The charter school movement encompasses many school models. In Massachusetts in the 2010's, the site of our study, urban charter schools primarily used "No Excuses" practices, whereas nonurban charters had greater model variety. Using randomized admissions lotteries, we estimate the impact of charter schools by locality on college…

Most of the literature on lottery-based charter school research focuses on charters in large urban centers, primarily finding that they raise standardized test scores. In contrast, the limited rigorous research on rural and suburban charters suggests that they reduce or do not affect test scores. However, this evidence is limited, and almost no…

This paper considers an unavoidable feature of the school environment, class rank. What are the long run effects of a student's ordinal rank in elementary school? Using administrative data from all public school students in Texas, we show that students with a higher third grade academic rank, conditional on achievement and classroom fixed effects,…

Educators are increasingly focused on ensuring that students experience a rigorous curriculum in high school and graduate college and career ready. One way of introducing rigorous course work is to have students take college-level work, often in the form of either an AP® course and exam or a dual enrollment course. This study compared the outcomes…

The current study examined the role of AP® Exam participation and performance on four-year college graduation in four years. Because students who take AP Exams can earn college credit while still in high school, it was expected that AP students would have higher four-year graduation rates. Moreover, it was expected that AP students who earned…

The study presented here is an investigation and comparison of the relationships between the Advanced Placement Program® (AP®) and dual-enrolled high school courses and college outcomes. Previous research provides evidence that participation in AP, and subsequent success on AP Exams, is positively related to various college outcomes including an…

This research quantifies the extent of student-college academic undermatch among the 1992 and 2004 cohorts of graduating high school seniors and documents changes in the extent of academic undermatch over time. Tables are appended.

The purpose of this study is to develop a preadmission predictive model of student success for prospective first-time African American college applicants at a predominately White four-year public institution within the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education. This model will use two types of variables. They are (a) cognitive variables (i.e.,…