Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, online credit recovery (OCR) was the most popular use of distance learning in high schools in the United States. With high course failure rates during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, high schools have turned to OCR to help students recover lost credit. This study examined the potential consequences of…

Using rich administrative data from North Carolina and school-course fixed effects models, this study explores whether the availability of same-race instructors in advanced-track sections of courses affects Black high school students' enrollment in, and performance in, advanced-track courses. The availability of at least one Black instructor at…

Community colleges face challenges in developing, managing, and sustaining quality online courses. Some colleges are experimenting with the development and implementation of a master course design using quality metrics standards and course rubrics to maintain general education online course enrollment growth. Schmidt, Hodge, and Tschida (2013)…

A commonly used metric for measuring college costs, drawn from data in the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), is expenditure per full-time equivalent (FTE) student. This article discusses an error in this per FTE calculation when using IPEDS data, especially with regard to community colleges. The problem is that expenditures…

This mixed-methods study investigates the real and perceived barriers that African American male Edgecombe County high school students face when considering college enrollment to inform potential interventions to improve college enrollment of this market segment. Phase I of the study design included a survey of current, African American, male…

Using detailed administrative data for public schools, we document racial and ethnic segregation at the classroom level in North Carolina, a state that has experienced a sharp increase in Hispanic enrollment. We decompose classroom-level segregation in counties into within-school and between-school components. We find that the within-school…

Inequality in academic, financial, and social outcomes for children in the United States has grown over the past decade. Interest by policymakers in strengthening social and economic mobility has focused on points of transition in students' life trajectories. A key transition point is the shift from secondary school to postsecondary pursuits,…

According to the few quasi-experimental studies examining course outcomes for community college (Xu & Jaggars, 2011a, 2011b, 2013, 2014) and for-profit students (Bettinger, Fox, Loeb, & Taylor, 2014), there is a significant penalty for online students. No comparable research has been conducted on public four-year university students to…

Objective: In the first study of its kind, the impact of excluding noncredit enrollments in calculations of spending in community colleges is explored. Noncredit enrollments are not reported to Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), but expenditures for these efforts are. This study corrects for this omission and provides new…

In April 2000 the state of North Carolina announced an increase in the minimum number of math courses students would need to take to be considered for admission as undergraduates to any of the University of North Carolina's 15 four-year branch campuses. Previously, students had been required to take at least three math courses in high school to be…

This study examined the North Carolina Virtual Public School's (NCVPS) credit recovery program and other common credit recovery options available to students in the state. The study compared short- and longer-term academic outcome data across credit recovery options, as well as correlations between the academic outcomes and characteristics of…

"Keeping Pace with K-12 Online Learning 2016" marks the thirteenth consecutive year Evergreen has published its annual research of the K-12 education online learning market. Throughout the past thirteen years there has been a constant presence that has become the backbone, supporting the growth and success of online learning--the array…

Underrepresentation of women in economics is documented in many studies. Investigation of its sources at the undergraduate level is examined through students' decisions to persist in economics, either beyond an introductory course or in their major choices. The authors add to the literature by analyzing students' decisions to take their first…

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…

"The Talent Blind Spot," which is divided into two reports, demonstrates that, each year, more than 50,000 high-achieving, low- and moderate-income community college students do not transfer to a four-year institution. Approximately 15,000 of these students have a 3.7 GPA or higher, which suggests they could succeed at even the most…