The Smarter Balanced Assessment (SBAC), implemented in California in 2014-15 as part of the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress, is designed to evaluate students' levels of college and career readiness. Student scores on the Smarter Balanced Assessment are currently used for both accountability and school improvement…

In this report, the authors explore the patterns in mathematics course-taking among California public high school seniors. They describe what courses students are enrolled in and how course participation varies by key student characteristics, such as race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and performance level on the state's 11th grade assessments.…

In 2014, the state of California implemented the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) in order to align state assessment and accountability policies with the newly adopted Common Core State Standards (CCSS). At the heart of the new performance and accountability system is the Smarter Balanced Assessment. The Smarter…

In 2004, California launched the Early Assessment Program (EAP), developed jointly by the California Department of Education (CDE), the State Board of Education, and the California State University (CSU), to help bridge the gap between preparation for college in high school and the knowledge and skills necessary for success in postsecondary…

For as much as we know about the economic benefits of a college degree, California policymakers and educators have little information about the college destinations of high school graduates. To fill this information gap, we assembled a unique data set of three recent cohorts of public high school students matched with college enrollment data from…

State K-12 assessments may soon include measures for college readiness, as California's already do. We seek to understand how California's Early Assessment Program (EAP, designed to assess high school juniors' college readiness in English and math) may have influenced overall school-level college readiness and state accountability outcomes. Using…

This article focuses on California's efforts to improve the alignment between K-12 and postsecondary schooling through the Early Assessment Program (EAP). Implemented in 2004, the EAP was designed to give high school students information about their academic preparedness for postsecondary education and to encourage teachers to teach for college…

In this paper we focus on California high school students' transition to community colleges. Our unique dataset tracks five cohorts of California high school juniors into their freshmen year at in-state community colleges. We evaluate the extent to which high school achievement tests (currently not utilized by community colleges in course…