Our friend Max Brantley over at the Arkansas Times seems to trumpet every marginally negative charter school study story rumor that rolls across his desk, especially if the story appears in the New York Times (charter schools are thriving in NYC by the way).  Yet somehow he missed a screening of a charter school movie playing at the same LR film festival he attended, and he seems to miss most of the positive stories that speak well of charter schools.  So we thought Max and those like him in the state would be happy to hear some more great news about KIPP (see earlier good news about KIPP here), a charter school operator who is expanding in Arkansas.

Mathematica released a report today that takes a close look at academic performance in 22 KIPP middle-schools across the nation. You can find the full report here and the Ed Week article here. The report makes use of a matched longitudinal dataset as well as data from the traditional districts around the KIPP schools to answer several interesting questions.

Do KIPP schools take the best, brightest, and whitest from the traditional public schools? The resounding answer from the report is NO.

We find that students entering these 22 KIPP schools typically had prior achievement levels that were lower than average achievement in their local school districts.
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On average, KIPP middle schools have student bodies characterized by higher concentrations of poverty and racial minorities, but lower concentrations of special education and limitedEnglish proficiency (LEP) students, than the public schools from which they draw.

What about retention? Do KIPP schools simply counsel out those kids who can’t cut it? Again, the data demonstrate that retention rates at KIPP schools do not differ significantly (higher or lower) from the surrounding traditional school districts despite more rigorous monitoring.

Cumulative rates of attrition vary widely in different KIPP schools, but we did not find systematically higher (or lower) levels of attrition among these KIPP middle schools as compared with other schools within their districts. 

However, the report does find a couple of important differences between the KIPP schools and their traditional counterparts. The first difference is that KIPP is more likely to require students to repeat a grade. This finding is meaningful because there is some evidence that retention programs help struggling kids reach higher achievement in the future.

The second difference is that students who attended KIPP schools exhibited higher academic achievement in math and reading across multiple statistical specifications.

Within two years after entry, students are experiencing statistically significant, positive impacts in 18 of 22 KIPP schools in math and 15 of 22 KIPP schools in reading.

Not only are the results positive but they are also statistically significant and meaningfully large. The additional learning accumulated by the average KIPP student over the 3 year study period was equivalent to an additional 1.2 years of learning in math and 0.9 years in reading. To put it another way, the average KIPP school produced gains that would cut the black-white test score gap in half in math and by a third in reading over three years.

Now I’m sure there will still be the Debbie Downers out there who will try to downplay the continued positive findings for KIPP.  Some people just won’t let evidence stand in the way of their beliefs.  But I think we should be heartened that the KIPP model continues to demonstrate success with some of our poorest students.

Others will surely say that KIPP is not a workable solution because it cannot be scaled to help all the kids who might need it.  But I say abandoning KIPP because you believe it cannot be taken to scale is like firemen standing outside an apartment building in a poor neighborhood watching it burn, explaining their inaction by claiming that they could not save everyone.

Helen Ladd and Jacob Vigdor have a new new CALDER Center/NBER working paper looking at how home computers and broadband access help students. (Interestingly, an earlier version of the same paper listed Charles Clotfelter as a third author.)

Turns out that home computers harm students:

Do students’ basic academic skills improve when they have access to a computer at home? Has the introduction of high‐speed internet access, which expands the set of productive tasks for which home computers might be used, caused further improvements? This paper addresses these questions by studying administrative data covering the population of North Carolina public school students between 2000 and 2005, a period when home computer access expanded noticeably, and the availability of home high‐speed internet rose dramatically.

. . .

Models with student fixed effects, which restrict identification to within‐student variation, by contrast, show modest but statistically significant negative impacts. In these models, we can trace the impact of home computer introduction for periods of up to three years; there is no indication that the negative effect of access diminishes over this time period. . . .

Similarly, the introduction of high‐speed internet service is associated with significantly lower math and reading test scores in the middle grades. Moreover, student fixed‐effect specifications reveal that increased availability of high speed internet is associated with less frequent self‐reported computer use for homework. On the margin, then, access to broadband internet appears to crowd out studying effort, presumably by introducing new options for recreational use by students and other family members. In addition, we find that the introduction of broadband internet is associated with widening racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps.

In this video, Sheriff Tim Helder has some strong words to say about Jessie Lunderby’s recent art project.  Sheriff Helder sounds pretty serious about conducting a thorough investigation.  He clearly feels that the incident is an embarrassment to the department.

In order to put this into perspective, recall that two years ago, local incompetence led to Adriana Torres-Flores spending four days in a holding cell down at the Washington County courthouse.  She had no food, no water, and no toilet.  She drank her own urine in order to survive.  What was the result of that incident, you ask?

Was it an embarrassment to the law enforcement of the region?  Just Google Adrian Torres-Flores.  The national media had a heyday with the story, and it added to the perception that southerners don’t treat everyone equally.  Helder and Hunton were even publicly chastised by officials within the Mexican government.

How did Helder respond to the near death caused by the inexcusable negligence of one of his employees?  Well, he made some excuses for him, saying that the bailiff was simply busy and had forgot.  Judge Hunton also avoided saying much that was critical, offering that “The best thing that we can do is to make sure it doesn’t happen to anybody else.”

Ultimately bailiff Jarrod Hankins received a 30-day suspension without pay.  In his own words to local media 40/29, Helder articulated his forgive and forget philosophy:

“I realize some people may have expected Hankins to be terminated, however my philosophy is if an employee makes a mistake while trying their best to perform their duties I will try to salvage them,” Helder said.

It’s already been interesting to see how differently the Sheriff’s department has reacted to Jessie Lunderby’s art project.  The official punishment is expected to be handed down early this week.  I wonder how her punishment will compare to the one given to the guy who nearly killed a woman and caused an international incident.

UPDATE: The Northwest Arkansas TImes had an editorial on Saturday with a simliar (too similar?) take.  See here.

Some Northwest Arkansas prudes are freaking out about a local woman’s art project.  Jessie Lunderby, a 21 year-old Washington County jailer, posed nude (gasp!) for Playboy.com.  You can see the “scandalous” pictures here (fair warning, they include nudity!).

A few local yokels are up in arms, some saying she should be fired.  KHOG has a video story that you can watch here.  The Dem-Gaz covered the story too, but, alas, did not include any of the art.  And we wonder why print media is dying.

I doubt Fayetteville residents actually care that much about what Jessie does in her spare time.  It’s not like Lunderby locked up a Hispanic woman and forgot about her for four days, leaving her without food, water, or a bathroom.  And it’s not like she was secretly watching inmates undress. She was simply producing art in her spare time.

Still, in the 40/29 story, Sheriff Hoyt made it clear that he is against free artistic expression.  Here’s an excerpt:

“Hoyt said they’re conducting an investigation to determine if Lunderby violated any one of two policies — conduct unbecoming or engaging in off-duty employment in an area that’s sexual in nature.”

“It goes against the very things that let people have confidence in our agency,” said Hoyt. “Subscribers can actually pay money, so somebody’s making money on this and money is changing hands. So it is a business and so we feel that that policy has been violated as well.”

Sexual in nature?  Maybe Hoyt should get his mind out of the gutter.  When I looked at the pictures, I saw beautiful works of art.  I guess to some people, it’s only art if it’s 500 years old and painted by an Italian.  Maybe Jessie should’ve posed with some swans.

The state released the 2010 benchmark results yesterday. You can find them here. 

Those who “don’t believe” in tests or think students are being tested to death should probably stop reading now.  You wouldn’t want to gain any knowledge that resulted from torture.

For everyone else, here is the Dem-Gaz article about the results.  And here’s an excerpt.

More Arkansas students scored at grade level or better on the Augmented Benchmark Exams in math and literacy this year as compared to 2009, with two-thirds or more of students scoring at proficient and advanced levels on 11 of the 12 exams.

“We are excited by what we see in these test scores,” said Tom Kimbrell, who became Arkansas’ education commissioner in September. “We’ve got areas we need to focus on, and we’ve got areas in which we can celebrate success.”

Kimbrell said he was most pleased with the continued year-to-year progress in student achievement and, for the fourth year in a row, a narrowing of the achievement gaps among the subpopulations of black, white and Hispanic students.

In conjunction with the Benchmark exams, the Arkansas Department of Education also released the results of state’s 11thgrade literacy test and the Stanford Achievement Test, 10th edition. The Stanford results also showed gains in virtually all categories and particularly strong performances in math.

The Benchmark Exams, which test students’ mastery of state academic standards in grades three through eight, are required by state law and by the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which calls for all students to achieve at grade levels in math and literacy by 2013-14.

The tests are used to identify students who need individual academic improvement plans.

Most state media sources (for example see here and here) are reporting that for the first-quarter of 2010 the Arkansas lottery ranked fifth in the nation in per-capita sales.  La Fleur’s magazine reports that Arkansans have spent an average of $38 per person for the first three months of this year.

I’ve expressed before that I am not a huge fan of the lottery because it is a regressive way for the state to raise money and because the way scholarships are being awarded is a joke (see here and here).

Naturally, fans of the lottery saw the ranking as a wonderful measure of success, while opponents viewed the rankings with disdain.  I think, however, that fans would be even happier, and opponents even more fruistrated, if these numbers were put into context.

Here’s the rankings in order. I have also added the average median income of each state in parantheses:

1. Massachusetts ($65,401)
2. Georgia ($50,861)
3. New York ($56,033)
4. Connecticut ($68,595)
5. Arkansas ($38,815)
6. Tennessee ($43,614)
7. New Jersey ($70,378)
8. Maine ($46,581)
9. South Carolina ($44,625)
10. Pennsylvania ($50,713)

Now, while I don’t know the per-capita numbers for every state (I’ve looked but to no avail), Arkansas sticks out like a sore thumb as the poorest state on this list with the lowest median income.  Some news stories did cite that Connecticutt, at number 4, collected an average of $42 per person during the first quarter.  Compared to Arkansas, that’s only an 11% increase in per-capita sales, but their median income is 77% percent higher than Arkansas’.  Clearly, if we consider lottery sales as a percent of income, Arkansas is doing far better (or worse, depending on your view) than Connecticutt.

If anyone has access to the per-capita numbers for everyone on the top ten list, please weigh in.  It would be interesting to see how we measure up to the other states when relative income levels are added to the mix.

Arkansas has submitted it’s application for Round Two of the Race to the Top grant.  The Dem-Gaz’s coverage can be found here. After finishing only 17th in the first round, it doesn’t appear that the State’s application has changed much, except that the amount of money requested this time is significantly less ($175 million).  Most notably, no changes have been made to Arkansas’ charter school law, which cost the state a significant amount of points in Round One.

The application can be found here.  Winners are to be announced in September.

In a last ditch effort to keep the state money tap flowing, the Little Rock School District (LRSD) filed a motion last month claiming that the state is in violation of the 1989 desegregation settlement because it has approved charter schools in Pulaski County.  Here is the Dem Gaz article. LRSD attorney Chris Heller put it this way:

A key complaint is that the state has “unconditionally” approved independently run, open-enrollment charter schools in Pulaski County, draining students away from traditional public schools and hindering efforts to desegregate the three Pulaski County school districts, said Chris Heller, an attorney for the Little Rock School District.

“The combined impact has been to undermine the student assignment aspect of the 1989 settlement agreement,” he said.

Twenty seven years after the initial suit was filed and twenty one after the settlement agreement, the state continues to pay the three Pulaski County districts a sum just shy of $70 million annually. However, these payments may be coming to an end. The LRSD was released form court monitoring in 2007, and the other two districts will likely be declared unitary in the not so distant future. This seems to have left the LRSD leadership grasping for straws to keep the state payments rolling in, and charter schools seem like as good a scape goat as any.

As we have noted before, the claims made by LRSD simply do not appear to be true. Last week the Office for Education Policy provided more evidence on this point with the release of an updated version of their previous report on racial segregation in Pulaski County schools. You can find the updated report here and the Dem Gaz article about the report here.

Here are some excerpts from that article:

The impact of charter schools on the Little Rock School District is “quite insignificant” because so few Little Rock students transfer to Pulaski County-area charter schools, a new analysis from the University of Arkansas’ Office for Education Policy concludes.

“But if there is any impact at all, it would be one that is actually beneficial for the LRSD,” says the study, which was written by Nathan C. Jensen and Gary Ritter and is a follow-up to a similar study done last year. Ritter is director of the Office for Education Policy, and Jensen is a research associate.

Relatively few Little Rock students leave the district each year for the independently run, taxpayer-supported charter schools, the authors wrote.

*****

This year, 266 students from the Little Rock district transferred to charter schools, which was 1.2 percent of the district’s enrollment in the first through 12th grades. In 2008-09, there were 586 transfers from Little Rock, 2.6 percent. In 2007-08there were 102 transfers, or 0.7 percent.

“We found that a majority of these transfers are enhancing the levels of racial integration for the traditional public schools from which they transferred,” Jensen and Ritter said.

“This is because the majority of transfers involved black students leaving predominately black schools, white students leaving predominately white schools, or [low-income] students leaving predominately high-poverty schools. In all of these cases, the student transfers help the exiting schools because the LRSD TPS [traditional public school] is left less segregated as a result of these student transfers.”

For those who are interested in reading more, here is a more detailed listing of the report’s conclusions taken from the executive summary:

1. What are the general demographic characteristics of charter schools as compared to those of the Little Rock School District?
   • • Charter schools have shown significant growth in enrollment since 2004-05; conversely, the LRSD total enrollment has remained relatively stable in that same time period.
   • • Students enrolled in charter schools are more white than students in the LRSD and Pulaski County TPS (41.8% in charters, 21.8% in LRSD, and 33.0% in Pulaski County TPS). While there are more black students than white students in charter schools, when compared to the LRSD and Pulaski County TPS there are less black students (44.8% in charters, 68.0% in LRSD, and 58.4% in Pulaski County TPS). However, the overall racial composition of charter schools reflects more equal proportions of black and white students than LRSD and Pulaski County schools.
   • • There are fewer economically disadvantaged (as measured by FRL eligibility) students in charter schools (38.0%) than in the comparison Pulaski County TPS (63.3%).
2. Are charter schools in Pulaski County more or less segregated (racially and economically) than traditional public schools in the Little Rock School District?
   • • More black students in charter schools attend school in a hyper-segregated black environment (20.4% in charters and 10.7% in LRSD TPS). Conversely, more minority students in LRSD TPS attend school in a hyper-segregated minority environment (28.8% in charters and 52.4% in LRSD TPS).
   • • 26.4% of LRSD students eligible for FRL attend school in hyper-segregated FRL environments compared to none of the charter students.
   • • Neither charter schools nor LRSD TPS have racial compositions that are similar to that of Pulaski County. Both differ by roughly 20 percentage points in the percentage of minority students. However, LRSD TPS are more similar with regard to the percentage of students in Pulaski County eligible for FRL.
   • • More students in charter schools are enrolled in integrated school environments (40.4%) than their LRSD TPS peers (26.3%).
3. Where do students transferring to charter schools come from, and what are the racial and economic characteristics of these students?
   • • Since 2005-06, 31% of students who transferred to charter schools came from the LRSD. The rest were students from other TPS, private schools, other states, or home-schoolers. There are more black students transferring to charters than white students. But when compared to their LRSD peers, students who transferred to charter schools are more white (28.2% in charters, 21.8% in LRSD) and less black (59.8% in charters, 68.0% in LRSD).
   • • Similarly, 52.3% of students transferring to charters are eligible for FRL, compared to 68.1% of LRSD students.
   • • However, in the past two school years, the percentage of charter transfers eligible for FRL has been 52.2% and 52.3% respectively. This percentage has increased from 16.9% in 2005-06.
4. What impact do transfers to charter schools from the Little Rock School District have on the level of segregation in the Little Rock traditional public schools in which these students were previously enrolled?
   • • Overall, white students transferring from the LRSD to charter schools tend to leave LRSD TPS that have an above-average percentage of white students. As a result, these transfers likely have a positive impact on the racial balance of the exited LRSD TPS.
   • • Similarly, more black students leave schools with above-average percentages of black students; again, it is likely that these transfers overall have a positive impact on the racial balance of the LRSD TPS.
   • • Overall, 44.1% of the charter transfers from 2006-07 to 2009-10 involved black students leaving disproportionately black schools or white students leaving disproportionately white schools; 38.3% of the transfers were from schools that were integrated. Thus, it seems reasonable to conclude that the transfers to charters are having a neutral, or even a positive effect on racial integration in LRSD TPS.
   • • FRL students also primarily leave LRSD TPS with high percentages of FRL students. These transfers likely have a positive impact on the level of economic integration in the LRSD TPS.
5. Are students transferring to charter schools entering into more or less segregated school environments?
   • • White students enter into charter schools that have a higher percentage of white students than their previous schools (37.4% to 40.4% in 2009-10); however, the charter schools they entered had a more equal proportion of white and black students.
   • • Black students transfer into charter schools with a lower percentage of black students than the LRSD TPS in which they were previously enrolled (70.7% to 67.1% in 2009-10).
   • • However, these differences are quite small. Students who transfer to charter schools attend schools that have racial compositions similar to those of the schools they left.
   • • All students, both FRL and non-FRL, are more likely to enter into charter schools with substantially fewer FRL students.

A new documentary by Oscar-winning filmmaker Davis Guggenheim (who made An Inconvenient Truth and It Might Get Loud) is promising to ask some tough questions about America’s schools.  According to the film’s website, Guggenheim “follows a handful of promising kids through a system that inhibits, rather than encourages, academic growth…Guggenheim undertakes an exhaustive review of public education, surveying drop-out factories and academic sinkholes, methodically dissecting the system and its seemingly intractable problems.”

A friend of mine who attended an advance screening of the film tells me that it’s excellent.  Here’s a trailer:

There’s no guarantee that the movie will play in Nortwest Arkansas when it opens this fall, but taking the pledge below surely couldn’t hurt.

Fayetteville voters overwhelmingly approved the proposed change for HMR tax revenues, by a margin of 81% to 19%.  Mayor Jordan was quoted in today’s paper saying that “This will help us in our general fund.”  In the coming months, we’ll keep tabs on general fund spending and spending on park development.  As we have said before, changing the park development portion of the HMR tax was a tradeoff.  It meant that park development funds could be diverted to park maintenance, and as a result general fund revenues could be spent on other things.  Since Fayetteville’s politicians never spelled out what those tradeoffs specifically entailed, it will be interesting when we find out.

The ballot language was horribly misleading.  Taken at face value, it apppeared that one was either voting for park “development, construction and maintenance” or against park “development, construction and maintenance.”  In truth, the only choice being decided yesterday concerned ”maintenance.”  Intentionally misleading?  Almost certainly.  But, I expect it would have passed anyway.