It is well established that some charter schools do far better than others at educating their students. This variability has profound implications for the children who attend those schools. Yet painful experience shows that rebooting or closing a low-performing school is a drawn-out and excruciating process. This report investigates whether or not it is possible to predict which schools are likely "not" to succeed before they even open their doors. The authors examined more than six hundred charter school applications across four states. They found three "risk factors" in approved applications that were significant predictors of a school's future weak performance in its first years of operation: (1) lack of identified leadership; (2) high risk, low dose; and (3) a child-centered curriculum. Further, when an application displayed two or more of these risk factors, the likelihood of low performance rose to 80 percent. The study also found that the following indicators, among others, made it more likely that an application would be rejected entirely: (1) a lack of evidence that the school will start with a sound financial foundation; (2) no description of how the school will use data to evaluate educators or inform instruction; (3) no discussion of how the school will create and sustain a culture of high expectations; and (4) no plans to hire a management organization to run the school. These results are meant to enhance an authorizer's existing review procedures. This report gives authorizers, operators, and advocates one more tool in their toolkit. [Foreword and summary by Amber M. Northern and Michael J. Petrilli.]