Students' college choices can affect their chances of earning a degree, but many lack the support to navigate the opaque college application and admissions process. This paper evaluates whether guaranteeing four-year college admissions based on transparent academic standards affected community college students' enrollment choices and graduation…

This digest provides descriptive, aggregated statistics related to the experiences of 10 cohorts of graduates of City Schools from school years 2010-11 through 2019-20. The compilers use multiple indicators of college access, including the process of applying for college and financial aid, enrollment in the fall following high school graduation,…

Charter schools are highly debated in policy and political discussions about delivering public education. As "laboratories of innovation" that often use lotteries to assign spots, they hold the potential to generate rigorous evidence about effective educational practices. This paper synthesizes and summarizes findings from charter…

In 2010, Arkansas became the most recent state to establish a state lottery program, which allowed lottery revenue to serve as the primary funding source for the Arkansas Academic Challenge Scholarship. The primary goal of this research study was to begin understanding the type of impact the Arkansas Academic Challenge Scholarship funded by the…

The past three decades have seen charter schools emerge as a prominent and controversial alternative to traditional public schools. This policy brief examines "Thirty Years of Charter Schools: What Does Lottery-Based Research Tell Us?" which summarizes 40 studies that have used lottery research designs to analyze how charter schools…

This study presents findings from three cohorts of students--the classes of 2003, 2004, and 2005, in the School District of Philadelphia--that were admitted to the district's career and technical education (CTE) schools through a randomized lottery process. This study takes advantage of this so-called "'natural experiment' to compare high…

One of the most wideranging reforms in public education in the last decade has been the reorganization of large comprehensive high schools into small schools with roughly 100 students per grade. We use assignment lotteries embedded in New York City's high school match to estimate the effects of attendance at a new small high school on student…

New York City's elite public specialized high schools have a long history of offering a rigorous college preparatory education to the City's most academically talented students. Though immensely popular and highly selective, their policy of admitting students on the basis of a single entrance exam has been heavily criticized. Many argue, for…

The New Mexico Higher Education Department strives to bring leadership, guidance, and assistance to New Mexico's higher education stakeholders. The HED is committed to promoting best practices, institutional fiscal responsibility, and student achievement. Everything the agency does is through the lens of supporting New Mexico's higher education…

The New Mexico Higher Education Department (HED) and higher education institutions (HEIs) have set long-term statewide goals to increase 4-year graduation rates, improve transfer and articulation, and improve remedial education outcomes. HED is pursuing these goals through the following initiatives: (1) Statewide common course numbering and…

In light of the recent bans on affirmative action in higher education, this paper provides new evidence on the effects of alternative admissions policies on the persistence and college completion of minority students. I find that the change from affirmative action to the Top 10% Plan in Texas decreased both retention and graduation rates of…

This paper examines the impact of attending different categories of selective institutions on students' college completion. Specifically, it explores differences in the impact that selectivity of an institution has by race and ethnicity. The analysis accounts for the impact of individual and institutional characteristics and corrects for omitted…