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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think without the ability to expel, KIPP struggles, and the city has been a lot stricter on that in recent years. Again, something a real journalist would be aware of.[/quote]

As an education reporter for an actual newspaper, I am loving comments like this.

No shade on Iglesias. I don’t know him personally but my sense is he’s probably trying to fill a coverage gap and from what I can tell he’s clear in explaining that he’s not a traditional journalist.

But commentary and analysis like his  - while worthwhile its own reasons - isn’t the same as an article from a standards based news organization that incorporates the broader context, as PP rightly notes.

I’m glad at least some people can discern a difference, especially given what’s happening in my profession these days. Appreciate you, PP!

Sorry to hijack the thread with something off topic. Go back to KIPP! 
[/quote]

Are you really a journalist? He's one of the most successful journalists in the country with stints at The Atlantic, Slate, and a founder of Vox. He sucks and is wrong all the time, but to act like you working for some backwater newspaper compares is hilarious.[/quote]

It's more like, he didn't bring his journalist self to this particular article. It's clearly just slapped together from behind-the-laptop analysis with no real research and not much background understanding of the subject matter. Mistakes like not knowing that Chisholm is newly Dual Language are what happens when someone doesn't make an effort to learn background.[/quote]

What really is wrong though? The data is easily confirmed on the OSSE website, the dc school report card site and EmpowerK12 public dashboards.  Is the problem that the analysis is critical of KIPP or of charters? The performance is what it is and it’s bad.

The Washington Post used pretty words to pat KIPP on the back but they also showed the severe decline in a data graph. Seems like the problem isn’t the terrible data, it’s criticizing a charter. A charter that is continuing to suspend and expel at higher rates than the rest of the city and higher rates than it did before the pandemic. But maybe no one cares because the kids being under-served are the historically underserved?

[/quote]

Nobody is saying KIPP's data is actually good. It's just that this isn't a very satisfying article because it doesn't do any deep or interesting analysis of what's wrong. It's just some charts that say KIPP's scores are bad. It offers one possible explanation, leadership instability, which is a fine reason. But it doesn't take into account anything else that might be interesting, and there are so many possibilities. We've talked about discipline data. Other suggestions are: How have KIPP's demographics changed over time, and how have the neighborhoods around KIPP schools changed over time? Are there other policy changes within KIPP such as the decision to offer self-contained classrooms, affecting their scores? What's the middle school math programming-- can't really do a meaningful comparison without considering that. Are any other charter LEAs outliers and are they similar to KIPP, or are they of a different style? What percentage of KIPP's students are actually being reported in these CAPE numbers? Is enrollment going up or down? How are the financials? I'm not saying any one or another of these things is a reason for the performance, they're just suggestions for things I think would make for a good analysis, and they aren't very hard to look up online. Only exploring one potential reason isn't much of an article. The section on accountability doesn't even talk about how KIPP is up for its 25-year review very soon, on March 23. That would be a relevant piece of information, no? I realize that this is just a casual blog, but a major review event coming up in 6 weeks is the kind of thing that deserves mentioning!

Also, the name of the blog "Ten Miles Square" is probably a reference to the dimensions of DC proper. But it's also similar to a consulting firm Ten Square that's very pro-charter. So it can give a misleading impression that there's some sort of connection between them. It would be nice to include a mention that they aren't connected. But Yglesias probably doesn't realize that due to lack of familiarity, or maybe doesn't care. Either way, not a best journalism practice.[/quote]

Can you post some examples of articles that do that level of analysis for DC schools? [/quote]

https://www.empowerk12.org/dc-cape-dashboard
https://www.empowerk12.org/blog
https://www.dcpolicycenter.org/
https://www.dcboldschools.org/

The growth section of DC School Report Card is also very informative.

Another weird thing about his KIPP article is that it didn't acknowledge that many KIPP schools have no CAPE-testing grades at all, so it seems unhelpful to treat KIPP as if all the schools have bad CAPE scores. And the Accountability Score on the School Report Card for KIPP schools varies widely. It's interesting, it's worth thinking about.[/quote]

Definitely worth thinking about. [b]The article mentions that it only compares the ten KIPP campuses that had proficiency data before and after the pandemic. [/b]KIPP has like 15 or 20 campuses.  OSSE provides an accountability scorecard for the entire organization -- that organization-wide report shows students aren't just low, they are not growing as expected or in line with the rest of the city, discipline rates remain high, and other measures are equally troubling. Look at DC Prep on the same OSSE report and they are better on every comparable measure.  Is his reporting perfect? I don't know -- but does it capture that KIPP has collapsed? It does and the data backs up that conclusion.

I'd rather have an article that did more comparison -- what's DC Prep doing for example or deeper analysis on how similar populations are doing in DC or KIPP's response to this data. Or to your point about the range of accountability scores -- KIPP schools median OSSE score is 32, the city is 50. The scores vary as you stated but the range is low. Perhaps he'll go deeper or another journalist will pick up the story. The discipline angle is an interesting one as the data shows that KIPP is suspending at or above the levels it did pre-pandemic. So is it also worse academically and less safe?

I won't hold my breath for better journalism though. We've had no deep DC-specific journalism in a long time and this piece is better than most.[/quote]

Which means that it's excluding the newer KIPP schools if they didn't have proficiency data for pre-pandemic years. Are the newer KIPP schools doing better than the older KIPP schools? Another very interesting question![/quote]

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