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NYC Charters Retain Students Better Than Traditional Schools
WNYC | 3/15/2016

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

Data from charter schools and traditional public schools in New York City shows that a lower percentage of students transfer out of charter schools than traditional public schools. The data from the New York City Department of Education were analyzed by WNYC.

Citywide, across all grades, 10.6 percent of charter school students transferred out in 2013-14, compared to 13 percent of traditional public school students. But there is wide variety among these schools and among the different networks. You can see all of our data here.

Among the larger charter networks — those with four or more schools — the Icahn, Kipp and Uncommon charter school networks had the lowest attrition rates in elementary school grades when compared to traditional schools in the same school district for the 2013-14 school year.

An earlier study published by Education Next investigated the claim that KIPP charter schools were only able to achieve high scores because of student attrition.

According to that study’s authors, Ira Nichols-Barrer, Brian P. Gill, Philip Gleason and Christina Clark Tuttle,

We find 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. new

— Education Next