On September 17th, Mathematica Policy Research released its third report on KIPP schools to date. Mathematica has been intensively studying KIPP schools for the past eight years. The two previous reports from their earlier study of KIPP Middle Schools were released in 2010 and 2013.
For the first time, Mathematica studied all K-12 levels of KIPP, including elementary and high schools as well as middle schools. They also looked at how KIPP schools have performed over time, particularly before and after we received a federal Investing in Innovation (i3) Scale-Up Grant.
These are the key findings from the report:
- KIPP elementary schools have positive, statistically significant, and educationally meaningful impacts on three of four measures of reading and mathematics skills.
- Consistent with prior research, KIPP middle schools have positive, statistically significant, and educationally meaningful impacts on student achievement in math, reading, science, and social studies. Average impacts of middle schools were positive and statistically significant throughout the 10-year period covered by the study, though higher in earlier years than recent years.
- KIPP high schools have positive, statistically significant, and educationally meaningful impacts on student achievement for high school students new to the KIPP network. For students continuing to KIPP high schools from KIPP middle schools, impacts on achievement are not statistically significant. For this group of continuing KIPP students, KIPP high schools have positive impacts on a variety of college preparation activities and the likelihood of applying to college.
- On surveys of student motivation, engagement, behavior, and educational aspirations, KIPP schools showed no significant impact. However, KIPP elementary and middle schools had positive impacts on parent satisfaction.
You can access the full report here.
As always, we are committed to doing everything we can here in D.C. to continue to build a tomorrow that is bigger, brighter, and better.
