This Data Point looks first at whether students who planned to go to college also met with a high school counselor about financial aid. The second question considers a different population of students, addressing whether students who enrolled in college also received aid. This analysis does not indicate a causal relationship between meeting with a…

Among students in the 2024 ACT-tested graduating class, over 374,000 took the PreACT 8/9® or PreACT test before taking the ACT. This issue brief compares the ACT scores and college enrollment rates for students who took a test from the PreACT Suite of Assessments versus those who did not. The brief also examines average PreACT-to-ACT gain scores…

This paper estimates the causal effects of enrollment in one of five oversubscribed high-quality Los Angeles charter schools using a lottery design. Enrolling in a charter school increased eleventh-grade standardized test scores and enrollment and persistence in four-year colleges substantially, but had no effect on high school GPA. Charter…

Social and emotional (SE) skills are known to be linked with many important life outcomes, including academic performance, performance on standardized college entrance exams, and college enrollment. In this technical brief, the authors evaluated whether the five SE skills measured with the Mosaic™ by ACT® predict postsecondary enrollment and…

Although it is well documented that women are under-represented in STEM majors, the causes of this under-representation in different contexts are less clear. This article studies the relevance of absolute and relative performance in high school courses on STEM field enrollment when entering college in Chile. We use administrative countrywide data…

There is an increasingly large disparity in college graduation rates among low-income and first-generation college students. Research suggests that the main reason for this discrepancy is the lack of access to information and knowledge about the college process. First-generation students have fewer people in their social network who went to…

Shanghai has always led college entrance examination reform in China, and has piloted the new round of college entrance examination reform for 5 years. At present, the comprehensive quality evaluation of general high school students has been carried out on a regular basis, and the comprehensive quality evaluation information of graduates of the…

This research brief summarizes student outcome findings from SRI International's evaluation of the California Linked Learning District Initiative, an effort to build robust district-level systems to sustain high school career pathways in nine school districts in the state. With funding from The James Irvine Foundation, SRI conducted a rigorous…

Since 2006, The James Irvine Foundation has invested more than $100 million in Linked Learning, a promising approach to transforming education in California. In 2009, the Foundation launched the California Linked Learning District Initiative ("the initiative") to demonstrate this approach in nine school districts. The multiyear…

This report summarizes 2006-2007 evaluation results of AISD's Project ADVANCE activities. Project ADVANCE staff worked with high school students and their parents to prepare students for postsecondary enrollment.