The purpose of this study is to evaluate the implementation and impacts of the Building Assets, Reducing Risks (BARR) model in its first year of implementation in 66 schools across the U.S. and to document scale-up progress during the Investing in Innovation (i3) grant period (2017-2021). The impact evaluation included 21,529 9th grade students…

Are statewide college Promise programs an effective way to increase college access and success? It's hard to say. While these programs are becoming more common, they vary widely along a number of dimensions. RFA's new "Statewide College Promise Framework" is a tool that can be used to capture and compare important variation in the…

Research for Action has studied statewide Promise programs since 2017, with in-depth analysis in four states--Delaware, Nevada, Oregon, and Tennessee. Our research in these states includes an extensive review of legislative and policy documents; 146 interviews with policymakers, institutional leaders, and high school staff; site visits to 8…

This study presents a survey developed to measure the skills of entering college freshmen in the areas of responsibility, motivation, study habits, literacy, and stress management, and explores the predictive power of this survey as a measure of academic performance during the first semester of college. The survey was completed by 334 incoming…

In a causal-comparative research design, this study investigated the effectiveness of an academic alternative school in improving at-risk student outcomes in a selected county school system in the Upper Cumberland region of Tennessee. The academic alternative high school was compared to a traditional high school serving at-risk populations.…

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between a coach's leadership style and the academic achievement of the student athletes in Tennessee high schools. This dissertation examines the relationship between the leadership styles of high school coaches and how it affects the grade point average and ACT scores of student-athletes…

The purpose of this study was to contribute to the research body of literature regarding dual enrollment, the impact and effectiveness of the program, and its relationship to college persistence. The goal was to provide information useful to governing bodies, educational leaders, parents and students. The theoretical construct, defined through the…

The purpose of the study was to investigate the associations between first-time full-time freshmen's attributes and fall-to-fall retention at Northeast State Technical Community College. The 15 attributes included age, first-generation student status, gender, high school classification, race, the student's application date to the institution…

This paper reports on the results of a research project that focused on the relationship between (1) high school foreign language study and college cumulative grade point average (GPA), and (2) high school foreign language study and college freshman English cumulative GPA in a random sample of Tennessee public college graduates in 1987-88. The…