As part of a larger research study entitled "Where Do Test Scores Fit in a Test-Optional Environment," the authors surveyed students who took the ACT on June 11, 2022, in order to better understand why high school students would take a standardized test like the ACT when they knew they were applying to test-optional institutions. Among…

Social and emotional (SE) skills are interpersonal, self-regulatory, and task-related behaviors that are important for adaptation to and successful performance across all domains of life, including education and workplace settings (Casillas et al., 2015). Family engagement affects the development of these important skills (Brooks & Lambert,…

This study explored perceptions of African American college students concerning barriers to enrolling in higher education institutions, focusing on a public comprehensive regional university in Kentucky, using interviews and focus groups. The focus of the research pertained to ACT testing requirements, home and school support systems, and the role…

High-stakes, standardized testing plays an important role in the lives of many students as they apply to college and compete for scholarships. In states where college readiness measures, like the ACT® test, are used for school and district accountability, the ACT scores of all students, whether college-bound or not, are a top priority for school…

We use statewide administrative data from Missouri to examine the role of high schools in explaining students' initial college and major placements at 4-year public universities. To facilitate our investigation of postsecondary sorting, we develop a "preparation and persistence index" (PPI) for each university-by-major cell in the…

"Exploring Texas's Private Education Sector" is the eighth entry in the "School Survey Series." This brief synthesizes information about Texas's accredited private schools from a first-of-its-kind survey about these types of choice programs and more to Texas's private K-12 schools in collaboration with the Texas Catholic…

The State of Higher Education for Black Californians is the first in the Campaign for College Opportunity's series of reports on the current state of college access and completion for California's Black; Latinx; and Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islanders. The state of higher education reports also discuss the implications of…

"Exploring Arizona's Private Education Sector" is the seventh installment in our "School Survey Series." EdChoice Director of State Research and Policy Analysis Andrew Catt surveyed Arizona private school leaders about the state's educational choice programs, especially its Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, as well as their…

The processes linking job characteristics to school performance and satisfaction in a sample of 253 full-time college students were examined from 2 role theory perspectives, 1 of which emphasized resource scarcity and the other resource expansion. Model tests using structural equation modeling showed that 2 resource-enriching job characteristics,…

The purpose of the inquiry described was to examine the ways in which characteristics of the educational environment of the home, the school, and the peer group accounted for change in performance at school over the period of a year, in which the sample of children selected for investigation progressed from primary school to high school. The…

A decline in student performance on the Scholastic Aptitude Test, the Achievement Tests, the American College Test, and the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test has been observed nationally since the mid 1960's and evidence indicates that very similar trends have occurred in Massachusetts. Score declines have occurred in public, private, and…