The Knowledge is Power Program, commonly known as KIPP, is a network of free open-enrollment college-preparatory public charter schools in low income communities throughout the United States.

[2] The head offices are in San Francisco, Chicago, New York City, and Washington, D.C.[3] KIPP was founded in 1994 by Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin, two Teach For America corps members, influenced by educator Harriett Ball.

[6] KIPP began in 1994 after co-founders Dave Levin and Mike Feinberg completed their two-year commitment to Teach For America.

[7] Hedge fund manager and philanthropist Whitney Tilson served on the board of the KIPP Academy in the South Bronx for two decades.

[8][9] Doris and Donald Fisher, co-founders of Gap Inc., formed a partnership with Feinberg and Levin to replicate KIPP's operations nationwide.

Prior to reaching a contract, the charter network had advanced legislation to bypass collective bargaining and had threatened to close two schools in the city.

In 2022, it was revealed the KIPP's director of technology had embezzled $2.2 million which he spent on cars and sports memorabilia which was intended for laptops and other equipment.

[19] At a KIPP middle school in New York, a teacher was arrested after accusations of grooming and sexually abusing a student for years starting when she was in fourth grade.

[23] In June 2010, Mathematica Inc. produced the first findings[24] from a multi-year evaluation of KIPP: "Using a matched comparison group design, results show that for the vast majority of KIPP schools in the evaluation, impacts on students' state assessment scores in math and reading are positive, statistically significant, and educationally substantial."

... [T]eachers told us either that they referred students who were more able than their peers, or that the most motivated and educationally sophisticated parents were those likely to take the initiative to pull children out of the public school and enroll in KIPP at the end of fourth grade.

A clear pattern to emerge from these interviews was that almost always it was students with unusually supportive parents or intact families who were referred to KIPP and completed the enrollment process.The authors of The Charter School Dust-Up said that KIPP's admission process self-screens for students who are motivated, compliant, and come from similarly motivated, compliant and supportive families.