Expert touts charter school system at Pitt

For the last decade, select middle schools and high schools around the nation, including four… For the last decade, select middle schools and high schools around the nation, including four schools in Pennsylvania, have implemented the Knowledge is Power Program with the aim of improving minority students’ test scores and graduation rates.

Philip Gleason, a senior fellow at Mathematica Policy Research, a social policy evaluation and development company, came to Pitt on Tuesday to discuss the programwith about 50 members of Pitt’s School of Social Work. His visit is the third in a monthly series of lectures hosted by the School of Social Work. During his lecture, he outlined ways to improve performance among minority and low-income students nationwide.

Ralph Bangs, co-director of the School of Social Work, said the goal of the lecture was to publicize the program and inform college students about ongoing efforts to improve minority education.

And although the Knowledge is Power Program does not directly impact university students, Bangs said the program can serve as a model for students looking to get involved with education reform and racial problems.

Gleason said the Knowledge is Power Program, developed in 2001, has been successful in bridging the gap in both test scores and high-school graduation rates nationwide. The program works by moving promising minority students into a network of charter schools.

There are 99 such charter schools around the nation. Sixty of them are middle schools, 24 are elementary schools and 15 are high schools. About 26,000 students are currently enrolled in Knowledge is Power Program schools.

More than 90 percent of Knowledge is Power Program students are black, Hispanic or Latino, according to the program’s website.

Gleason’s organization started working with Knowledge is Power Program administrators in 2007, evaluating the test scores and graduation rates of 22 Knowledge is Power Program-affiliated schools and comparing them to public schools in the same districts.

Compared to public school students, Knowledge is Power Program students showed improved performance in both reading and math.

Gleason said 18 of the 22 program’s schools examined showed “statistically significant” improvement in their average math scores, and only one of the remaining four showed negative changes. Fifteen of the 22 program schools showed statistically significant improvement in their reading scores as well, and again, only two of the remaining seven schools had any negative results.

These improvements, Gleason said, are equivalent to 1.2 additional years of math instruction and 0.9 additional years of reading instruction.

Another method for improving classroom performance among minority students is to decrease the student-faculty ratio in schools, Gleason said. He referred to a class-size reduction experiment in which a Knowledge is Power Program-affiliated school in Tennessee started holding classes with fewer students and saw positive results.

Since the experiment, New York City charter schools have instituted policies aimed at reducing the student-faculty ratio and showed similar improvements to those in Knowledge is Power Program schools with reduced ratios. Boston charter schools have implemented similar policies and shown even more improvement in test scores.

One question raised during the lecture was whether or not these improvements suggest that Knowledge is Power Program middle schools could truly eliminate the “black-white test score gap,” as Gleason called it.

Gleason responded by saying that, right now, the Knowledge is Power Program is still too small to have this much effect on minority education, but added that the Knowledge is Power Program Foundation plans on nearly doubling its student base from 26,000 to 55,000 by 2015.

Perhaps then, Gleason said, the Knowledge is Power Program will be able to come closer to finally bridging that gap.