where I offered my reaction to "Waiting for Superman." There is an error in the diary, and the responsibility is mine. It was something I put in almost as an afterthought when talking about charters, and really was not all that relevant to what I needed to say. Let me explain
I made reference to a Mathematica study on KIPP schools because of a recent communication I had received about it from someone normally quite reliable in summarizing data like this. There was a typo and a miscommunication, both of which I would have caught had I actually read the study. The communication to me said that the study showed only 10% of the KIPP schools were performing better than the public schools. The figure should have been 20%, but that is not a fair representation of the study, which only studied about 1/4 of the KIPP schools then in existence, finding 18 of the 22 studied performed better than the public schools. Thus while it would have been correct to say that to date only about 20% of KIPP schools have been shown to outperform public schools, even that statement would have been somewhat deceptive.
There are other concerns with the study, but that does not justify my misrepresentation of it, however unintentional that was.
Since it was not really necessary for the point I was making about charters in general, based on the CREDO study, it would have been better to simply have left the reference out. There are some good schools. There are some in the KIPP organization that are quite good, but unlike other organizations, KIPP allows a fair amount of local control so we will have to wait further until we draw final conclusions about KIPP.
I apologize for my mistake and accept full responsibility. I do not, however, believe that this mistake in any way weakens the overall thrust of my diary. That, however, is for others to decide.
Peace.