Background/Context: Over the past five decades, policymakers have introduced Public-Private Partnership (PPP) programs in education as a reform in the presence of "government failure," aiming to increase the freedom of school choice, educational productive efficiency, and social equity. While the evidence regarding charters in US is better understood (e.g., Cohodes and Parham, 2021), the causal evidence on PPPs in developing countries is very thin (with the few exceptions of Romero et al. 2020, Crawfurd and Alam, 2023, Bonilla, 2011, Barrera-Osorio, 2009). We explore the impacts of the Schools in Administration (SA) program in Bogota, Colombia. The SA program uses lotteries to assign students to oversubscribed charter schools. We leverage this variation to examine critical questions about the effectiveness of educational PPPs in a middle-income country. Purpose/Objective/Research Question: What are the effects of SA in students entering early grades of these schools on cognitive skills, executive function, socioemotional development, and numeracy? Are there heterogenous effects by gender, poverty, and provider? Hypothesis: SA produce better outcomes due to flexibility in managerial decisions (including hiring and firing of teachers); better training and pedagogy; and, based on contract theory, a contract that has quality clauses and selection of high-quality providers which leads to higher accountability. What are the differences in characteristics between SA schools and public schools in the same catchment area? The analysis of differences can shed light on potential mechanisms of the effect. Hypothesis: differences in favor of SA in terms of quality and characteristics of teachers; provision of services; training of teachers; management. What are the differences between SA school applicants and non-applicants? Hypothesis: applicant have higher preferences for quality of schools; have better information; and have higher socioeconomic variables than non-applicants. Setting: The setting is Bogota, Colombia, where migration and demographic patterns have led to surging demand. In the 1990s, the local government identified low-income areas as having insufficient supply of seats in local public schools. Residents faced a choice: search for a seat in a local public school or participate in a program in which the local government contracted excess capacity in low-quality private schools with no accountability or oversight (Uribe et al. 2006). Low quantity of public supply combined with low quality of both public and private providers in low-income areas produced a third issue: socioeconomic segregation coincided with stark inequality in the access to a good education. Population/Participants/Subjects: The population of interest for the impact evaluation is students who applied for admission for the first time to a public elementary school in Bogota for the 2022 academic year and who include an SA in their priority list, such that they may be eligible for SA assignment. These are students are between 4 and 6 years old at the time of application and are applying to pre-kindergarten or kindergarten. For the 2022 academic year (Cohort 1), we include in our sample all 751 pairs of students (1,502 students) who participated in the random assignment. Intervention/Program/Practice: The Schools in Administration (SA) program, under the Secretary of Education of the city (SED), started in 1999 with 23 schools, with an additional 12 schools incorporated in 2015. Under SA, private agents are chosen in competitive processes with a criterion of educational excellence to operate public schools in low-income areas with scarce educational supply. The providers have flexibility in the administration of the institution--including teacher management--and in the pedagogical model. The contract between the government and the provider stipulates standards of educational quality and maintaining the infrastructure in good condition. Research Design: We are implementing a randomized control trial using the random assignment of students to SAs to identify causal effects. In 2022, the SED partnered with us to implement a pairwise randomization algorithm that randomly offers seats in PPP schools to applicants for the entry grades. The algorithm is based on a poverty index built with administrative data. Individuals who applied to these schools were ranked using the index; then, pairs of adjacent individuals in the index were formed; finally, individuals with odd-numbered ranks were chosen for SA assignment and individuals with even-numbered ranks were offered another--usually nearby--public school. We compare outcomes between SA lottery winners and losers. Data Collection and Analysis: We used home visits to collect extensive data on students. Cohort 1 of student-level randomization into SAs occurred in October 2021 for children entering (pre)kindergarten in February 2022. Cohort 2 was randomized in October 2022 for February 2023 entry. The initial data collection (February-May 2023) covers the first follow-up for Cohort 1 (one year of exposure) and baseline for Cohort 2. The survey instruments consist of a parent/guardian survey and student tests of cognitive (e.g. Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test) and non-cognitive outcomes. We also have access to rich administrative data, including all components of the poverty index, and enrollment. Findings/Results: We document effects of 0.2 standard deviations (sd) in cognitive outcomes and 0.26 sd in socioemotional outcomes. Parent satisfaction is 8pp higher in SA schools than in traditional public schools (TPS). The annual per-capita transfers that fund all non-infrastructure operations in SA are 1,070 USD per student, while our lower bound estimate of this transfer for TPS is about 1,480 USD. SA schools exhibit several differences in comparison to nearby public schools. SA schools hire and fire more teachers during the year, and they provide more training to their teachers. The focus of the training is on pedagogy and content. While these differences may not directly cause the observed effects, they are compatible with the hypothesis of higher accountability and teacher quality in SA schools compared to TPS. Conclusions: Our estimates show a clear positive effect of SA schools on students. It seems that these schools consider the "whole student,'' as we found positive effect on both cognitive and socioemotional skills. Moreover, SAs seem to be a cost-effective--lower costs and higher effects--way to improve educational outcomes for disadvantaged populations in large urban areas in developing settings.