This paper investigates the intersection of income and race in structuring access to higher education among students that participate in a national high-stakes exam in Brazil. Our objectives are (1) to estimate the probability of students coming from different income strata, racial groups, and performance levels to access higher education and (2)…

The labor-market payoff to workers with associate degrees in healthcare and STEM occupations is very high in Massachusetts. We examine whether this induced a growing proportion of students in MA community colleges (MACCs) to earn an associate degree (AD) in one of these fields. We do this by using multinomial logit analysis to compare trends…

ACT retesting occurs when students take the ACT® test multiple times with the goal of improving their scores and postsecondary credentials. In this paper, the author examines preliminary data for the 2022 ACT-tested graduating cohort to better understand the ACT score gains that occur with retesting. The author presents the following six things to…

Families are now an undeniable part of prospective students' college search process. As American higher education stands at the precipice of profound demographic shifts, colleges and universities must reexamine how they engage not just prospective students, but their families as well. In collaboration with Ardeo and CampusESP, RNL collected and…

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is strongly associated with social functioning deficits in adolescents. However, the factors underlying this relationship are not well understood. Prior research has established that emotion dysregulation (ED) mediates the relationship between ADHD symptoms and social skills in middle school students…

Social and emotional (SE) skills are "individual capacities that (a) are manifested in consistent patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviours, (b) can be developed through formal and informal learning experiences, and (c) influence important socioeconomic outcomes throughout the individual's life" (Organisation for Economic…

High school students' optimism pertaining to future life outcomes, such as having a career they enjoy, owning a home, and having a better life than their parents had, might have been influenced negatively by recent events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, which has been particularly stressful for students. Using data from a sample of current high…

This study aimed to investigate the association of locus of control (LOC) with reading and mathematics achievement of high school students with disabilities using data from the Special Education Elementary Longitudinal Study (SEELS). Data used in analysis for the current study included achievement and self-concepts measures from students with…

Prior research has demonstrated that paid work experience while in school is a predictor of postschool employment outcomes for youth with disabilities. For youth with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), early paid work experience in high school can provide a place to learn occupational skills as well as develop communication, problem solving and…

Parents and guardians are the biggest influencers on enrollment for students. Nearly all are invested and involved in the college search process with their students. But are colleges and universities really engaging them? Are they communicating the right information, with the right frequency, across the right channels? Are they helping families…

Understanding the concerns high school students have about college presents opportunities to address college-bound students' needs before they arrive on campus, potentially increasing enrollment and retention. In this study, we investigated the academic, campus, social, and personal concerns of college-bound high school students and how these…

Students exhibit a variety of test-related behaviors before and during the American College Testing (ACT®) test. Previous ACT research has identified associations between test-related behavior and ACT test performance. For example, test preparation has been shown to be associated with modest ACT Composite score gains on the second ACT testing…

We combine a large multi-site randomized control trial with administrative and survey data to demonstrate that intensive advising during high school and college leads to large increases in bachelor's degree attainment. Novel causal forest methods suggest that these increases are driven primarily by improvements in the quality of initial…

This study employs hierarchal linear modeling to examine whether high school grade inflation occurred between 2010 and 2021, including for students who were tested during the pandemic. The study does so while simultaneously accounting for student and school characteristics. This is the first study, to the current authors' knowledge, that makes use…

This paper estimates the patterns and sources of White-Black and White-Hispanic enrollment gaps in Advancement Placement (AP) and dual enrollment (DE) programs across several thousand school districts and metropolitan areas in the U.S. By merging several data sources, we show that both AP and DE enrollment gaps vary substantially across districts.…