Thoughts on the Upcoming Charter School Vote

Normal disclaimer that this is my personal blog and I don't officially speak for KIPP Philadelphia.

As a resident of Philadelphia and a parent, I appreciate the real challenges facing the School District and the decision the SRC has to approve or deny new charter applications. The budget disaster is mostly caused by a lack of funding from the state and makes it really hard for the district to do lots of things they wish they could. It's a huge issue I've written about and understandably colors the charter approval process. But if you listen to some advocates recently, you would think there are no charters worthy of approval and that's just not true. While some schools applying don't serve high need students or don't serve them well, you can't reasonably make that case about KIPP Philadelphia. While we are always looking to do better for our students, we know that we serve all kids and serve them well at KIPP Philly. Some quick examples of our results:

Our students

This year 86% of our student qualify for free/reduced lunch (76% free)

Over 20% of our students have IEPs. At our elementary school where I am the principal, we have students with Down Syndrome, autism, and intellectual disabilities, as well as many students with more minor challenges. 

Our student attrition is low, with a 6% student attrition rate using the SDP's methodology of September though June of a single year. 

At our elementary school, our kindergarten through 3rd grade cohort retention rate was 93%, which was significantly higher than the 61% number for schools in NYC schools (no data like this exists in Philadelphia).

Our results

Our middle school in West Philadelphia (KWPP) had an SPP of 74, which is higher than all but 2 district schools with more than +80% free/reduced lunch.

At our North Philadelphia middle school (KPCS), 76% of our 8th graders passed the math PSSA. Only 2 district schools had over 80% free/reduced lunch and had a higher PSSA score than we had at KPCS.

Last year was the first time our elementary school had students old enough to take the PSSA. Of the almost 150 SDP elementary schools, only 5 had more than 80% of students qualifying for free/reduced lunch and scored higher on the 3rd grade math test. In reading, it was only 7 schools serving a similar population who had higher scores.

At our high school (KDCA), every single student takes the ACT and our scores are comparable or even surpass some of the best open-enrollment SDP high schools like Bodine and Girls.   

Our original students at KIPP aren't old enough to have graduated from college, but nationally, students at KIPP are 5 times more likely to graduate college than their low-income peers.

We have also been a leader in transparency with our Open Book section of our website and our enrollment practices have been held up by the district and the Education Law Center as models for other charter to emulate.

While Donna Cooper is right that we don't want to harm one child by helping another, the status quo right now means tens of thousands of kids in Philadelphia are in low-performing schools. By doing nothing and rejecting even high-quality charter schools, we are causing them continued harm. The SRC can make targeted approvals of the best charter applicants committed to serving high-need students and help more climb the mountain to and through college.

Some student attrition data

Eva Moskowitz from Success Academies wrote an op-ed this morning about charter school enrollment and attrition data. She uses interesting attrition data for NYC charters and district schools that we don't have here in Philadelphia. The budget office in NYC looked at what percent of students present for kindergarten were still in that school 4 full school years later (day 1 of 3^rd grade).

The average for charters was 70% and district schools was 61% - which obviously is a huge piece of evidence against those who attribute academic gains in charters to kicking out students. 

I was curious what our results at KPEA would be like since while we know we have very low student attrition each year (<4%) it can actually be tough to visualize this over time for one cohort of kids.

Our founding class is now in 4th grade so I looked at how many of the 75 student present when they started kindergarten in August of 2010 were with us last year on the first day of 3rd grade. Of those original students, 70, or 93% were still at KPEA. 18 months later, as we head to the end of 4th grade and those students' time at KPEA, we have 88% of our original students will with us. Looking at the NYC data, that makes us feel really good about the number of students we have kept with us and what that means for our ability to deliver on promises we make to families at their kindergarten home visit.

Of the 9 students who have left our founding class over 5 years, 6 of them moved outside of Philadelphia and by law have to be dropped from our roster. Another student left to attend an elite private school for 4th grade. The other two left for other schools in Philadelphia, for example, one that has a focus on the arts, but both families actually continue to have siblings at KIPP. We have also backfilled all of our spots, including taking in new 4th graders this year.