Behind the Headline: KIPP Charter School Students Show Lasting Achievement Gains, Study Finds

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KIPP Charter School Students Show Lasting Achievement Gains, Study Finds
Houston Chronicle | 9/17/15

Behind the Headline
Does Student Attrition Explain KIPP’s Success?
Education Next| Fall 2014

A new study by Mathematica examines how the KIPP charter network fared during a period of rapid growth, when enrollment in KIPP schools roughly doubled to 68,000 students after the network received a $50 million expansion grant from the U.S. Department of Education in 2010.

The study found that test scores for KIPP students have continued to increase, but that gains have not been as rapid as they were in the period before the massive expansion.

[KIPP co-founder Mike] Feinberg said he’d like to see students at new schools show improved performance faster, but he cautioned that building schools is a long-term effort.

“For us, this has never been a sprint. This is about making and keeping sacred promises to children’s families,” he said. “Growth is hard, and I’m glad we were able to keep the promises, no matter the year.”

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A separate study published in the Fall 2014 issue of Education Next investigated whether the apparent success of KIPP schools is due to student attrition.

That study found that “on average, KIPP middle schools admit students who are similar to those in other local schools, and patterns of student attrition are typically no different at KIPP than at nearby public middle schools.”

– Education Next

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