There is more to it than that, they try to isolate the effect of the school from social programs. There are two pieces of evidence that, taken together, sugges

There is more to it than that, they try to isolate the effect of the school from social programs. There are two pieces of evidence that, taken together, suggest that high quality schools are enough to significantly increase the achievement of poor minority students (see also Atila Abdulkadiroglu et al. (2009) and Angrist et al. (2010)). First, students who live outside the Zone garner the same benefit from attending the Promise Academy as the students inside the Zone, suggesting that proximity to the community programs is not important. Second, siblings of Promise Academy students who have access to the same community programs but were ineligible for the Promise Academy because of their age show no detectable gains in achievement.