KIPP student mobility

KIPP charter schools have captured the attention of educational reformers with their apparent ability to close the academic achievement gap for low-income students and students of color. However, the KIPP network has come under scrutiny around the issue of "student mobility," or those students who leave before promotion from the eighth grade. Critics worry that many students leave, and those who exit are the lowest achievers. In this thesis, I ask—in each grade level—are students who have lower baseline achievement scores at greater risk of non-promotional exit from KIPP middle schools than their higher-performing peers? To address my research question, I use discrete-time survival analysis in a student-grade data set that contains information on 7,023 students who attended one of 16 KIPP middle schools across four geographic regions between SY2000 and SY2009. Ultimately, 29% of KIPP middle school students made non-promotional exits during a three-grade-level span—somewhat lower than previous estimates from KIPP middle schools. Of those who exit, more than half leave during fifth grade, the students' first year at a KIPP middle school. Students who have lower baseline scores are at greatest risk of leaving, especially during this first year. In fact, for two students with baseline scores that differ by one standard deviation, the lower-achieving student has 1.92 times the fitted odds of making a non-promotional exit in fifth grade compared to an average-achieving peer. Students who are retained and return to repeat the same grade level are at lower risk of non-promotional exit than peers who are not retained. Finally, students who attended recently-founded KIPP middle schools are at greater risk of exit than peers who attended more established KIPP schools. This thesis is among the most comprehensive analyses of KIPP middle-school student mobility to date, and the findings have implications for the KIPP organization and the larger school reform community. Most notably, this work demonstrates that KIPP schools should do more to support students who enter with low baseline achievement scores and national policy makers should work to standardize the definition of student mobility.