California's Early Assessment Program is designed to notify students about their college readiness, encouraging them to take action to improve their skills during their senior year. The author uses qualitative methods and applies sense-making theory to examine how students attending majority Latino, low-income high schools make sense of the…

This study examines the relationships between school funding and students' college preparation, postsecondary enrollment, and postsecondary degree attainment, adding to the literature on how money matters in education. The author addresses how past school funding levels among Illinois public high schools may have been associated with students'…

Students with disabilities have significantly lower graduation rates in four-year postsecondary institutions than students without disabilities. Although there are many barriers associated with persistence and graduation, for students with vision loss, additional accessibility challenges exist. This paper describes a pilot study that examined the…

Like other major school districts throughout the country, the New York City Department of Education (NYC DOE) has shifted its focus over the last decade from holding high schools accountable for graduation rates to holding them accountable for rates of college and career readiness. There are two major challenges facing both research and policy…

Variations of the question, "How are you doing in school?" are among those most frequently posed by adults to students (Reeves, 2004). Grades represent the primary source of that information; indeed, Olson (1995) called grades "one of the most sacred traditions in American education" (p. 24). There is so much trust in the…

As educational priorities have changed, so have the standards for success. New York City has made dramatic progress reducing high school dropouts and boosting on-time graduation rates, which rose from 47 percent in 2005 to 70 percent in 2016. At the same time, changing priorities and expectations have led to an increased emphasis on graduating…

As educational priorities have changed, so have the standards for success. New York City has made dramatic progress reducing high school dropouts and boosting on-time graduation rates, which rose from 47 percent in 2005 to 70 percent in 2016. At the same time, changing priorities and expectations have led to an increased emphasis on graduating…

As educational priorities have changed, so have the standards for success. New York City has made dramatic progress reducing high school dropouts and boosting on-time graduation rates, which rose from 47 percent in 2005 to 70 percent in 2016. At the same time, changing priorities and expectations have led to an increased emphasis on graduating…

In rural areas, a lack of motivation to pursue a postsecondary degree continues to affect Hmong students at the postsecondary education level. The purpose of this qualitative grounded theory research was to create a model based on the exploration of the lack of motivation to pursue postsecondary education among Hmong high school students.…

We study GO Centers, a college information program that is run by student peers and provides information about all aspects of the college-going process to academically prepared students on the margin of attending college. We use the semi-random rollout of the program along with detailed panel data on the universe of Texas public school students to…

This study addresses a longstanding question among high school mathematics teachers and college mathematics professors: Which is the best preparation for college calculus-- (a) a high level of mastery of mathematics considered preparatory for calculus (algebra, geometry, precalculus) or (b) taking calculus itself in high school? We used a data set…

We use statewide administrative data from Missouri to examine the explanatory power of high schools over student sorting to colleges and majors at 4-year public universities. We develop a "preparation and persistence index" (PPI) for each university-by-major cell in the Missouri system that captures dimensions of selectivity and rigor…

Since the 1990s, the United States has fallen behind on college completion, slipping from first in the world in 1995 to 10th in 2016. A major factor in the country's low rates of college completion is a lack of true college preparation in the K-12 education system. On the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the math achievement of 12th…

Drawing on a sociocultural view of learning as acculturation into the distinct social language of academic communities, this study reports the developmental impacts of an intervention program designed to prepare students from a comprehensive urban high school for the rigors of college reading and writing. Statistical analysis of students' pre-,…

African American students continue to attend college at much lower rates than their white, Asian, and Latino counterparts. Although researchers have examined this issue from a multitude of vantage points, the voices of students--particularly students of color--have been limited in this research. Using a counter-storytelling narrative approach,…