High KIPP attrition must be part of San Francisco discussion
by CarolineSF
The KIPP charter school chain, which operates two charter middle schools here in San Francisco, is applying to open a high school. This is a local issue, but relates to similar situations that are widely discussed in other parts of the country.
I’m posting figures on attrition from the existing KIPP middle schools. The number indicates students who left and were not replaced. A 2008 study of the (then-existing) Bay Area KIPP schools by SRI International showed a 60% attrition rate (students who left and were not replaced), and added the information that the students who left were overwhelmingly the lower achievers.
I’m also posting figures from two randomly chosen SFUSD middle schools for comparison. In discussions of the attrition issue, it’s often asked whether the same phenomenon occurs at comparable non-charter public middle schools.
These figures, from the California Department of Education website, are from the 10-day count (10 days into the school year), so they show how many students remained in the
