KIPP Middle Schools: Impacts on Achievement and Other Outcomes

This report shows that Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) middle schools have significant and substantial positive impacts on student achievement in four core academic subjects: reading, math, science, and social studies. One of the report’s analyses confirms the positive impacts using a rigorous randomized experimental analysis that relies on the schools’ admissions lotteries to identify comparison students, thereby accounting for students’ prior achievement, as well as factors such as student and parent motivation. The latest findings from Mathematica’s multiyear study of KIPP middle schools, the report is the most rigorous large-scale evaluation of KIPP charter schools to date, covering 43 KIPP middle schools in 13 states and the District of Columbia. Student outcomes examined included state test results in reading and math, test scores in science and social studies, results on a nationally normed assessment that includes measures of higher-order thinking, and behaviors reported by students and parents.