’t-like or It-did-wonders-for-my-hair. Do not assume my statements and ideas about KIPP, high-stakes standardized testing, education and learning, etc, are plucked from TV commercials, yelling-at-the-school-board lunatics [you know who I am talking about], or homegrown prejudices. I look at multiple facts, not one child or family or school. I am not concerned with some kids who “change[d] right before their [parents'] eyes” and I do not see the value in overworked teachers and staff, which is unsustainable, the one thing Sarah Carr got right in the T-P. Whoever you think is being influenced by my blog, get over yourself. My blog has had and will not have any influence over the continued shredding of public education in NO and the US as a whole or the spread of KIPP. Look around. My years of research, quoting, complaining, debating, exposing has had exactly what motherfucking effect? Huh? Where? ‘Cause I missed it.