Every state has made the college and career readiness of its high school graduates a major priority, but few are doing a good job monitoring how well the education system is delivering on that goal. States mostly rely on high school graduation rates to gauge progress. While there have been signifcant improvements in the high school graduation…

Despite abundant anecdotes and theories suggesting a causal effect of teachers' expectations on student outcomes, documenting its presence and size has been challenging. The reason is simple: positive correlations between what teachers expect and what students ultimately accomplish might simply result from teachers being skilled observers. In…

This Data Point examines public high school graduates' postsecondary enrollment and attainment (at any type of postsecondary institution, at any level), for the class of 1992 as of 2000, and for the class of 2004 as of 2012. This Data Point uses data from two nationally representative studies of public and private high school students: the…

States cannot make good policy and practice decisions--and ultimately cannot improve student performance--if they do not have basic information about how students are performing along the way. As such, Achieve focused on states' publicly reported student performance against college- and career-ready (CCR) indicators in all 50 states and the…

A 2010 paper published in "Higher Education" investigated the relationship between South African Grade 12 students' programme preferences in 2001 for study in higher education, student enrolment in higher education programmes in 2002, and student graduations in 2006, devising what the author dubbed a preference-enrolment-graduation (PEG)…

In today's economy, graduating from high school is more important than ever. The economic consequences of dropping out of high school are more severe than in the past, with diminished job prospects and life-time earnings (Rouse, 2007). There are also substantial social costs associated with high school dropouts such as lower productivity and tax…

This study provides a first look at how student college- and career-readiness have progressed in the early years of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) implementation. It is motivated by concern that changes triggered by the standards transition might be disruptive to student learning in the short run, even when those changes may become…

Twenty-one US states currently offer some form of merit-based postsecondary financial aid, although the generosity and eligibility requirements of merit aid programs varies from state to state. This article uses nationally representative data from high school students in the early 1990s and the early 2000s to evaluate the relationship between the…

For the 2014 study, "Stand and Deliver: Effects of Boston's Charter High Schools on College Preparation, Entry, and Choice," researchers measured the effects of attending Boston's charter high schools on students' reading and math achievement, high school graduation, and college outcomes. Six Boston charter schools that include one or…

Dropping out of high school is related to a number of negative outcomes. For example, the median income of persons ages 18 through 67 who had not completed high school was roughly $26,000 in 2013. By comparison, the median income of persons ages 18 through 67 who completed their education with at least a high school credential (i.e., a regular…

The study reviewed in this paper examined whether winning an admissions lottery to attend a small school of choice (SSC) in New York City improved high school graduation rates, influenced the type of diploma students received, or increased the likelihood of college readiness. An SSC is a small, nonselective public high school emphasizing academic…

Funding agencies and the science education community at large have pursued strategies for increasing K-12 outreach by scientists and for improving instructional practices in higher education classrooms. However, the simultaneous achievement of both goals is generally not a target for single projects or even single programs. A 4-year project…

Gathering high school completer and dropout data and maintaining annual records provides longitudinal information on students which allows a district to observe its unique patterns of school dropouts. That information may assist schools to target prevention and intervention programs and policies that focus on local circumstances and address the…

This report shows college enrollment and graduation trends among Native American SAT® takers who finished high school in 2004 and 2010 by various student characteristics, including aspirations, self-perceived ability, and academic achievements. In every case, students in the top categories (high aspirations, high perceived ability, high assessed…

This paper examines the implications of tuition and need-based financial aid policies for family income--post-secondary (PS) attendance relationships. We first conduct a parallel empirical analysis of the effects of parental income on PS attendance for recent high school cohorts in both the U.S. and Canada using data from the 1997 Cohort of the…