SEO Ed Digest
|
Vol. 3, Issue 10
October 2006
Bringing urban P-16 education resources to policymakers, parents, advocates, and district and school staff in the District of Columbia
Research on DC Schools
National Lessons Learned
New Ideas
The State Education Office does not endorse the views expressed in the resources and reports contained in the SEO Ed Digest.
|
|
Despite its importance, only one in four Americans who enter 9th grade will successfully attain a college degree. Low-income students face greater odds in this country: out of 100 freshman high school students, fewer than 15 will ultimately graduate from college. This issue of the SEO Ed Digest covers recent and background research on the topic of college access, including: the population of students going to college; strategies to improve college readiness; ways to increase academic rigor in high schools; challenges students face in the transition from high school to postsecondary education; successful high school models that move students from high school to postsecondary education; and strategies to lower the number of high school dropouts.
Interactive Resources
Reports
Interactive Resources
This online tool helps students locate scholarships, internships, grants, and loans that match their education level, talents, and background. The database has more than 2,300 sources of college funding, totaling nearly $3 billion in available aid.
This national directory of college access programs is a free online resource for students, parents, counselors, researchers, and those operating college access programs. This online tool allows people to search the directory for college access programs; take a survey to add or update program data; and generate real-time reports of directory data.
Reports
Claiming Common Ground: State Policymaking for Improving College Readiness and Success (March 2006)
This report identifies four state policy dimensions for improving college-readiness opportunities for all high school students. 1) Alignment of coursework and assessments: States should require K–12 and postsecondary education to align their courses and assessments. Currently, the K–12 standards movement and efforts to improve access and success in higher education are not connected. 2) State finance: States should develop financial incentives and support to stimulate K–12 and postsecondary education to collaborate to improve college readiness and success. Most existing state finance systems perpetuate the divide between K–12 and postsecondary education. 3) Statewide data systems: States should develop the capacity to track students across educational institutions statewide. Currently, most states do not collect adequate data to address the effectiveness of K–12 reforms in improving student readiness for college. 4) Accountability: States should publicly report on student progress and success from high school through postsecondary education. Schools, colleges, and universities should be held accountable for improving student performance from high school to college completion. Through these policy levers, states can create the conditions for claiming common ground between our systems of K–12 and postsecondary education.
This report surveys the higher education landscape and highlights a number of facts about the various converging trends. The authors find that several of these trends point to decreasing access and success for students from certain backgrounds, with the overall effect of less opportunity for some students, especially students of color and students from low-income backgrounds. The report is divided into four parts. The first part explains why access to postsecondary education matters both for individuals and for society as a whole, given the various benefits that education brings with it. Next, the report highlights the current status of postsecondary education opportunity in this country, especially for traditionally underserved populations such as low-income students and students of color. The report then details the trends affecting postsecondary opportunity, including state and federal policies, institutional level practices, student and parent influences, and private sector involvements. Finally, the report recommends steps to mitigate the effects of this convergence of trends.
Early College High Schools (ECHS) are successfully enrolling low-income and minority youth and placing many in college courses. Although some students struggle with academically rigorous courses, almost all say they plan to attend college after high school. Early college high schools reported high attendance rates, and students in general were more likely to benefit from personalized relationships with high school faculty than college instructors. Challenges remain in accelerating students unprepared for college-level work and gauging the right amount of student support needed. Evaluation data was collected from several sources, including 25 early college high schools and Jobs for the Future.
Fast Track to College: Increasing Postsecondary Success for All Students (December 2004)
It is time to reinvent the relationship between American high schools and postsecondary institutions so that every student has a chance to attend college and complete some kind of postsecondary credential by the age of 26. This report discusses the development of three fast track to college alternatives to the traditional high school senior year that would enable students to get a head start toward the goal of education through grade 14. These are: an Academic Head Start on College; An Accelerated Career/Technical College; and A Gap Year, or College in the Community. States would be the focal point for developing, testing, and redefining these alternatives. To accomplish these alternative programs, the federal government would support state innovation by providing seed money and regulatory flexibility on a competitive basis over a six- to twelve-year time period. The goals would be to: increase the number of students who complete postsecondary credentials; reduce the time it takes to do so; and eliminate disparities in educational attainment by race and income by the end of the decade.
This white paper, prepared for Staying the Course: High Standards and Improved Graduation Rates, a joint project of Achieve and Jobs for the Future, summarizes research about the dropout problem and the best strategies for building an early warning data system that can signal which students and schools are most in need of interventions. The report notes that recent research and experience convey three important lessons: 1) The dropout problem is not an inevitable, immutable feature of U.S. education; 2) We can do a much better job predicting which students are most likely to drop out; and 3) We know more than ever about how schools contribute to high dropout rates and what educators can do to solve the problem.
Indicators of Opportunity in Higher Education: 2005 Status Report (2005)
http://www.pellinstitute.org/files/6_Indicators.pdf In fall 2004, the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education released the first Indicators of Opportunity in Higher Education. This first edition asked four core questions about students’ opportunities for postsecondary education: Who is going to college? Where do students go? What do students pay for college? Who graduates from college? This second edition continues to build on the knowledge base of the first report and maintains consistency with the indicators of the first report. An important addition is the inclusion of an indicator that addresses a key financial issue – the percentage of family income that is needed to cover the cost of college. This indicator gives greater depth to understanding what college costs mean in the context of family budget and therefore, how much college opportunity can vary by income. Findings include the following: low-income students participate in higher education at lower rates, and there is concern that these rates are declining; the types of postsecondary opportunity available to low-income students are limited compared to students in other income groups; baccalaureate attainment rates for low-income students lag considerably behind the rates for students from other income groups; a primary factor that restricts opportunity for low-income students is their limited ability to pay for college; and the high price of college causes students to alter their behavior – for example they attend 2-year institutions instead of 4-year.
The numbers are astonishing and unfortunately all too familiar – while four in five high school students expect to complete a college degree, fewer than a third will actually emerge from the high-school-to-college pipeline with a baccalaureate six years after high school graduation. A growing number of parents see a college degree as absolutely necessary for their child’s success, and more students believe that they will attain this goal. But the sad fact is that only one in three will complete a college degree. This policy brief examines the troubling gap between educational aspirations, what students (and parents) need to do to achieve those expectations, and what states are doing to better communicate to students and parents the importance of being academically prepared for college and the steps to take to achieve that level of preparation.
In this paper, the authors examine the predictors of college-going behavior and how they have been addressed within the school reform movement. They then extrapolate the promising practices from existing reform initiatives and make recommendations for the future. To do this, the authors reviewed the literature on school reform, college access, and the predictors of college-going behavior, and analyzed research and materials pertaining to a set of school reform designs. They found that among the predictors of college-going behavior, academic rigor and strong social and academic support were the most crucial predictors of a student’s successful enrollment in, and completion of, postsecondary education.
In an EdWeek op-ed, Jobs for the Future’s Adria Steinberg, Cassius O. Johnson, and Cheryl A. Almeida discuss the many misbeliefs about dropouts and educational persistence. Their analysis shifts the emphasis from who drops out and why, to how and why current educational options fail to effectively recapture young people who drop out and put them back on track to earn secondary and postsecondary credentials. The authors also offer policy recommendations to remedy these misbeliefs, which include the following: do a better job of counting and accounting for what happens to dropouts; and increase pathways that help dropouts pursue an education.
Mortgaging our Future: How Financial Barriers to College Undercut America’s Global Competitiveness (September 2006)
The Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance's new report attempts to estimate the cumulative impact of price barriers on low-income students by calculating the extent to which low-income college-qualified high school graduates are unable to enroll and persist in college at the same rates as their middle-income peers. During the 1990s, nearly 1 million to 1.6 million bachelor's degrees were lost; during the current decade, between 1.4 to 2.4 million more degrees will likely be lost.
At the same time that a college education has become the ticket to the middle class, college has become less affordable. This report finds that the situation in New England is worse than it is nationally. Even though incomes are higher in the region, families are likely spending a higher share of their income to pay for college. In 2003-04, families with students attending a community college in New England spent 17 percent of their annual income to cover the costs of college. Families are stretching even more to attend a public four-year college in the region, spending 21 percent of their income. Private colleges are the most expensive, requiring that families spend a stunning 33 percent of their income. Although family incomes and grant aid have increased over the past decade, they have not increased enough to offset the increases in tuition prices. As a consequence, more students and parents are taking out loans to finance their college education, and the amount of debt that students are carrying has increased significantly during the past ten years. The increase in loans has shifted a greater amount of risk to students and their families, and the consequences of this shift deserve more public discussion.
Ready or Not: Creating a High School Diploma that Counts (2004)
The diploma has lost its value because what it takes to earn one is disconnected from what it takes for graduates to compete successfully beyond high school – either in the classroom or in the workplace. Working intensively with more than 300 employers and faculty members from two- and four-year institutions and drawing on new quantitative research into the educational background of the current workforce, the American Diploma Project has defined in concrete terms the English and mathematics that high school graduates must have mastered by the time they leave high school if they expect to succeed in post-secondary education or in high-performance, high-growth jobs. The result is an ambitious set of college and workplace readiness benchmarks accompanied by action steps that schools, states, postsecondary institutions and employers must take to give value back to the dilpoma.
Jobs for the Future commissioned the development of a financial analysis model for calculating the return on investment for early college high schools. The model, created by Augenblick, Palaich, & Associates, Inc., indicates that young people and their families would recognize significant advantages in terms of savings on college tuition and increased lifetime earning from attending early college high schools. Early college high schools allow students to graduate with a high school diploma and also an Associate’s degree or up to two years of college credit toward a Bachelor’s degree. In addition, states would reap their financial investment in these schools in terms of higher educational attainment for young people, increased earnings, and a longer working life for graduates—and hence increased future tax revenues.
School-to-College Transition: Challenges and Prospects (December 2004)
This report summarizes the growing body of research on the school-to-college transition, focusing on actions that college and university leaders can take to improve low-income and minority students’ access to higher education. After a brief description of today’s students, the report summarizes research on the various stages of the college transition process and on six critical issues that must be addressed to improve college access. The report ends with three tools for college leaders: research-tested action steps that colleges and universities can take to improve college access; a set of key questions to prompt institutional research and conversation; and an annotated bibliography of selected key studies for further reading.
Student Financing of Undergraduate Education: 2003–04, With a Special Analysis of the Net Price of Attendance and Federal Education Tax Benefits (August 2006)
Based on data from the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study, this report contains information on the price of attendance at various postsecondary institutions, the amount of aid offered, and the benefits received from tax credits and tax deductions. For the 2003-4 academic year, the average price of attendance for full-time undergraduates ranged from $10,500 to $28,300. Rhree-fourths received some type of financial aid, and one-half took out student loans. The average aid package was $9,900; student loans averaged $6,200.
The Toolbox Revisited (February 2006)
The Toolbox Revisited is a data essay that follows a nationally representative cohort of students from high school into postsecondary education and asks what aspects of their formal schooling contribute to completing a bachelor's degree by their mid-20s. The universe of students is confined to those who attended a four-year college at any time, thus including students who started out in other types of institutions, particularly community colleges. The study finds that the following make a difference in students completing a four-year college degree: the academic intensity of the student's high school curriculum; completing a certain amount of college credits after one-year of college; student uses of time in undergraduate careers; how a student transfers from school to school; and student academic performance.
Back to OSSE Ed Digest Main