Rising college costs have outpaced federal grant aid and placed more of the financial burden on students and their families. Children's Savings Account (CSA) programs help families, especially lower-income families, save for college--and other postsecondary education--by providing financial contributions and possibly other supports. A Senate…

Evaluating the impact of widening participation interventions can be challenging. This article discusses some of the difficulties in "attributing" change to complex widening participation interventions and suggests that the Theory of Change (ToC) approach can address some of these challenges by evidencing the "contribution"…

College 101 is powerful Pre-College Opportunity Program (PCoP) designed to expose at-risk high school students to the benefits of post-secondary education, to motivate them to stay in school, and to help them envision a future that includes post-secondary education. The unique features of College 101 include that it is grounded in the pedagogical…

Early exposure to college and career readiness supports were offered to disadvantaged grade 10 and 11 high school students through the Launch Ignite Scholar Program. Ignite Scholars were encouraged to build a stronger foundation for college and career through participation in one-on-one advising, college and industry tours, and college and career…

This paper analyzes challenges indigenous Peruvian college students face in completing their studies, based on field research that included interviews with Peruvian higher education leaders, administrators, researchers, and faculty, and a review of published research. Since 2012, the government of Peru has sponsored Beca 18, a comprehensive…

"Riawunna" is an Aboriginal word meaning "a place of learning" for Aboriginal people, from entry level to tertiary studies, at the University of Tasmania (UTAS) and operates on Hobart, Launceston and Burnie campuses. The Riawunna Centre was established to encourage Aboriginal people to aspire to higher levels of education, and…

Children of parents with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) are at-risk for a variety of negative outcomes, including poor educational achievement. The multi-level, resilience-based "ChildCARE" intervention has been found to yield short-term improvement in a number of school-related variables for children affected by parental HIV.…

This report aims to fill the gap in research on English as a Second Language (ESL) programs at California's community colleges and the effectiveness of reforms aimed at improving student success. A number of colleges have implemented curricular reforms in recent years--accelerating coursework, integrating skills courses, and the like. These…

This formative program evaluation and research study uses multiple methods and mixed paradigms to describe and evaluate the eighth grade Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) program in a suburban middle school in Minnesota. The problem motivating this study is the persistent achievement gap among student groups as defined by racial,…

This article documents narrative experiences from alumni who participated in the GEAR UP program. The San Jose State University GEAR UP program, based on an intensive counseling model, is grounded in social capital and resilience theories, and is designed to increase the number of low-income students who are prepared to enter and succeed in…

This study develops a sequential mixed model of Delphi-Propensity Score Matching to discuss how an NGO's socio-emotional support affects the decisions of dropout, work, and two types of upper secondary schooling in rural China. Data were collected from 6,298 students in 2012 after a subgroup of them were treated. The analysis shows that…

Background: Truancy and alcohol use are quality indicators of academic achievement and success. However, there remains a paucity of substantive research articulating the impact these deviant behaviors have on an adolescent's educational aspirations. The purpose of this study is to assess whether recent alcohol use and truancy impact students'…

The Ingenuity program was designed to "provide Baltimore's brightest middle school students with a free, highly accelerated, and challenging mathematics and science curriculum" (Ingenuity Project, 2014). It started in 1993 at two middle schools, one on the east side of Baltimore and the second on the west, but as of SY 2014-15 the…

KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) is a national network of public charter schools whose stated mission is to help underserved students enroll in and graduate from college. Prior studies (see Tuttle et al. 2013) have consistently found that attending a KIPP middle school positively affects student achievement, but few have addressed longer-term…

KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) is a national network of public charter schools whose stated mission is to help underserved students enroll in and graduate from college. Prior studies (see Tuttle et al. 2013) have consistently found that attending a KIPP middle school positively affects student achievement, but few have addressed longer-term…