“No Excuses” Schools Grapple with the College-Completion Challenge

In this thoughtful article in Education Next, Robert Pondiscio reports on the ferment in “No Excuses” charter schools as they contemplate their impressive but still sub-optimal record for getting their graduates through college. “You can’t play the ingénue forever,” says Pondiscio of KIPP (the Knowledge Is Power Program), which has had “something of a halo” over its success in boosting student achievement, expanding to more than 100 sites, and getting an impressive number of students into college. The release of KIPP’s April 2010 report on college completion painted a different picture. Although KIPP’s 33% college graduation rate (within six years) of its early cohorts of middle-school students was four times higher than the average rate of students from underserved communities and a little above the 31% average for all American students, it was well below KIPP’s goal of a college degree for all its students – “the essential stepping stone to rewarding work, a steady income, self-sufficiency and success.” In fact, two out of three students were not meeting that standard.

So KIPP leaders and their counterparts in Uncommon, Achievement First, YES Prep, Mastery, Aspire, MATCH, and other No Excuses charter networks have been asking what it takes to prepare students for college success. KIPP has identified five factors in raising college-completion rates – in getting students to the point where they say, “I can go to college. It’s gonna be tough, but it’ll be fine. I know what my resources are. I know how to talk to professors and upperclassmen. I know how to navigate the system.” 

• Enhanced academic preparation;
• Character strengths including “grit”, self-control, and optimism;
• Getting each student into a “right match” college;
• Social and academic integration on campus;
• College affordability.

KIPP has 100 full-time staffers doing college counseling and support in its schools, some colleges are doing their part with summer programs for incoming and struggling students, and there is general agreement on the characteristics that prepare a “first-generation” student to make it in college. In addition, there is a growing network of colleges – like Franklin & Marshall in Pennsylvania – that are particularly receptive to No Excuses students and have people and structures to help them succeed.

But the challenge is figuring out how to foster the key student characteristics in the first place. And this is where some schools are tweaking their model. Step one has been expanding into the elementary and high-school level to create a K-12 pipeline. Step two is beefing up the non-cognitive part of student preparation, including teaching the “growth mindset” that intelligence is malleable and with it, motivation and productivity in the face of challenge and adversity. “If they can work through that, their persistence through graduation from college is off the charts,” says Donald Kametz of YES Prep. 

Step three is questioning one part of the classroom approach. “What we’ve found with the ‘whatever it takes’ or ‘no excuses’ mentality is that it was very teacher-driven and less student-driven,” says Kametz. Teachers give demerits or detention for missed assignments and turning in work that’s not “neat and complete.”  He wonders whether this “tough-love” approach undermines the self-advocacy that students will need to make it in college. “It’s the largest gaping hole with our kids in college,” he says. “They will constantly say, ‘You structured my life so much that I had to do very little thinking and structuring myself.’” Michael Goldstein, founder of Boston’s MATCH schools, acknowledges, “We don’t really know of many interventions that change grit significantly. It may be harder to change grit than other things like knowledge.”  

What about the special support students from KIPP and some other schools get once they arrive at college? Shouldn’t they need less support, not more? “If students need an army of college advisory and KIPP staff to act in loco helicopter parentis, just how gritty can they be?” asks Pondiscio. But Richard Barth of KIPP pushes back. Middle-class kids get 50 times that amount, he says, much of it baked into their lives by educated parents who are not intimidated by college and financial-aid applications – and in addition, college tours, SAT test-prep help, tutors, siblings, relatives, and consultants to advise on where to apply and what courses to take. “The safety net is deep and broad,” says Pondiscio. “Perhaps most importantly there is a baseline expectation among the children of the well-off and well-educated: they grew up simply assuming they would go to college.”

Pondiscio tells the story of a KIPP graduate who went to the University of California/ San Diego and struggled in freshman year. “It came crashing down on top of me,” she said. Freshman year was “a big dose of reality.” She did a summer internship with the KIPP Foundation of Chicago and is back on track, using her KIPP schooling and the support she continues to receive. “Nothing is going to keep me from graduating,” she says. “Nothing.”

“‘No Excuses’ Kids Go to College” by Robert Pondiscio in Education Next, Spring 2013 (Vol. 13, 32, p. 8-14), http://educationnext.org/no-excuses-kids-go-to-college/ 

From the Marshall Memo #477