KIPP DC Charters Schools

KIPP leaders unworried by test score drop

Fifth grade scores dropped this year at the KIPP DC charter schools. Some people wondered if the Knowledge Is Power Program’s long record of raising D.C. student achievement was in jeopardy. The woman who created KIPP DC seems unworried. She has already made a change that may drive some average scores even lower next year.

With eight schools, more space and scores still among the highest in the city, Susan Schaeffler and her teachers appear as devoted to experimentation as they were when I visited the first KIPP school in a Southeast Washington church basement in 2001. With available space in a new building on Benning Road in Southeast, Schaeffler added fourth graders to what had been a fifth to eighth grade middle school.

The reading proficiency rate for KIPP DC fifth graders dropped from 51 to 41 percent and the math proficiency rate from 72 to 51 percent last year. Schaeffler shrugs this off as random chance, something that has happened before when fifth graders arrive at KIPP with lower grade levels than the previous year’s class. As a whole, KIPP DC students are still advancing from typical urban achievement levels to much higher suburban levels by the end of eighth grade.

With the new load of fifth graders plus the fourth graders, Schaeffler anticipates an increased number of low-performing students that may again depress average scores. She expects those students to respond eventually to the KIPP formula of well-selected and trained teachers and longer school days and years.

Then the KIPP culture may begin to shift.

The network has 99 schools in 20 states and the District. It was started by two Houston teachers in their twenties who began with a fifth grade because that was what they were teaching at time. KIPP became the favorite of politicians, editorial writers and low-income parents for its strong rules for behavior, more time for learning, imaginative teaching and success at preparing students for good high schools and then college.

It also became known for middle schoolers walking in silent lines when they changed classes and quick punishment (usually isolation from friends) for students who teased other students or failed to pay attention in class. Internet critics said KIPP expelled many low-performing students to keep test scores up, but that was false. Last year only 1 percent of KIPP DC middle schoolers were expelled, almost entirely for having weapons or drugs on campus. KIPP retained a no-nonsense reputation, however, which may be about to change a bit.

KIPP has been opening elementary schools, 24 nationally and three in the District. In a few years most KIPP fourth and fifth graders will arrive already at or above grade level. The hard work of raising whole classes of middle schoolers who are two or three years behind will be unnecessary. Some of the tougher rules may fade.

Most of the fifth graders at the original KIPP middle school in Houston arrived this year well prepared by their years at KIPP SHINE, the network’s first elementary school. KIPP national spokesman Steven Mancini says they are “more relaxed, and a little more cocky” than newly arrived KIPP fifth graders usually are.

At the other end of the K-12 spectrum, KIPP has been adding high schools, including KIPP DC: College Prep. It is into its second year at the renovated Frederick Douglass School building in Southeast. Schaeffler and KCP principal Cheryl Borden say they have much work to do. Last year, Schaeffler says, they did not hire enough teachers to address the differences between students who had attended KIPP middle schools and non-KIPP newcomers unused to the high expectations.

Like the fifth graders in Houston, the KIPP DC high schoolers are allowed more freedom. “Seeing kids walking the halls talking to each other, that took me a while to get used to,” Schaeffler says. Those who earn 3.2 grade point averages can even leave school an hour early.

But that has proven a weak incentive. The students are so used to nine hours of school a day that if feels too weird to cut out at 3:30 p.m. They prefer to stay after school with their friends, and make sure they, and KIPP, don’t lose their edge.

Jay Matheus

The Washington Post