While earning a high school diploma is a critical educational milestone for students, research has shown that obtaining a college degree further equalizes opportunities and increases their upward mobility. To be eligible to apply for the University of California system, students must take 15 college-preparatory courses during their high school…

Schools no longer have a choice between providing students with either college or career readiness; they are now accountable for guiding students through the achievement of both (Malin, Bragg, & Hackmann, 2017). This requirement includes those who participate in a career and technical education (CTE) sequence of courses, defined as a program…

This dissertation investigates whether dual credit students' academic performance in subsequent university courses is comparable to that of non-dual-credit students. The study uses data from a Midwest regional public university over a ten-year period and employs propensity score matching and proportional odds ordinal logistic regression to create…

Ensuring postsecondary readiness is a goal of K-12 education, but it is unclear whether high school students should get different messages about the required levels of academic preparation depending on their postsecondary trajectories. This study estimated readiness benchmark scores on a college admissions test predictive of earning good grades in…

Research shows that students who take advanced mathematics courses perform better on measures of college readiness than students who take less rigorous courses. However, no clear effect has been shown on requiring all students to take more advanced courses. This study examined whether increases in the number and level of mathematics courses…

Previous work has looked at the relationship between high school preparation and student performance in calculus-based introductory mechanics (physics 1) courses. Here, we extend that work to look at performance in introductory calculus-based electricity and magnetism (physics 2), and we look at the significance of what college math courses have…

This study was conducted at a college in Ontario with a sample of students from the Game Development program for 5 intake years: 2014-2018, with the purpose of determining the validity of the Mathematics Diagnostic Test used to place 1st semester college students directly into an advanced math course (Math 10), or to leave them in the introductory…

This study addressed college matriculation rates among high-poverty Arkansas high schools and public charter schools. The purpose of the study was to examine the effects of the college preparation program of Cross County New Tech High School and KIPP Delta Collegiate High School from 2014-2015 through 2017-2018. Central High School in Helena-West…

In Saudi Arabia, high school education has always been blamed for students' weaknesses in the English language. Teachers have been accused of overestimating students' scores in English language courses, resulting in evaluations that do not reflect the students' real levels. Consequently, students believe that they are good enough at English and…

High school students enroll in Advanced Placement (AP) courses and take AP exams for a variety of reasons. However, a lack of information about the extent to which there are incremental benefits associated with taking multiple AP exams has fostered a perception that students must take many APs to be prepared for college. Conversely, many American…

Background/Context: To enhance postsecondary completion and minimize equity gaps, researchers have focused on defining, measuring, and developing students' college readiness, or the preparation required to persist in higher education. While this work has been useful to identify the ingredients of postsecondary success, the emphasis on individual…

Prior research shows that English learners (ELs) lag behind their peers in academic achievement and education attainment. The persisting gap is partly attributed to ELs' limited exposure to academic content. This article investigates the efficacy of a summer credit recovery program aimed at expanding high school newcomer ELs' access to academic…

The AP Capstone Diploma ™ program was launched in 2014 to offer high school students an opportunity to learn interdisciplinary critical thinking and collaboration skills and complete college-level academic research by means of two Advanced Placement® (AP® ) courses: AP Seminar and AP Research. In these early years of the AP Capstone program,…

At the high school level, advanced students are especially hyper-focused on grades, test scores, and college admission. Little information is available on the experiences of participating in these courses from the student's perspective. The purpose of the descriptive phenomenological study was to identify and report the lived experiences of…

The recent simulation-based inference (SBI) movement in algebra-based introductory statistics courses (Stat 101) has provided preliminary evidence of improved student conceptual understanding and retention. However, little is known about whether these positive effects are preferentially distributed across types of students entering the course. We…