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KIPP schools can't be replicated to help all urban students but the numbers of KIPP schools can be increased more than they are now. The bigger problem with KIPP right now is that some of them have a lot of attrition so you know they're not serving ALL students.

Among the points the article does not make are the following:

• Student attrition rates at KIPP schools are extremely high.

• Geoffrey Canada, founder of the Harlem Childrens’ Zone project (which the Obama Administration has said it wants to provide funding to replicate in other cities), considered seriously at one point, and rejected, bringing in KIPP to run his project’s middle school. The reason: he felt KIPP’s vision was, unlike his, not fully inclusive of all Harlem children, the neediest included. Canada is highly critical of the neighborhood public schools in Harlem.

• The recent Stanford/CREDO study found that rates of improvement in student achievement in charter schools were worst in those states with the largest numbers of charter schools.

• The claim that the charter school movement is “improving education across America” is not substantiated.

• Staff turnover rates at charter schools are high, calling into question the sustainability of the positive results some of them have attained.

• There is growing evidence suggesting that only about 5% of all charter school students nationally are students with disabilities, substantially lower than the percentage of students with disabilities at neighborhood (“regular”) public schools.

• Charter schools attended by affluent families sometimes have plush facilities and budgets supported by substantial non-public funds (charter schools are not required to disclose even the amounts publicly, and typically don't), while charter schools attended by poor families that are not part of a national “chain” are often hard-pressed to find adequate facilities and, depending on the state’s funding formula, adequate operating funds.

Here's a thought: instead of bullying any state that doesn't want to have its Race-to-the-Top application tossed in the trash upon receipt to raise its charter school caps, regardless of whether they have sound reasons for their current approach or not, why not require states to collect student attrition rates from all of their charter schools and report that data publicly?

That might represent a helpful step in the direction of walking the accountability-on-charters walk. If policymakers and the public don't have such data how can they render a balanced, sound judgement about what we're getting for our money with charter expansion? I find it puzzling that, evidently, none of the very smart and well-intentioned people at the Department have even expressed a desire to know this information before hopping on the charter school express full bore.

To his credit, Secretary Duncan recently challenged KIPP (which currently seems to be regarded as the gold standard when it comes to charter school quality) in particular to get into the school “turnaround business”, which they have so far refrained from doing.

My intent here is to try to introduce a “truth in advertising” response to inflated claims coming from prominent charter school advocates, which may be leading policymakers and members of the public to have overly high expectations for the benefits likely to come out of charter expansion as currently proposed. I don't see much chance of the hype translating into the hoped-for results without much more effective attention to ensuring accountability for quality and fiscal integrity.

Sorry for the long comment. Not much reality to the discussion over charter school expansion these days, though.

Wow, Anonymous--Thanks for the comment!

It seems like the Stanford/CREDO study has actually prompted many supporters of charter schools to temper their claims. Unfortunately, many members of the media don't seem to believe in "truth in advertising."

Mike Petrilli's recent commentary suggesting that traditional educators and charter school educators are essentially struggling with the same problems--and that reformers have to face difficult realities when they become the new establishment--suggests that, with time, the silver-bullet claims will become even less supportable.

By the way--I've seen references to some of the data you cite in other places, but I don't know where the sources are. Are there one or two reliable sources you can point to? For example, the KIPP attrition data I'm familiar with come from California Bay-area schools. Are there reliable data on other KIPP schools? David Whitman suggests in his book that their attrition rates are low. Perhaps there should be stronger efforts to track attrition rates, why students leave, and where they go.

The media merely echo Secretary Duncan and self-proclaimed "reformers." There is sufficient variability in both charter schools and non-charter schools that one can readily cherry-pick "successes" in both charters and non-charters. But these rely on selection of students and/or school personnel that are not replicable.

Some students acquire academic rudiments with little or no formal instruction, others manage to cope despite mal-instruction. Prevailing testing practice credits these accomplishments to the school and attributes the remaining failures to the students, their parents, or "society."