Fewer than one in five students in the nation's low-income areas will attend college. But at KIPP charter schools, the inverse is true: Better than 80 percent of students who complete eighth grade at a KIPP school continue on to higher learning.MISSIONVITALS Founded as a downtown-Houston fifth-grade charter-school program in 1994 by Teach for America alumni Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin; 82 tuition-free charter schools in 19 states (and D.C.) now serve 20,000 mostly black and Latino kids nationwide; KIPP students (the name stands for "knowledge is power program") regularly outperform those in neighboring schools by wide margins.ACCOLADES As if a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation didn't speak loudly enough, Gates himself offered praise for KIPP during his 2009 TED talk; other fans include Oprah Winfrey, the president of the World Bank, and just about every news outlet in the country.WHY IT WORKSPLANS FOR THE FUTURE More schools, better teacher training and support, and more kids getting the opportunity to go to college.Average test score growth over four years at KIPP middle schools:
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