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Student supports
Should College Be “Free”? Evidence On Free College, Early Commitment, and Merit Aid From An Eight-Year Randomized Trial
Tags: Higher education, Student supportsWe provide evidence about college financial aid from an eight-year randomized trial where high school ninth graders received a $12,000 merit-based grant offer. The program was designed to be free of tuition/fees at community colleges and substantially lower the cost of four-year colleges. During… more →
Challenges and opportunity: An examination of barriers to postsecondary academic success
Community colleges are a critical component of the U.S. higher education system, providing access to students from traditionally underserved communities. However, enduring challenges to completion stemming from educational, economic, and social inequities persist. Building on prior work that… more →
The Benefits of Math Corequisite Support for Academic Outcomes for Students in Texas
An increasing body of robust evidence concludes that corequisite remediation in math and English is a cost-effective alternative to traditional developmental education, offering improved immediate course progression and potentially better persistence and completion. This is the first study to… more →
Do Financial Incentives Increase the Impact of National-Scale Educational Programs? Experimental Evidence from a National College Advising Initiative
Recent work highlights the challenge of scaling evidence-based educational programs. We report on a randomized controlled trial of a financial incentive program designed to increase the efficacy of a national remote college advising initiative for high-achieving students. We find substantial… more →
EMERGEing Educational Opportunities: The Effects of Social Capital and Nudging on Selective College Outcomes
Tags: Higher education, Student supportsThere is a growing debate in social science and education policy research on how to improve college access for high-performing students from low-income or first-generation backgrounds. While some studies suggest that providing information to students impacts college access, other studies do not… more →
COVID-19 Diagnoses and University Student Performance: Evidence from Linked Administrative Health and Education Data
Topics: Student Well-BeingWe analyze the impact of COVID-19 diagnoses on student grades, retention, and on-time graduation at a large public university. Even though COVID-19 rarely causes major health complications for a typical university student, diagnosis and quarantine may cause non-trivial disruptions to learning.… more →
Integrated Student Support Intervention Mitigates the Adverse Impact of School Mobility on Middle School Students' Achievement and Behavior
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceSchool mobility, compounding socioeconomic inequities, can undermine academic achievement and behavior, particularly during middle school years. This study investigates the effect of a school-based integrated student support intervention – City Connects – on the achievement and behavior of… more →
Experimental Estimates of College Coaching on Postsecondary Re-enrollment
College attendance has increased significantly over the last few decades, but dropout rates remain high, with fewer than half of all adults ultimately obtaining a postsecondary credential. This project investigates whether one-on-one college coaching improves college attendance and completion… more →
Forging a path to college persistence: An experimental evaluation of the Detroit Promise Path program
Stacey L. Brockman, Jasmina Camo-Biogradlija, Alyssa Ratledge, Rebekah O’Donoghue, Micah Y. Baum, Brian A. Jacob.Detroit students who obtain a college degree overcome many obstacles to do so. This paper reports the results of a randomized evaluation of a program meant to provide support to low-income community college students. The Detroit Promise Path (DPP) program was designed to complement an existing… more →
Integrated Student Support and Student Achievement: A Replication Study
Topics: Student LearningGrowing up in poverty presents numerous nonacademic barriers that impede academic progress for economically disadvantaged students (Duncan and Murnane, 2016). Because schools alone have limited capacity to address the systemic nature of economic inequalities that directly affects student… more →
Do Early Warning Systems Help High School Students Stay on Track for College? Mixed Methods Evaluation of the Ninth Grade Success Initiative
As the transition point between middle school and high school, ninth grade can either set a student up for long-term success or diminish a student’s likelihood of graduating high school altogether. Interventions that can help educators better meet the needs of students during this critical… more →
School-Based Healthcare and Absenteeism: Evidence from Telemedicine
Topics: Student Well-BeingThe prevalence of school-based healthcare has increased markedly over the past decade. We study a modern mode of school-based healthcare, telemedicine, that offers the potential to reach places and populations with historically low access to such care. School-based telemedicine clinics (SBTCs)… more →
Leading Indicators of Long-Term Success in Community Schools: Evidence from New York City
Topics: Families and CommunitiesTags: Absenteeism, Student supportsCommunity schools offer supports such as health and social services, extended school days, and family education, to improve the performance of students whose learning may be disrupted by challenges related to poverty. In 2015, the New York City Community Schools Initiative was implemented in… more →
The inequity of opt-in educational resources and an intervention to increase equitable access
Topics: Student LearningTags: Equity, Student supportsBillions of dollars are invested in opt-in educational resources to support struggling students. Yet, there is no guarantee these students will use these resources. We report results from a school system’s implementation of on-demand tutoring. The take up was low. At baseline, only 19% of… more →
Beyond Teachers: Estimating Individual Guidance Counselors’ Effects on Educational Attainment
Topics: Student LearningTags: Counseling, Student supportsCounselors are a common school resource for students navigating complicated and con- sequential education choices. I estimate counselors’ causal effects using quasi-random assignment policies in Massachusetts. Counselors vary substantially in their effectiveness at increasing high school… more →
Keep Me In, Coach: The Short- and Long-Term Effects of Targeted Academic Coaching
To boost college graduation rates, policymakers often advocate for academic supports such as coaching or mentoring. Proactive and intensive coaching interventions are effective, but are costly and difficult to scale. We evaluate a relatively lower-cost group coaching program targeted at first-… more →
Can the promise of free education improve college attainment? Lessons from the Milwaukee Area Technical College Promise
This study found that the MATC Promise increased college attainment by encouraging Milwaukee high school students to access state and federal aid, and to consider matriculating to their local two-year college. The MATC Promise exemplifies the last-dollar model of college aid. If seniors at… more →
Gauging Engagement: Measuring Student Response to a Large-Scale College Advising Field Experiment
Interactive, text message-based advising programs have become an increasingly common strategy to support college access and success for underrepresented student populations. Despite the proliferation of these programs, we know relatively little about how students engage in these text-based… more →
Can Information and Advising Affect Postsecondary Participation and Attainment for Non-Traditional Students? Evidence from a Large-Scale Experiment with the U.S. Army
Tags: Higher education, Student supportsNon-traditional students disproportionately enroll in institutions with weaker graduation and earnings outcomes. One hypothesis is that these students would have made different choices had they been provided with better information or supports during the decision-making process. We conducted a… more →
Does Monitoring Change Teacher Pedagogy and Student Outcomes?
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentIn theory, monitoring can improve employee motivation and effort, particularly in settings lacking measurable outputs, but research assessing monitoring as a motivator is limited to laboratory settings. To address this gap, I leverage exogenous variation in the presence and intensity of teacher… more →