Recent federal initiatives in education, such as Race to the Top, the Teacher Incentive Fund, and the flexibility policy for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act are designed in part to ensure that disadvantaged students have equal access to effective teaching. The initiatives respond to...

The Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) is a network of charter schools designed to improve the educational opportunities available to low-income families. KIPP schools seek to boost their students’ academic achievement and ultimately prepare them to enroll and succeed in college.

This report presents the first findings from a multi-year evaluation of the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), a network of charter schools for disadvantaged students. Using a matched comparison group design, results show that for the vast majority of KIPP schools in the evaluation, impacts on...

Over the years, concern has mounted that many of the more than 26 million children certified to receive free or reduced-price meals may be ineligible for these benefits. This brief looks at the issue of reducing payment errors in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and the School Breakfast...

About 61 percent of school districts used direct certification in the NSLP in the 2001-02 school year, the same share as in 1996. Direct certification increased the number of children certified for free meals by about 400,000 and slightly increased overall NSLP participation. Under direct...

Using data from Mathematica's experimental evaluation of charter schools, this methodological study examines the validity of four different comparison group approaches to test whether these designs can replicate findings from a well-implemented random assignment study.