Fact checking Bill Gates and his statistics about KIPP Charter schools.

[madfloridian]

According to a post at Schools Matter, Bill Gates made an error about KIPP charter. The blogger suggests the Harvard Gazette do the research and correct it.

Dear Harvard Gazette: Please Fact Check Bill Gates

Bill Gates has a lot of money to give away in ways that shape the world in the image of Bill Gates. Microsoft received $12 billion in tax breaks between 1996 and 2000, and between 2000 and 2002, Microsoft's tax rate was 1.8% on almost $22 billion of pre-tax profits (Anyon, 2005). So Gates has lots and lots of money, certainly enough to turn the heads of Harvard's reporters, sent out to do a gush on the oligarch's visit yesterday.

Gates, it seems, is doing a five campus tour (the Ivys?) preaching the virtues of Teach for America and KIPP.

Here is Gates' statement he made there at Harvard:

“Every time I get discouraged,” he told one questioner later, “I go to a KIPP school and say: This can be done.” KIPP stands for the Knowledge is Power Program, a network of college-preparatory U.S. public schools that Gates said now number 82 — and that send 95 percent of their graduates to four-year colleges.

Gates is apparently quoting what Jonathan Alter wrote in Newsweek in 2008, which was true then and is not true now.

So Gates has upped the ante on the lie that Jonathan Alter wrote in Newsweek in 2008 about 80 percent of 16,000 KIPP students going to college. What Caroline Grannan found out from KIPP, Inc.'s home office at that time is that only 447 KIPPsters had entered college when Alter wrote that lie. And now Gates's figure of 95% going to college. Pure fabrication. Does the Harvard Gazette bother to fact check public education's greatest philanthropic enemy?

Here is more on the debunking done previously by Caroline Grannan of the SF Examiner.

Debunking yet another false claim about KIPP alumni and college

A letter in today's San Francisco Chronicle claims that "thousands" of alumni of the KIPP charter school chain have become the first in their families to graduate from college.

This is a brand-new false claim for KIPP. The usual false claim for KIPP is that thousands of its students have started college, which isn't true either. Actually, KIPP runs almost all middle schools and has only been running a few long enough to have their graduates finish high school and go to college. I pinned them down on the number after Newsweek wrote in July 2008 that 12,800 KIPP graduates had gone on to college.

The actual number of KIPP alumni who had started college, KIPP spokesman Steve Mancini said at that time, was 447. Again, that's the number of KIPP graduates who had started college by 2008. (KIPP claims to track them carefully even though of course they're long gone from KIPP by that time.)

Needless to say, it's wildly untrue that thousands have graduated from college. It may become true in the future, and for those students' sake I hope it does -- but of course if possible future news could be printed as fact, the morning paper would get really interesting.

She actually contacted the KIPP spokeman and got the facts. Yet Bill Gates is expanding on all those untruths from Newsweek in 2008. That's a shame.

In fact as Schools Matter points out as well today....if a public school had that record it would be to their shame.

KIPP Delta's Student Loss Rate 3 to 4 Times Higher Than Helena Public Schools

He quotes the Arkansas Times:

. . . .The KIPP Delta College Preparatory Academy in Helena-West Helena reports, according to state Education Department figures, a “student loss” rate in the eighth and ninth grade that is between three and four times that of the Helena-West Helena School District. The “student loss” occurring at KIPP would be a scandal if it took place at a regular public school, but charter schools seem to remain under the radar when it comes to serious scrutiny. This process leaves the KIPP schools with only the most dedicated students and parents, while the rest go back to public schools. . .

Charter schools get only the best coverage from the big media. Public school positive coverage is limited to a handful of bloggers.

How in the world did that happen?