Charter schools are a central component of current efforts to reform the public education system in the United States. These schools are publicly financed, but free of many of the regulations that govern traditional public schools, such as those involving staffing, curriculum, and budget decisions. As of the 2013-2014 school year, about 6,400 charter schools served about 2.5 million students in 40 states and the District of Columbia. 1 These numbers reflect rapid growth in the charter school sector in recent years; for example, there were just 2,800 charter schools serving 0.7 million students as of 2003.Despite the policy emphasis on charter schools and the growth in their numbers, rigorous evidence of their effectiveness on a broad scale is limited. Previous research includes observational or non-experimental analyses across several school districts or states (see, for example,

The Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) is a network of charter schools designed to improve the educational opportunities available to lowincome 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 operate under a set of standards that emphasize strong student behavior policies with rewards and sanctions; contracts between students, parents, and teachers; longer school days and school on Saturdays; substantial autonomy for KIPP principals; and close monitoring of school performance in terms of student achievement and college readiness. KIPP has grown from two middle schools established in the mid-1990s to a nationwide network of more than 140 elementary, middle, and high schools in 20 states and the District of Columbia as of the 2013-2014 school year.Several recent quasi-experimental and experimental studies have found that many KIPP middle schools (which constitute the majority of KIPP schools) have large, positive impacts on academic achievement. Using propensity-score matching, Woodworth, David, Guha, Wang, and Lopez-Torkos (2008) found that San Francisco KIPP schools had effect sizes ranging from .19 to .88 standard deviations in math and .16 to .68 standard deviations in reading. In 2010, Angrist, Dynarski, Kane, Pathak, and Walters used an experimental study design based on admission lotteries at one KIPP school and found statistically significant effect sizes of .35 standard deviations in math and .12 standard deviations in reading for each year spent at the school. Gleason, Tuttle, Gill, and Nichols-Barrer (2014) used a matched comparison group design to estimate impacts at 41 KIPP middle schools. The study found large cumulative impacts 3 years after 564215E PAXXX10.

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The Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) is an influential and rapidly growing nationwide network of charter schools serving primarily disadvantaged minority students. Prominent elements of KIPP's educational model include high expectations for student achievement and behavior, and a substantial increase in time in school. KIPP is being watched closely by policy makers and educators as a possible model for urban education, but existing studies of KIPP's effects on students have been subject to methodological limitations, making them less than conclusive. We measure the achievement impacts of forty-one KIPP middle schools across the country, using propensity-score matching to identify traditional public school students with similar characteristics and prior-achievement histories as students who enter KIPP. We find consistently positive and statistically significant impacts of KIPP on student achievement, with larger impacts in math than reading. These impacts persist over four years following admission, and are not driven by attrition of low performers from KIPP schools.

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