The Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) is the nation's largest network of public charter schools. KIPP began as a network of charter middle schools designed to serve underserved communities, with the goal of closing achievement gaps and preparing students to succeed in college. KIPP has since expanded its model to include elementary and high…

The charter school sector plays an important role in efforts to reform the education system and better serve the nation's public school students. To help understand this role, more than a decade ago the National Evaluation of Charter Middle Schools examined how admission to about 30 charter middle schools affected students' achievement. On…

This issue brief presents results of a long-term tracking study that follows 1,177 students who applied to enter 1 of 13 oversubscribed KIPP [Knowledge Is Power Program] middle schools through a 5th- or 6th-grade admissions lottery in 2008 or 2009. Those students are now old enough to have attended college for at least two years. This study uses a…

In this report, the authors present the results of a long-term tracking study that follows 1,177 students who applied to enter 1 of 13 oversubscribed Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) middle schools through a 5th or 6th grade admissions lottery in 2008 or 2009. Those students are now old enough to have attended college for at least two years. This…

Skeptics of the KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) charter school network argue that these schools rely on selective admission, attrition, and replacement of students to produce positive achievement results. We investigate this using data covering 19 KIPP middle schools. On average, KIPP schools admit students disadvantaged in ways similar to other…

The Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) is a network of charter schools designed to improve the educational opportunities available to low-income families. KIPP schools seek to boost their students' academic achievement and ultimately prepare them to enroll and succeed in college. To achieve these objectives, KIPP schools leverage strong…

The Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) charter schools' consistently positive impacts on student achievement (detailed in Volume I of this report) have prompted efforts to scale up the KIPP model to serve more students. According to the KIPP model, highly qualified and autonomous principals, supported by national and regional staff, drive the…

This paper draws on data and experiences observing and analyzing school lotteries from the National Evaluation of Charter School Impacts (Gleason et al., 2010) to describe the challenges associated with lottery-based research. In that study, covering 36 charter middle schools in 15 states, we found that charter schools did not affect student…

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are widely considered to be the gold standard in evaluating the impacts of a social program. When an RCT is infeasible, researchers often estimate program impacts by comparing outcomes of program participants with those of a nonexperimental comparison group, adjusting for observable differences between the two…

As a condition of its i3 grant, KIPP contracted with an independent evaluator (Mathematica) to address a key research question: does KIPP maintain its demonstrated effectiveness as it scales? While this question sounds simple enough in theory, it poses several methodological and practical challenges. This paper outlines some of those key…

KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) is a national network of public charter schools whose stated mission is to help underserved students enroll in and graduate from college. Prior studies (see Tuttle et al. 2013) have consistently found that attending a KIPP middle school positively affects student achievement, but few have addressed longer-term…

KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) is a national network of public charter schools whose stated mission is to help underserved students enroll in and graduate from college. Prior studies (see Tuttle et al. 2013) have consistently found that attending a KIPP middle school positively affects student achievement, but few have addressed longer-term…

KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) is a national network of public charter schools whose stated mission is to help underserved students enroll in and graduate from college. Prior studies (see Tuttle et al. 2013) have consistently found that attending a KIPP middle school positively affects student achievement, but few have addressed longer-term…

This paper presents findings from the first national randomized study of the impacts of charter schools on student achievement, which included 36 charter middle schools across 15 states. The paper compares students who applied and were admitted to these schools through randomized admissions lotteries with students who applied and were not…

The Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) is a network of charter schools designed to improve the educational opportunities available to low-income families. KIPP schools seek to boost their students' academic achievement and, ultimately, prepare them to enroll and succeed in college. This paper provides the most thorough analysis to date of the…