Why Do Some Students Fail to Receive Pell Grants?

IN PREVIOUS RESEARCH, we found that one in five California community college (CCC) students who are seemingly eligible for federal Pell Grant funds do not receive them.1 While the reasons students forgo these funds are not entirely understood, the consequences are quantifiable: Eligible CCC students pass up $130 million in financial aid in one semester alone. The amounts of forgone Pell Grants vary significantly by student characteristics and by college campus, suggesting that campus financial aid policies and practices may play an important role in whether or not students receive awards. Eligible students can receive as much as$6,095 in Pell funds each year. Because many low-income CCC students receive a state fee waiver that covers tuition, the Pell Grant can help them cover food, rent, transportation, and other expenses, thus allowing them to focus on school. To dive deeper into the phenomenon of forgone aid, we conducted a statewide survey of CCC campus financial aid directors. We sought to learn more about these administrators' perceptions of students' challenges in seeking aid, their general orientation as either conduits or gatekeepers of aid, and also about their institutions' policies and procedures, including methods of outreach to students who are flagged for a verification process that can pose significant challenges for students

Investing in Schools: Capital Spending, Facility Conditions, and Student Achievement (Revised and Edited)

Public investments in repairs, modernization, and construction of schools cost billions. However, little is known about the nature of school facility investments, whether such investments actually change the physical condition of public schools, and the subsequent causal impacts on student achievement. We study the achievement effects of nearly 1,400 capital campaigns initiated and financed by local school districts, comparing districts where school capital bonds were either narrowly approved or narrowly defeated by district voters. Overall, we find little evidence that school capital campaigns improve student achievement. Our event-study analyses focusing on students that attend targeted schools and therefore are exposed to major campus renovations also generate very precise zero estimates of achievement effects. Thus, locally financed school capital campaigns - the predominant method through which facility investments are made - may represent a limited tool for realizing substantial gains in student achievement or closing achievement gaps

Percent Plans, Automatic Admissions, and College Outcomes.

Abstract Access to selective universities is highly sought-after due to the prestige of these institutions and the perception that attending one provides economic opportunities that would otherwise be difficult to obtain. However, there remain large disparities by race and socioeconomic status in who attends these institutions. To help expand access to the state's flagship universities in a way that does not rely on race-conscious affirmative action, Texas passed the Top Ten Percent Plan in 1997, which guarantees automatic admission to any public university in the state to students in the top decile of their high school class. This paper estimates the effect of eligibility for this admissions guarantee on college choice and persistence for students in a large urban school district. We do so using a regression discontinuity design that compares the outcomes of students who barely made it into the top decile to those who barely did not. We find that eligibility for automatic admission has a substantial impact on enrollments at Texas flagship universities and increases the number of semesters enrolled at a flagship university. This increase in flagship enrollment appears to displace enrollment in private or out-ofstate universities but has no effect on overall college enrollment or on the quality of college attended. The effects on flagship enrollment are concentrated in schools that have high college-sending rates (relative to other schools in the district), suggesting that automatic admissions may have little effect on the outcomes of students in the most disadvantaged schools

Ready for Fall? Near-Term Effects of Voluntary Summer Learning Programs on Low-Income Students' Learning Opportunities and Outcomes

This report is the second of five volumes from a five-year study, funded by The Wallace Foundation and conducted by the RAND Corporation, designed as a randomized controlled trial that assesses student outcomes in three waves: in the fall after the 2013 summer program (reported here), at the end of the school year following the program, and after a second summer program in 2014 (to show the cumulative effects of two summer programs). The goal of the study is to answer one key question: Do voluntary, district-run summer programs that include academics and enrichment activities improve student academic achievement and other outcomes, such as social and emotional competence

Disparate Impacts of COVID-19 Disruptions for California College Students

This paper documents the experience of California college students in the midst of the pandemic as their academic and home lives were disrupted. The analysis relies on a survey sent to all financial aid applicants statewide. Survey respondents include nearly 100,000 students enrolled in both two-year and four-year postsecondary institutions. Results reveal multiple stressors strained the educational experience and trajectories of many students. These stressors were not evenly distributed. In particular, students from low-income backgrounds were more likely to face increased financial stress, additional home responsibilities, and difficulty accessing the online learning environment, when compared to their higher-income peers

Understanding the Cost and Quality of Military-Related Education Benefit Programs, Summary

Since the 1944 passage of the original GI Bill following World War II, the military has provided veterans with a collection of financial aid benefits designed to help them attend college. While research has shown that these programs have helped many veterans acquire a college education, less is known about the impact of more recent educational benefits for veterans. This is especially true of the Post-9/11 GI Bill, which, in conjunction with a number of other assistance programs, has afforded veterans new educational opportunities. The Post-9/11 GI Bill offers tuition subsidies paid directly to institutions, a housing allowance tied to cost of living, and a book stipend, which in combination are usually more generous than preceding GI Bills. However, issues such as rising tuition costs; an increasing presence of low-quality, for-profit institutions that target veterans; and a potentially confusing array of benefit options could mitigate the impact of these programs on the recruitment, retention, and human capital development of service members. This report contextualizes these issues and formulates a research agenda to address them

School Principals and School Performance

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The Signaling Value of a High School Diploma

Although economists acknowledge that various indicators of educational attainment (e.g., highest grade completed, credentials earned) might serve as signals of a worker¿s productivity, the practical importance of education-based signaling is not clear. In this paper we estimate the signaling value of a high school diploma, the most commonly held credential in the U.S. To do so, we compare the earnings of workers that barely passed and barely failed high school exit exams, standardized tests that, in some states, students must pass to earn a high school diploma. Since these groups should, on average, look the same to firms (the only difference being that "barely passers" have a diploma while "barely failers" do not), this earnings comparison should identify the signaling value of the diploma. Using linked administrative data on earnings and education from two states that use high school exit exams (Florida and Texas), we estimate that a diploma has little effect on earnings. For both states, we can reject that individuals with a diploma earn eight percent more than otherwise-identical individuals without one; combining the state-specific estimates, we can reject signaling values larger than five or six percent. While these confidence intervals include economically important signaling values, they exclude both the raw earnings difference between workers with and without a diploma and the regression-adjusted estimates reported in the previous literature.