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.