Results released today of a new study following the long term impact of KIPP charter schools are incredible and highly policy relevant. One of my critiques of program evaluations is they tend to judge short term measures (like test scores) when what matters is long term outcomes (higher ed completion and income). So we @Arnold_Ventures sanctioned the 1st study to follow kids who attended a KIPP charter school for 10 years. While earlier research showed kids who attended a KIPP middle school had significant improvements in test scores, this study shows that kids who subsequently did not attend a KIPP high school only had minimal improvement in college attendance and completion. But for kids who attended both a KIPP middle and high school, the impact was enormous: nearly doubling the % of kids who graduated with a 4-year degree. As the researchers wrote: "An effect of this size, extrapolated nationwide, would be large enough to nearly close the degree-completion gap (for Black and Hispanic students)."