To address under-preparation of students for college-level course-work, Texas House Bill 5 (HB5) introduced a number of substantive changes to the state high school curriculum and graduation requirements. Among its provisions, HB5 created a requirement that school districts offer a college preparatory mathematics course for students not meeting…

Students who delay immediate postsecondary enrollment may forego individual benefits, or represent misplaced resources for higher education institutions by not persisting once enrolled. Understanding the various pathways of diverse students is especially important in states that are experiencing a major demographic shift. Using a multi-agency…

The "IDRA Newsletter" serves as a vehicle for communication with educators, school board members, decision-makers, parents, and the general public concerning the educational needs of all children across the United States. The focus of this issue is "Data for Actionable Knowledge." Contents include: (1) Office for Civil Rights…

The impact of charter schools on early-life labor market outcomes using administrative data from Texas is estimated. It was found that, at the mean, charter schools have no impact on test scores and a negative impact on earnings. No Excuses charter schools increase test scores and four-year college enrollment, but have a small and statistically…

Each time children change schools, they leave behind friends, and must adapt to a new environment. This new environment may include not only a new school, but also a new home, a new neighborhood, a new part of town, and, potentially, a new family arrangement. This larger array of possible changes will determine if the move causes overall benefit…

Community colleges across the country are plagued with tight budgets--caused in part by state disinvestment and chronic federal underfunding. For rural community colleges, these challenges are even more acute, as their needs are greater and the costs of providing services higher. The COVID-19 pandemic has only deepened the prosperity gap between…

Hispanic high school graduates have lower college completion rates than academically similar white students. As Hispanic students have been theorized to be more constrained in the college search and selection process, one potential policy lever is to increase the set of colleges to which these students apply and attend. In this paper, we…

Do schools reduce or perpetuate inequality by race and family income? Most studies conclude that schools play only a small role in explaining socioeconomic and racial disparities in educational outcomes, but they usually draw this conclusion based solely on test scores. We reconsider this finding using longitudinal data on test scores and…

Despite increases in postsecondary enrollment at American universities and colleges, there are still significant gaps in who matriculates to college and persists through graduation. Low-income students and students of color continue to be underrepresented in institutions of higher education; for many of these students, a lack of awareness of…

This article uses administrative data from the University of Texas at Austin to examine whether the number of classmates from the same high school at college entry influences college achievement, measured by grade point average (GPA) and persistence. For each freshman cohort from 1993 through 2003, the authors calculated the number and ethnic…

Cash incentives for high school students to perform better in school are growing in popularity, but not everyone understands them. Does paying students for better Advanced Placement (AP) test scores encourage enrollment in AP classes? The author set out to determine the impact of a cash incentive program operating in a number of Texas high…

The purpose of a state report card is to provide the general public and policymakers with information to assess and improve post secondary education in each state. "Measuring Up 2008" is the fifth in a series of biennial report cards that evaluates states in six overall performance categories: (1) Preparation for post-secondary education…

The purpose of a state report card is to provide the general public and policymakers with information to assess and improve post secondary education in each state. "Measuring Up 2008" is the fifth in a series of biennial report cards that evaluates states in six overall performance categories: (1) Preparation for post-secondary education…

On May 7, 2002, the Governor's Business Council of Texas was honored to host a number of state and national education leaders who came together to discuss higher education's role in creating an effective and aligned P-16 education system. The State of Texas faces a daunting challenge in improving our P-16 system and increasing rates of college…