Another Research Study Showing KIPP's Large Funding Advantages, Both Public and Private

It's no secret that the segregated KIPP testing camps have been viewed as the final urban education solution ever since Feinberg and Levin trotted out a group behaviorally-altered and culturally-scrubbed children onto the stage at the National Republican Convention in 2000.

Just as white philanthropists of the early 20th Century eagerly supported the  learning chain gangs of the industrial training schools that began with Hampton and Tuskegee (documented by James Anderson), modern day philanthrocapitalists (Fisher, Gates, Broad, Waltons) came knocking on KIPP's corporate door with bags of tax-sheltered cash, following the KIPPster performance in 2000.

As did the federal government under both Bush and Obama.  This is from Sam Dillon at the NYTimes in March 2011, which focused on a new study by Gary Miron and colleagues documenting large financial advantages by KIPP:

. . . .The Department of Education last year awarded KIPP a $50 million grant to finance its growth.

In the study, “What Makes KIPP Work? A Study of Student Characteristics, Attrition and School Finance,” Gary Miron and two other Western Michigan researchers note that KIPP’s academic achievements have been well-documented in previous research.

Instead, they said their goal was to examine the network’s methods and model to see whether they could be replicated widely. Among other findings, the study concludes that KIPP schools enjoy significant financial advantages over traditional public schools.

By analyzing Department of Education databases for the 2007-8 school year, the researchers calculated that the KIPP network received $12,731 in taxpayer money per student, compared with $11,960 at the average traditional public school and $9,579, on average, at charter schools nationwide.

In addition, KIPP generated $5,760 per student from private donors, the study said, based on a review of KIPP’s nonprofit filings with the Internal Revenue Service.

The study does not offer an explanation for why KIPP schools would get more government financing than regular public schools.

“We can’t explain it, but that’s what the data shows,” Dr. Miron said. . . .

Now another study has been published by Bruce Baker, Ken Libby, and Kathryn Wiley, which is entirely consistent with what Miron found. From the Executive Summary (my bold):

We find that in New York City, KIPP, Achievement First and Uncommon Schools charter schools spend substantially more ($2,000 to $4,300 per pupil) than similar district schools. Given that the average spending per pupil was around $12,000 to $14,000 citywide, a nearly $4,000 difference in spending amounts to an increase of some 30%. In Ohio, charters across the board spend less than district schools in the same city. And in Texas, some charter chains such as KIPP spend substantially more per pupil than district schools in the same city and serving similar populations, around 30 to 50% more in some cities (and at the middle school level) based on state reported current expenditures, and 50  ii to 100% more based on IRS filings. Even in New York where we have the highest degree of confidence in the match between our IRS data and Annual Financial Report Data, we remain unconvinced that we are accounting fully for all charter school expenditures. 

Baker, B.D., Libby, K., & Wiley, K. (2012). Spending by the Major Charter Management Organizations: Comparing charter school and local public district financial resources in New York, Ohio, and Texas. Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. Retrieved [date] from http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/spending-major-charter