New KIPP Study Flawed
The preliminary findings of a new study of KIPP schools were released this week by Mathematica Policy Research, the company contracted by KIPP, Inc. to conduct this longitudinal examination of the KIPP’s effects on student test scores. To no one’s surprise, these new finding show KIPP students have higher test scores than students from a matched group of public schools. In fact,
. . .the black-white test score gap in math is typically estimated as approximately onestandard deviation at fourth grade and eighth grade (Bloom et al. 2008). Half of these KIPP schools are producing impacts large enough to cut that gap in half within three years (p. xv).
So what does this study tell us that we did not already know, since KIPP’s high test scores have been