Effects of Early College on Educational Attainment for All in Massachusetts

Evaluations of Early College, a type of intervention that enables simultaneous enrollment in secondary and post-secondary courses in the United States, consistently find positive effects on educational attainment across racial and socioeconomic groups. Unlike Early College initiatives in other states, Massachusetts launched Early College in Fall 2018, enabling a within-school as well as a whole-school intervention, in which each participating school may enroll some or all of its students in Early College, with guiding principles of equitable access, guided academic pathways, student support, and connection to career. This study uses propensity score matching to evaluate the impact of participating in Massachusetts Early College on students’ educational attainment. Positive effects found on college enrollment, with statistically significant positive interactions between the treatment and being socioeconomically disadvantaged, and on college persistence, with statistically significant positive interactions between the treatment and being Latinx, suggest the intervention may help promote equitable access to higher education in Massachusetts. Massachusetts is a local-control state, where public school governance is legally delegated to district and school boards located in the communities they serve, as opposed to the state government, making it more difficult to have state-wide interventions. The flexibility of Massachusetts Early College renders it more easily replicated in local-control states, than the whole school models previously studied.