In this article, the authors sought to discover if participation in formal debate programs translates into better academic achievement and attainment for students. First, individual debaters' reading and math test scores over time were looked at and students were compared to themselves in years when they did and did not participate in debate. The…

In this study we employed regression analysis and between-group matched pair design to analyze whether participation in a competency-based education pilot was associated with improved high school completion and postsecondary entry. Data were obtained for high schools participating in a CBE pilot program in Illinois. Results of the matched pair…

This report contains college enrollment, persistence, and completion outcomes of high school graduating students based on the data submitted to the National Student Clearinghouse on graduating classes of 2016, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022. High school diploma data are submitted to the Clearinghouse by schools and districts that participate in the…

Washington's high school graduation rate has increased over the past decade. In 2022, 82 percent of high school students in the state graduated in four years, a six-percentage point increase over the 2013 graduation rate. This report looks at postsecondary enrollment trends for Washington high school graduates in the classes of 2020 and 2021…

Recent years have seen a major decline in community college enrollments across the country. Although the market to attract secondary school students contains many pathways, the overall marketplace is very competitive as most schools are competing for the same body of students. The adult market is the largest and most neglected group of potential…

With more than 290 Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs across 131 high schools, the NYC Department of Education (NYCDOE) oversees one of the largest and most diverse CTE systems in the country. In the last year, NYC's mayor and NYCDOE leadership have made a number of new investments in Career and Technical Education. The Research…

Success Boston, a city-wide initiative to boost college persistence and ultimately improve college completion rates for Boston's high school graduates, has one-on-one transition coaching as a core strategy. Transition coaching offers students sustained, proactive, and responsive support in their first two years of college. Specifically, coaches…

There is an increasingly large disparity in college graduation rates among low-income and first-generation college students. Research suggests that the main reason for this discrepancy is the lack of access to information and knowledge about the college process. First-generation students have fewer people in their social network who went to…

Noncognitive constructs such as self-efficacy, social awareness, and academic engagement are widely acknowledged as critical components of human capital, but systematic data collection on such skills in school systems is complicated by conceptual ambiguities, measurement challenges and resource constraints. This study addresses this issue by…

Education leaders need valid metrics to predict students' long-term success. We use a unique data set with cognitive skills, self-regulation, behavior, course performance, and test scores for eighth-grade students from a Northeast school district. We link these data to students' high school outcomes, college enrollment, persistence, and on-time…

We show that natural disasters affect a region's aggregate human capital through at least four channels. In addition to causing out-migration, natural disasters reduce student achievement, lower high school graduation rates, and decrease post-secondary attendance. We estimate that disasters that cause at least $500 in per capita property damage…

The Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) is the nation's largest network of public charter schools. KIPP began as a network of charter middle schools designed to serve underserved communities, with the goal of closing achievement gaps and preparing students to succeed in college. KIPP has since expanded its model to include elementary and high…

This update of an annual report from the Boston Private Industry Council in partnership with the Boston Foundation and Success Boston captures one of the first looks at how the pandemic affected whether Boston Public Schools graduates enrolled in and completed college. On enrollment, the report finds that the percentage of Boston Public Schools…

This tenth annual High School Benchmarks Report provides updated data on high school graduates' college access, persistence, and completion outcomes. This report was designed with several features particularly tailored to secondary education practitioners and policymakers. First, results presented in this report update last years' findings on high…

Context: From 2009 through 2017, the vast majority of states implemented major reforms to their teacher evaluation systems (Bleiberg & Harbatkin, 2016). State adoption occurred in part due to Race to the Top (Howell & Magazinnik, 2017), which rewarded states for implementing teacher evaluation systems under the theory that generating…