Over the past five years, the national average college persistence rate for low-income students was 16%. Compared to the national rate of 60%, this number presents a significant gap in college persistence rates between low-income and the overall persistence rate. However, the college persistence rate for low-income students from Cristo Rey Boston…

Estimote Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons deployed throughout a university campus enabled the creation of interactive tours for prospective and accepted students at Fall and Spring open house events. By configuring their mobile devices with an app to detect the beacons' signals, participants could view webpages containing information based on…

Substance use disorders among adolescents can have detrimental and long-term impacts on their educational goals. As such, high school students in recovery who wish to pursue a college education can face unique challenges, ranging from a potential history with the criminal justice system and inequitable evaluative metrics poorly influencing the…

Author Alexis Brooke Redding is an advanced doctoral student and instructor in education at Harvard University. In the spring of 2015 she spent six weeks interviewing administrators and students about the myriad pathways that bring students to Hampshire College. More than simply understanding the nature of this singular campus, her study focused…

This report examines the trends in post-secondary education in Massachusetts following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Massachusetts has had historically high rates of college enrollment and a highly educated labor force. We focus on two groups of high school graduates: those in the high school class of 2020, whose final year of high school…

"Summer counseling" is designed to help college-intending high school graduates complete the steps needed to enroll in college and start their college careers. These programs provide services during the months between high school graduation and college enrollment and involve outreach by college counselors or peer mentors via text…

Though counseling is one commonly pursued intervention to improve college enrollment and completion for disadvantaged students, there is relatively little causal evidence on its efficacy. We use a regression discontinuity design to study the impact of intensive college counseling provided by a Massachusetts program to college-seeking, low-income…

This article explores how college expectations in 8th grade change by 10th grade, and if students realize the expectations for a given level of college from 8th and 10th grade, in light of the "college for all" ethos. This study is based on administrative data from 235,875 public school students in Massachusetts from 2006 to 2016. Using…

The New Bedford Whaling Museum's High School Apprenticeship Program assists economically disadvantaged New Bedford-area high school students to achieve success in high school and post-secondary education. The museum developed the program as a direct response to low high school graduation rates in New Bedford, one of Massachusetts' poorest cities.…

This topic paper details how dual and concurrent enrollment programs can help states overcome workforce readiness and postsecondary access and completion challenges and how governors can strengthen these programs by using their bully pulpit, agenda setting authority and budgetary authority to do so. It concludes with a number of examples of how…

The movement toward proficiency-based learning is gaining momentum at secondary schools across New England and beyond. Proficiency-based learning is the system of instruction, assessment and grading based on demonstration of skills that meet performance standards or "proficiencies." The goal of proficiency-based learning is to better…

Early awareness strategies, from outreach campaigns to cohort-based learning groups to scholarships, are a group of efforts that help middle school students stay on the path to college and understand how to fund their education. These strategies become part of early awareness programs, which seek to put students on a college-going path by…

Recent high school graduates continue to make up a significant number of postsecondary enrollees, begetting a clear focus by education leaders and state policymakers on strategies that support successful student transitions from high school to college. Of the nation's 3.3 million expected high school graduates for the 2014-15 academic year, a full…

We describe the structure of a writing-intensive, chemistry first year seminar designed to support a three week, research focused summer bridge program. Writing assignments in the seminar helped students understand their research activities, learn to conduct themselves as scientists, and reflect upon their lab work. The writing intensive seminar…

Using data from the first National study on high school preparation for college calculus success, the Factors Influencing College Success in Mathematics (FICSMath) project, this article connects student high school instructional experiences to college calculus performance. The findings reported here reveal that students were better prepared for…