Low SES students are educable

"Three years after students enroll in KIPP schools, they had 11 more months of math knowledge than their peers, according to the study. The research showed KIPP students had eight more months of reading knowledge, 14 more months of science knowledge, and 11 more months of social studies knowledge."

This is an excerpt from this article about the latest study on KIPP schools. The study was conducted by an independent research firm which compared students in 41 KIPP middle schools to students in local non-KIPP schools. The research firm also compared KIPP lottery winners in 13 oversubscribed schools to non-winners.

The study strongly suggests that educators should not believe - as so many do - that most low SES students are uneducable. The fact that educators are making pilgrimages to Finland, as opposed to KIPP schools, suggests that they are more interested in validating their own ideologies than in finding better ways to reach low SES students.

If education leaders truly cared about their students' welfare, they would be looking into the approaches used in jurisdictions with superior results - for example, KIPP schools and the Asian tigers.