Andrew Rotherham turns in a nice column for Time magazine in which he reports on the findings of a study of the rates of college completion by graduates of the Knowledge is Power Program. The results: 33 percent of pupils who graduated from a KIPP middle school at least ten years ago have also since graduated from a four-year college. It's important to remember, of course, that 95 percent of KIPP students are black or Latino and most are from low-income families; among similar students (black or Latino, and low-income) nationwide, only 8 percent have bachelor's degrees. So though KIPP has failed to meet its goal?75 percent college completion? and failed by a lot, it has nonetheless done well, comparatively.
That is not how KIPP chooses to see it, however. In fact, what's most astounding about this study may well be the refusal of the KIPP brass to twist or spin its findings in any way.? The organization runs middle schools. It could easily have noted that 95 percent of KIPP graduates also graduate high school, which is an unqualified marvel. It might have pointed out that 89 percent of its alumni matriculate at college and that, frankly, the effectiveness of a network of middle schools really shouldn't be determined by college graduation rates. But no. KIPP has, as Rotherham writes, not moved ?the goal posts on its own targets for success,? and it has ?owned ?the outcomes for its graduates? regardless of outside factors beyond the organization's control.
And yet. Thirty-three percent is not 75 percent. How will KIPP meet its immobile aspiration? ?The number one thing we have to own is rigor,? KIPP CEO Richard Barth told Rotherham. He wants to get to kids earlier ?and stay with them longer? in order to ?really demonstrate what's possible.? He also hopes to encourage more KIPP kids to look closely at colleges where the graduation rates of low-income and minority pupils?of?all pupils, really?are high. It remains to be seen, of course, whether such initiative will yield success.
The common complaint about KIPP is that it is a bright, burnished organization that attracts both talent and philanthropic dollars to its schools, that it accepts and retains only the low-income, minority pupils who and whose parents are willing to sign a rigid academic contract and adhere to it, and thus that its successes, however impressive, are diminished by their inapplicability to the nation's larger educational system. This is a bizarre bit of reasoning?essentially, "all or nothing"?that seems unfortunately endemic to and persistent in many education-related debates. It simply cannot be defended. KIPP's triumphs are worth appreciating regardless of whether they offer lessons for American public education overall. But the lessons are there, too. In the organization's seeming discomfort with politics and in its true commitment, as Barth put it, to ?dig in? to help students succeed, it can be an example for an educational community whose efforts are too frequently focused on less crucial or pertinent matters. KIPP can and does play hardball when it must. But it does so, one thinks, with its central purpose never far from mind. The differences in education are real. They should be expressed and argued. But without the unfortunate film of dishonesty, the tallying of even the most insignificant wins and losses that regrettably often accompany all that.