KIPP middle and high school students were 31 percentage points more likely to enroll in a four-year college within three years of high school versus those students who were not selected, according to And their likelihood of graduating college within five years after high school shot up by 19 percentage points.

Among Mathematica鈥檚 sample of students, the effect of attending both a KIPP middle school and high school was so large that if it were applied to all students nationally, the longstanding college completion gap between Black and Hispanic students and their white peers would nearly close.

鈥淭he magnitude of these impact estimates is large, and effects of this size have substantial policy relevance,鈥� the researchers write. 

KIPP, which got its start in Houston in 1994, now serves 120,000 students across 21 states and Washington, D. C. It currently operates 117 elementary, 121 middle and 42 high schools. 

KIPP enrolls mostly Black and Hispanic students from low-income communities, children who have been historically underserved and have lower high school and college completion rates. 

KIPP places much emphasis and resources on supporting its alumni through college and into their early careers. The model of following through with children beyond high school has seen tremendous success elsewhere: Students who participated in Chicago鈥檚 program, which spans students鈥� junior and senior year of high school in addition to their freshman year of college, had a 40% greater chance of earning a bachelor鈥檚 degree than their peers, a recent study found.

鈥淲e just have an unyielding belief in children and 鈥� we鈥檙e frankly willing to do whatever it takes to make sure that every child fulfills their potential,鈥� said Shavar Jeffries, who joined the KIPP Foundation as CEO in January 2023.

The study tracked 2,066 students who applied to 21 KIPP middle schools in 2008, 2009 or 2011. Mathematica senior fellow Philip Gleason first studied KIPP in 2007, four years after his company began a broader that showed marked improvement in the achievement of children who attended charters in city centers.

鈥淲e wanted to know what was going on in these schools and KIPP was the largest network of charters that served students in urban areas,鈥� he said. 

The 2007 study showed KIPP middle school students outperformed their peers 鈥� children who applied to the program but were not selected through the lottery system 鈥� in both reading and math. 

In this latest report, Mathematica went back to the students in the 2007 study to see whether they attended or completed college, using data obtained through the National Student Clearinghouse. 

While the findings were consistent with their earlier work, Gleason found the degree to which KIPP middle and high school students outperformed their peers surprising. 

鈥淭he earlier studies were also positive in terms of their impact on academic achievement,鈥� he said. 鈥淏ut what we did not know was how important the combined effect of going to a KIPP middle and high school would be.鈥� 

Jeffries attributes the results to KIPP鈥檚 academic program 鈥� and to its efforts to counsel students long after graduation. 

鈥淲e are very intentional,鈥� he said, adding that staff work hard to help every high school student find their path. 鈥淲e have partnerships with well over 100 colleges throughout the country. We do a lot of work to match students with postsecondary placements.鈥�

He said, too, that staff believe in the success of all students. 

鈥淲e go above and beyond,鈥� Jeffries said. 鈥淲e tend to have longer school days and longer school years. And we use data in very intentional ways so that in our classrooms, on an ongoing real-time basis, we can differentiate our instruction based upon where a kid is at any given point in time.鈥�

While Jeffries said the network is very focused now on learning loss recovery following the pandemic, there are plans over the next five years, a KIPP spokesperson said, to open as many high schools as possible with an aim that every KIPP 8^th grader would be able to attend a KIPP high school.

Some 70% of students offered admission to a KIPP middle school attend one, the study found. Roughly 75% of these students graduate from those schools and approximately 71% of these graduates continue on to a KIPP high school.

Makala Faniel, 25 and who enrolled in KIPP WAYS Atlanta in fifth grade, credits the program with much of her academic and professional success. 

College readiness was built into the curriculum, she said, and counselors routinely helped students research universities, choose the right Advanced Placement courses to boost their chance of acceptance, fill out the Common Application and apply for key programs within a particular school.

Faniel visited the University of Pennsylvania as a middle schooler and would graduate from the college in 2020 with a degree in material science. 

鈥淭hat early exposure really helped,鈥� said Faniel, who is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in bioengineering at Georgia Tech University. 

She said KIPP’s partnerships with colleges and universities provided much-needed support: Faniel was in regular contact with other KIPP students at UPENN who helped her navigate next steps. 

Even after college, when she was first considering graduate school, she once again called on KIPP resources. 

鈥淚 talked to a lot of my former teachers when I was thinking about grad school, trying to figure out what do I do? How do I apply? What do I need?鈥� she said. 鈥淚 changed majors between undergrad and graduate school, so I talked to them about making that transition.鈥� 

Ivelyn Camano-Lucero, 16 and a senior at KIPP NYC College Prep, hopes to study computer science at Yale. 

She will be among the first in her family to attend college: Her older brother was a student at Syracuse University while her sister studies at Fordham. All three attended KIPP schools. 

The youngest of the trio, Camano-Lucero, who lives near the Mott Haven section of the Bronx, wants to become a cybersecurity engineer. 

She talks often with other students about her plans beyond high school and noticed that those who attend other public schools don鈥檛 seem to have as much support. 

鈥淲hen I talk to my friends about my career counselor, they aren鈥檛 familiar with that,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 think that aspect is pretty different.鈥�

Kelly Gallagher, KIPP NYC manager of college counseling, said the counselors on staff have manageable caseloads: a maximum of 60 students each, allowing them to work closely with each of them.

Counselors edit college essays, talk to the families about their student鈥檚 next steps, explain the documentation needed to obtain financial aid 鈥� and how to appeal when schools don鈥檛 provide enough, among a host of other duties, Gallagher said. 

Another set of staffers, the College Success Team, visit students at college at least once per semester, she said. Students who are headed for the military, seek to pursue certifications or enter the workforce also have designated staffers to help them progress. 

鈥淭his is my 10^th year at the high school and I have former students who are now my coworkers,鈥� Gallagher said, adding it鈥檚 not hard to focus KIPP students鈥� attention on college. 鈥淭hey are excited about it.鈥�

The Mathematica study released today leverages the lottery-based samples from the earlier research and was funded by , a philanthropy which has given millions of dollars to KIPP since 2011.

Disclosure: Walton Family Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the City Fund provide financial support to KIPP and 蜜桃影视.

DFER promotes education reform-minded Democratic leaders who push for innovation and accountability in schools with an eye toward improving equity, teacher preparedness, public school choice, data transparency and accountability. They support those who wish to make higher education affordable for all. The organization, founded in 2008 at a time of greater consensus around education reform, seeks these goals in a fractured 2023 political landscape where schools have become fodder for the culture wars.

Elorza, 46, a Harvard-educated lawyer, served two terms as Providence mayor, from 2015 to 2023. Former Gov. Gina M. Raimondo, now U.S. Secretary of Commerce, and Elorza called for an outside review of Providence Public Schools after its 2018 test scores showed . The results released by  Johns Hopkins University were damning, paving the way for a state takeover. 

Elorza made in 2019 by bringing his 15-month-old-son to work with him in City Hall. He said in December he to his city鈥檚 troubled .

The law school professor sat down with 蜜桃影视 last week, just before his new job was announced, to talk about growing up in an immigrant community, building consensus in education around what works for students and who he can rely upon in Congress.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

蜜桃影视: Tell me about your parents.

Jorge Elorza: They came from Guatemala in the mid-1970s, fleeing the civil war. They came here to Providence because there were a lot of factory jobs in the textile and jewelry industry. They were undocumented for the first 12 years of my life. (They became citizens in the 1980s under President Ronald Reagan鈥檚 .) My father dropped out of school in the 7th grade and my mother in the 5th grade. That鈥檚 a big part of my story. Even though I was born and raised here, I identify so strongly with immigrants because that’s the household that I was raised in and that鈥檚 the community where I grew up.

You say immigrant families put a tremendous emphasis on education, yet you floundered in K-12 before eventually graduating from Harvard. Do the problems/obstacles you faced back then have relevance today? 

All (immigrant families) place their hopes and dreams on public schools. I’d love to say I was that model student that always listened to their parents and was just destined for success. But the reality is I didn’t have a sense of direction as a young person: I got rejected from every college and university I applied to. When I was 17 years old and graduated from high school, that was a big pivot point for me in my life. I had to decide whether I was going to work in the factory with my parents, aunts and uncles or get my act together. And so that’s when I applied to community college.

You say part of your struggle was that your parents, who worked opposing shifts to manage child care, were not able to help you with schoolwork in part because of the language barrier. 

My father never spoke too much English. They would come home after work, we would have homework and they could only help us to a certain point. 

You attribute part of your success to your ability to score a seat at a coveted magnet school. It was a guidance counselor who urged you to take the admissions exam. 

So, you had to sign up for the test and then they had sent several papers home, but if they were in English, my parents couldn’t read them. My guidance counselor had seen something in me, some potential, and literally came and picked me out of my chair, took me to his office and he made me sign to register. 

You鈥檙e plagued by the arbitrary nature of that success. 

What if I happened to be absent that day or if an emergency came up and my guidance counselor just didn’t have the chance to get me? My entire life would have been completely different. We want to live in a world where every kid succeeds as a matter of course. But the reality is that so many kids who do succeed, succeed by overcoming all of the odds and, frankly, by just being fortunate at key moments in their lives.

Will your own ethnic background play a role in your leadership?

I’m absolutely a product of my upbringing and my past. When I think about the importance of education, I think about my friend Juan, one of the most brilliant, smart, sharp kids I have ever met in my life. He had those critical moments in his life where it was a combination of bad decisions and being unlucky. Juan is still a very good friend. He has a great family. He works hard every day, but he鈥檚 a laborer. He should have been a doctor. 

I think about my friend Jose 鈥� who had grown up next door, who was a year older than me and who I always looked up to. I found out that he had been murdered. I think that many of those stories, unfortunately, are still being recreated today 鈥� kids with limitless potential, having that potential either cut short or never being allowed to fully blossom.

The nation has been politically fractured for years. Where do you see consensus in education? 

Speaking about my community here in Providence, the number of Black and Latino families that support charter schools, for example, and that support common sense education policies that research has shown works, is extraordinarily high. Part of the challenge we have is lifting up their voices to make sure that voice on the ground is what’s driving public perception within the Democratic Party.

For example, there’s a lot of support for high-impact tutoring programs, especially as we’re coming out of COVID: Dedicated 1-to-1 tutoring that can help us not only make up that lost learning time, but also make learning gains. Those are things that are strongly supported across the board.

We also very much support summer learning programs that go beyond remedial to actual enrichment classes. Many of our students fall behind: They lose about two months of learning during the summer when other families move forward. 

There’s also mental health investments that make a lot of sense and pathways that can connect our students to careers. 

And you note these programs don鈥檛 just have support in Providence, but far beyond. Who are your allies now?

What’s different today than say, 10 years ago, is that there’s this critical mass of progressive and reformers of color. There are organic, grassroots efforts out there: There’s so much energy around this work. Part of my job as a leader of this organization is to organize and harness that enthusiasm and energy that we see at the grassroots level and amplify their voices so they drive more and more of the national conversation in this space. 

Your organization works with the National Parents Union, The Education Trust, Unidos, KIPP, Leadership Conference on Civil & Human Rights, Educators for Excellence, Alliance for Excellent Education and others. But who are your friends in Congress? 

Sen. Cory Booker has been an early supporter and he’s been steadfast throughout. Sen. Chris Murphy from Connecticut has been an amazing champion of this work 鈥� and Congresswoman Marilyn Strickland (of Washington state). We’ve identified about 200 elected champions around this work throughout the country.

Democrats have lost ground in education as Republicans have succeeded in using race, gender, immigration-related and transphobic rhetoric to whip up their base. How do you manage that environment?

On the one hand, you have Republicans who are infatuated with their culture wars right now: Republicans want to ban books while Democrats want to teach kids to read them. What we want to do is speak to the real issues as problem solvers. 

I get extremely frustrated hearing the way that education is being exploited for political gain and this is part of the performative aspect of politics today. But as Democrats, we’re going to continue to focus on the substance of it, call out things that are not working and propose solutions that are proven to work. And ultimately that’s what people want.

Three members of the San Francisco school board were recalled in 2022 after focusing on issues like renaming schools rather than core academic concerns as their city suffered through the pandemic. Do Democrats and progressives miss the mark? 

I’ll tell you what I know. Families want high-quality education options for their kids and they want them now: They’re just not getting enough of them. We see families continuing to apply for the charter lotteries and oftentimes in excess of 10 applicants for every one seat that’s available. It’s really clear what families want most and what they care most about is great public schools for their kids. 

Our job is to make sure that our focus remains on that, that we continue, in our party and in this movement, to always be about substance. That doesn’t mean being blind to the issues happening in society 鈥� but in order to meet the moment and what our families are demanding, it always has to be about ensuring that there are great public school options for our kids.

A civil rights lawyer by trade and an education activist by avocation, Shavar Jeffries was thrust into the spotlight in early 2010 when he was elected to a school board seat in Newark. It was an era when odd political bedfellows Republican Gov. Chris Christie and Democratic Sen. Cory Booker showed up in Newark bearing a $100 million check from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, to be spent on both charter and district-run schools.

On Jeffries’s watch, Newark鈥檚 schools posted historic gains 鈥� inviting gale-force political blowback that鈥檚 still reverberating.

He then embarked on an eight-year run as the head of Democrats for Education Reform and its nonprofit sister, Education Reform Now. He took the helm at a time when many Democrats were abandoning the centrist school-improvement policies of the Obama era, yet Jeffries 鈥� who is a distant cousin of U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries 鈥� coordinated dozens of winning political strategies.

Now, Jeffries is heading up the KIPP Foundation, which coordinates a coast-to-coast network of highly regarded public charter schools. His new job is to lead 280 schools 鈥� and affiliated groups tackling everything from increasing alumni college persistence rates to recruiting and training the next generation of education leaders 鈥� out of an unprecedented pandemic crisis.  

蜜桃影视 caught up with Jeffries recently to hear what prompted him to move to KIPP, his advice about the Democrats’ education agenda and what he believes will meet young people鈥檚 needs at a critical juncture. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

蜜桃影视: How many people have hit you up in the last two months for a pipeline to your cousin? 

Shavar Jeffries: A lot. It reminds me a little bit of when I was school board president in Newark. Every time I go into my LinkedIn, there鈥檚 somebody. So yeah, we’re getting a lot.

What advice do you have for Democrats who want to shepherd an education agenda? 

We need more political infrastructure to support Democrats. There’s a heavily funded infrastructure to oppose charters within the Democratic Party. A lot of that is funded by our colleagues in the teacher unions, who we work with on many different issues. 

There have to be more political assets made available to candidates and elected officials. As long as many Democrats feel like they have to put their political career on the line in support of an issue, we’re going to have challenges. Having said all that, we continue to get bipartisan support for the charter school program in Congress. President Biden has supported that, Roberto Rodriguez [U.S. Department of Education assistant secretary for planning, evaluation and policy development] has spoken publicly about that. Many of the communities with the largest charter school shares of enrollment are run by Democratic mayors and Democratic school boards. 

Tell us about the impetus for your move to KIPP.

I’ve been a part of the KIPP family for 22 years. My children attended both KIPP elementary and middle schools. I’ve been on the KIPP national board for about five years. I love it. I love our mission. I just believe in our promise. 

Really what motivated me was how profound the impact of a pandemic has been on our country from a student learning standpoint. When the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress came out showing that throughout the country we lost about 30 years of gains, I was convinced to use the resources and talents I have in a way that will be even more directly connected to kids and to student outcomes. 

KIPP is the largest public charter school network in the country, with 120,000 kids in 27 regions. We ought to be the model for the country in terms of how to deliver educational excellence and equity at scale.

Before COVID-19, a lot of research outlined how successful schools in networks like KIPP are with students from traditionally disadvantaged communities. The pandemic spared almost no one, though. What is the challenge for the high-quality charter sector right now?

Delivering academic good for kids, first and foremost. Given the pandemic, given school closures, given the disruption evidenced by the NAEP data and other data, all of us in public education 鈥� whether public charter schools or traditional public schools 鈥� we all have a lot of work to do to address unfinished learning, to support young people to obtain the skills, the competencies they need in order to fulfill their potential. That’s job one, as far as I’m concerned, for everybody in public education.

Throughout our network, when we’re sharing best practices, we’re able to deliver for young people. Most powerfully, we’ve seen this in our early literacy program. Several of our regions are working together to implement aligned, consistent [strategies] rooted in the science of literacy. We’ve already seen 28 percentage point gains in literacy rates for the [KIPP] regions participating in that program.

In high school, we see acute mental health challenges many young people are experiencing. In many places, we鈥檙e now seeing levels of violence in our communities coming to bear in our schools, so we’re pushing an aligned high school strategy focused on academic health, but mental health support as well.

We’re working on a middle school math [strategy]. And we’re focused on leadership. We have a principal pipeline program. We’re also excited to see the diversity throughout our organization. More than 60% of our school leaders are Black or Latinx. That鈥檚 three times the rate of what we see in public education broadly.

Policy wonks and researchers have floated lots of evidence-backed strategies for different aspects of pandemic recovery. But traditional school leaders often say, 鈥淲ell, I can’t find the people.鈥�

The teacher shortage is really a national challenge. We would love to see policymakers work with traditional public schools, public charter schools and a broad diversity of stakeholders who are committed to making sure that we have great teachers in every classroom. This is a macro-level problem, and we really need national leadership, a Marshall Plan-type level of engagement. This should be a call to arms that one of the most important things that any set of human beings can do is to go into our classrooms and educate our babies.

Similarly, there is a lot of talk about circumstance as a hurdle to student success, especially over the last three years. Many families鈥� circumstances are jaw-dropping. How should that inform our thinking going forward?

We have to be very clear that we’re equipping our young people with the skills and competencies they need to have a limitless future. That means we need to be unwavering in the idea that our kids are geniuses, they’re brilliant, they’re amazing. We need to hold them accountable to the hard work they need to invest in and we need to support them in. And then, the quality of teaching and learning so they actually obtain those skills. 

Our children are dealing with very difficult circumstances. And most of the communities that we work in, they’ve been dealing with difficult circumstances for generations. Notwithstanding all the macro-level, political, social, economic work many of us are engaged in, they’re likely to be in difficult circumstances for the foreseeable future. Our job is to work within the reality that the challenges they face can actually be a source of strength and power. Some adversity that actually can make you stronger, right? 

We have to be clear with all the adults who interface with our children that they do not need, or want, your pity. With the right expectations and the right practices, their challenges can be converted into energy to power them into their dreams. We have to be unwavering with the bar of what we expect students to be able to achieve. We have to make sure the adults are clear about that bar, and that we provide them the support, training and coaching they need to deliver against that bar, day in and day out.

Some people will talk about, 鈥淛ust pull yourself up by your bootstraps and figure it out.鈥� That is problematic. We have to make the investments that young people 鈥� and, frankly, adults 鈥� have the support that they need, and the coaching and training to recognize the greatness of our kids, to recognize that we have to support them as they’re dealing with very difficult and adverse circumstances.

Do you have fears about all this being subsumed by what feels like a societal inflection point?

It’s always been hard, right? When I was president of the Newark School Board, we dealt with a version of all of that. All kinds of misinformation, efforts to politicize the curriculum, to politicize accountability. We’ve been working to break cycles of poverty and the bonds of intergenerational racism for a long period of time. This work has always been challenging. In the current moment, there’s been many conversations around education, around equity and efforts by political figures to micromanage the curriculum. That’s obviously very concerning. Perhaps we鈥檙e seeing this play out in more uncomfortable ways than it has in the past.

We just want to continue to focus on children, to try to not get caught up in a partisan food fight, to really focus on what’s going to support students to love themselves, to recognize their culture and their identity as a source of power and a source of strength in order to fulfill their potential and change the world.

We’re going to ensure that student achievement and outcomes are the lodestar. And hope and hope that if we tell our story to enough of the right people, over a long enough period of time, more often than not, that’ll be good for kids.

Disclosure: Walton Family Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies provide financial support to KIPP and 蜜桃影视.

Public charter schools may have lost some of the luster they enjoyed with centrist Democrats in Washington, D.C., a decade or two ago, but a top Biden administration education official this week sought to reassure the sector that it enjoys broad support on both sides of the aisle.

鈥淚 do not believe that the bottom has fallen out from under the bipartisan coalition for public charter schools,鈥� said Roberto Rodriguez, assistant secretary for planning, evaluation, and policy development at the U.S. Department of Education. 鈥淚 think if that were the case, you would see the funding completely deteriorating from this program. And in fact, you’re not seeing that.鈥�

The Biden administration has faced harsh criticism for its stance on its $440 million , a key federal grant that more than half of charter schools rely upon. This comes as centrist Democrats, once the sector鈥檚 biggest backers, have sought political support from teachers鈥� unions, which for decades have forcefully opposed charters.

During the 2020 presidential campaign, then-candidate Joe Biden admitted, 鈥淚鈥檓 not a charter school fan.鈥�

But on Wednesday during a panel discussion at Washington, D.C.鈥檚 Brookings Institution, Rodriguez adopted a softer posture.

鈥淲e support high-quality public schools for all kids, including high-quality public charter schools,鈥� he told Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellow Doug Harris, the panel鈥檚 moderator. 鈥淥ur budget stands behind that. The work we’re doing stands behind that. The rulemaking that we’ve proposed is not an effort to tear down the charter school sector. In fact, it is an effort to further promote that objective.鈥�

But the administration has warned that more than one in seven charter schools funded by the grant either never opened or shut down before their grant period ended, in effect wasting an in taxpayer funding. In response, last year it proposed new regulations that critics said amounted to a new 鈥渨ar鈥� on charter schools.

The originally proposed rule for applicants required them to prove their schools met 鈥渦nmet demand鈥� in existing public schools 鈥� a requirement that charter advocates said ignored a bigger problem in district schools: poor quality.

The department also said applicants had to collaborate with 鈥渁t least one traditional public school or traditional school district,鈥� in effect giving districts a veto over their plans, according to charter advocates.

A third requirement said charter schools had to show they wouldn鈥檛 worsen district desegregation efforts or increase racial or socio-economic segregation or isolation in schools.

Taken together, , the draft requirements were 鈥渢ailor-made to ensure that the most successful charter schools won鈥檛 be replicated or expanded.鈥�

The education department received 26,550 comments on the proposed regulations, andangry charter school parents the White House in May to protest Biden鈥檚 stance on funding regulations.

eventually admitted that the final rules, issued in August, were less harmful but 鈥渘ot without impact鈥� on future growth of the sector. Among the concerns: a shortened window for submitting applications.

Two groups , saying, among other things, that the department lacked authority to impose new criteria on the grants, which Congress approved as part of a massive spending bill in December. It level-funded the charter grant for the . 

Harris, who has long studied the sector, noted that recent campaign rhetoric 鈥渉as been different from what the actions have been in the administration,鈥� with more public-facing skepticism from lawmakers about charters than 鈥渨hat’s happening in the nuts and bolts of committee rooms.鈥� He asked the panel if they see the coalition for charters 鈥渇racturing鈥� on the ground, especially among centrist Democrats.

Shavar Jeffries, CEO of the KIPP Foundation, which trains educators for the network鈥檚 280 schools, observed that even in the movement鈥檚 鈥渉alcyon heydays,鈥� charters were simultaneously 鈥渃ontentious among a variety of different constituencies鈥� and the beneficiaries of significant bipartisan support. That continues today, he said.

鈥淚 do think there’s a kind of false idea [that] people are moving away from the issue in ways that [are] maybe inconsistent with what we’ve seen in the past,鈥� he said.

But Jeffries said opponents of the Biden regulations had a point about not wanting to collaborate with districts, since some district officials are 鈥渘ot interested in the practices we’re trying to share.鈥� He added, 鈥淵ou can take a horse to water, but you can’t take it much further than that [if] people aren’t interested.鈥�

In a few instances, Jeffries said, opponents 鈥渁re actually acting aggressively to undermine the capacity for public charter schools to exist.鈥� He recalled local superintendents who were not only opposed to KIPP practices, but 鈥渟adly, in some instances鈥idn’t even want us to be here. So the idea that we’re going to obtain their support is obviously not going to happen.鈥�

He also said the requirement that charter schools not worsen segregation can, in some cases, amount to a requirement that schools serving Black and Latino students essentially find white students in the suburbs.

Charter schools serve more than 3 million students, recent research shows, about two-thirds of them Black or Hispanic and most low-income. 

The Brookings panel also included from another panelist, Katrina Bulkley of Montclair State University, who led a team that found charter school authorizers are a key but little-studied aspect of the charter school world.

While some authorizers say equity is key to their mission, they found, others focus on choice or 鈥渕arket logic.鈥� And they found that authorizers that prioritized equity received applications from schools that also prioritized equity. 鈥淭his really suggests to us that those beliefs and the practices of authorizers are shaping what applicants are submitting,鈥� Bulkley said.

Correction: An earlier version of this story contained an incorrect funding amount for the federal Charter Schools Program.