Students who attend KIPP middle and high schools are much more likely to enroll in–and finish–college than students who don’t. Those are the exciting findings from a new Mathematica study, released earlier this month.
KIPP, an acronym for Knowledge Is Power Program, is a national nonprofit network of public charter schools in 21 states and Washington, D.C. The network consists of 275 schools, serving 120,000 mostly minority and economically disadvantaged students. In North Carolina, KIPP’s network features eight public charter schools, including several Coalition member schools.
Here’s the write-up from KIPP about the findings:
The study followed 2,066 students from ten regions who applied to join KIPP in 5th and 6th grade via an admissions lottery. These students graduated from high school in the classes of 2016, 2017, and 2019 … Researchers tracked the college enrollment and persistence patterns of all three cohorts for at least three years after high school graduation.
… The study concludes that students who persist at KIPP from middle school to high school experience a large, long-term boost in their college outcomes.
KIPP impacts and college completion
Specifically, KIPP graduates were 31% more likely to enroll in college than students who did not attend KIPP middle and high schools. Almost twice as many KIPP graduates earned a degree from a four-year college within five years, compared to non-KIPP students (39% versus 20%). Such impacts, KIPP notes, are “large enough to close the degree completion gap for Black students and nearly close the degree completion gap for Latinx students in the United States.”
Source: “Long-Term Impacts of KIPP Middle and High Schools on College Enrollment, Persistence, and Attainment,” Mathematica, September 12, 2023.
Read the Mathematica study, KIPP’s summary, or The 74 article about the study.
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