30 research outputs found
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Heterogeneous Effects in Education: The Promise and Challenge of Incorporating Intersectionality into Quantitative Methodological Approaches
To date, the theory of intersectionality has largely guided qualitative efforts in social science and education research. Translating the construct to new methodological approaches is inherently complex and challenging, but offers the possibility of breaking down silos that keep education researchers with similar interests—but different methodological approaches—from sharing knowledge. Quantitative approaches that emphasize the varied impacts of individual identities on educational outcomes move beyond singular dimensions capturing individual characteristics, drawing a parallel to intersectionality. Scholars interested in heterogeneous effects recognize the shortcomings of focusing on the effect of a single social identity. This integrative review explores techniques used in quantitative research to examine heterogeneous effects across individual background, drawing on methodological literature from the social sciences and education. I examine the goals and challenges of the quantitative techniques and explore how they relate to intersectionality. I conclude by discussing what education researchers can learn from other applied fields that are working to develop a crosswalk across the two disparate, but interconnected, literatures.Educational Leadership and Polic
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The Causal Effect of Campus Residency on College Student Retention
Despite theoretical evidence positing a positive relationship between campus residency and collegiate outcomes, prior research has not established a causal link. Utilizing propensity score matching and national longitudinal data, this study investigates whether living in university-owned housing impacts retention. The results suggest that the impact of living on campus is not negligible: the probability of remaining enrolled into the second year of college is 3.3 percentage points higher for on-campus residents than off-campus residents. Colleges should consider evaluating the impact of their campus housing programs on academic outcomes to inform important housing policy decisionsEducational Leadership and Polic
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Pell Grants as Performance-Based Scholarships? An Examination of Satisfactory Academic Progress Requirements in the Nation's Largest Need-Based Aid Program
The Federal Pell Grant Program is the nation’s largest need-based grant program. While students’ initial eligibility for the Pell is based on financial need, renewal is contingent on meeting minimum academic standards similar to those in models of performance-based scholarships, including a grade point average (GPA) requirement and ratio of credits completed compared to those attempted. In this study, we describe federal satisfactory academic progress (SAP) requirements and illustrate the policy’s implementation in a statewide community college system. Using state administrative data, we demonstrate that a substantial portion of Pell recipients are at risk for Pell ineligibility due to their failure to meet SAP GPA or credit completion requirements. We then leverage the GPA component of the policy to explore the impacts of failure to meet standards on early college persistence and achievement, earning a credential, and transferring to a four-year college using two methodological approaches: regression discontinuity (RD) and difference-in-differences (DD). Our results across the two approaches are mixed, with the RD providing null estimates and the DD indicating some statistically significant impacts, including a negative effect on early college persistence. We conclude by discussing the implications for future research.Educational Leadership and Polic
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Navigating Vertical Transfer Online: Access to and Usefulness of Transfer Information on Community College Websites
Objective: To transfer, students often must navigate complex and imperfect information about credit transfer, bureaucratic hurdles, and conflicting degree requirements. This study examined how administrators and transfer personnel think about institutional online transfer resources and examined community colleges’ online transfer information.
Methods: For a sample of 20 Texas community colleges, we spoke to key transfer personnel about the information provided to students and reviewed college websites, assessing the ease of access and usefulness of online transfer information. We used a qualitative case study approach to triangulate findings from our data sources.
Results: Approximately two-thirds of colleges in the sample fell below the highest standard on our rubric for either ease of access or usefulness, indicating room for improvement at most institutions. Many personnel recognized the strengths and limitations of their college’s online information, though several were ambivalent about the need for improving online information, arguing that online information is not as promising an intervention as face-to-face advising.
Conclusions/Contributions: Our research illustrates the need for colleges to develop and update their online information intentionally, determining which information students need in order to transfer (including transfer guides for partner programs/colleges) and how students might search for that information, and ensuring that necessary transfer information is available and up-to-date. The framework provided by our website-review approach, coupled with a proposed rubric to assess ease of access and usefulness of transfer information, may guide institutions in their evaluation of their online transfer information.Educational Leadership and Polic
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Early Outcomes of Texas Community College Students Enrolled in Dana Center Mathematics Pathways Prerequisite Developmental Courses
To improve outcomes in math, many Texas colleges are adopting mathematics pathways, which accelerate developmental math and tailor math courses to different majors instead of requiring all students to take algebra. This study examines whether students participating in Dana Center Mathematics Pathways (DCMP) developmental courses enroll in and pass college-level math courses at higher rates than students who take traditional developmental math courses. It employs regression analysis controlling for student characteristics using student-level data compiled by the state from the more than 20 Texas community colleges that implemented the DCMP model in 2015 and 2016.
Results from this study are encouraging. They suggest that DCMP compressed prerequisite developmental courses are effective at accelerating community college students through their math requirements. Yet this study also found systematic sorting of students into DCMP by race/ethnicity, which could exacerbate educational inequalities.
Key Findings:
DCMP students were about 13 percentage points more likely to enroll in college-level math in the next semester and 8 percentage points more likely to pass college-level math in that term than peers in non-DCMP developmental courses.
The advantaged gained by DCMP students was maintained over time—there was still a 5-percentage-point improvement in passing college-level math two years later among students in the fall 2015 cohort.
Compared with non-DCMP courses, DCMP courses included more White students and fewer Hispanic students than would be expected based on the distribution of students at the colleges. This indicates inequality in subgroup access to reformed developmental math pathways
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Ease of Access and Usefulness of Transfer Information on Community College Websites in Texas
Many first-time community college entrants aspire to earn a bachelor’s degree, but few do. To transfer, students often must overcome information constraints to navigate bureaucratic hurdles and conflicting requirements. For a sample of 20 Texas community colleges, the authors reviewed college websites, assessing the ease of access and usefulness of online transfer information, and spoke to key transfer personnel about the information provided to students. The authors used a qualitative case study approach to triangulate findings from their data sources. Approximately two thirds of colleges in the sample fell below the highest standard on the rubric for either ease of access or usefulness, indicating room for improvement at most institutions. Many personnel interviewed recognized the strengths and limitations of their college’s online information, though several were ambivalent regarding the need for improving online transfer information, arguing that the availability of online information alone is insufficient for successful transfer and not as important as face-to-face advising. This research illustrates the need for colleges to develop and update their online information with care, determining which information students need to transfer (including transfer guides for partner programs/colleges), how students might search for that information, and ensuring that necessary transfer information is available and up-to-date. The framework provided by this rubric may guide institutions in the evaluation of their online transfer information
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The Impact of Corequisite Math on Community College Student Outcomes: Evidence from Texas
Developmental education (dev-ed) aims to help students acquire knowledge and skills necessary to succeed in college-level coursework, but the traditional prerequisite approach to dev-ed—where students take courses that do not count toward a credential—appears to stymie progress toward a degree. Corequisite remediation is a structural reform that places students directly into a college-level course in the same term they receive dev-ed support. Using state administrative data from Texas community colleges and a regression discontinuity design, we examine whether taking corequisite math improves student success compared with traditional prerequisite dev-ed. We find that corequisite math quickly improves student completion of math requirements without any obvious drawbacks. Although additional follow-up may be necessary to understand long-term effects (given generally low degree attainment in the current follow-up window), we find that students in corequisite math were not substantially closer to degree completion than their peers in traditional dev-ed within 3 years.National Science Foundation grant #1856720 (EHR/IUSE); Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development grant #P2CHD042849 (Population Research Center)Economic
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Performance Requirements in Need-Based Aid: What Roles Do They Serve, and Do They Work?
Satisfactory academic progress (SAP) requirements have existed in some form in the federal student aid programs for nearly 40 years—and have become increasingly strict—yet only limited research exists regarding their motivations and consequences. In this brief, the authors discuss two recent CAPSEE studies they conducted that examine the consequences of SAP policy for first-time community college students in two separate, anonymous states. They discuss the underlying motivations for the policy, examine how students are affected, and assess the implications for program efficiency and equity
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Pell Grants as Performance-Based Aid? An Examination of Satisfactory Academic Progress Requirements in the Nation's Largest Need-Based Aid Program
The Federal Pell Grant Program is the nation’s largest need-based grant program. While
students’ initial eligibility for the Pell is based on financial need, renewal of the award is
contingent on their making satisfactory academic progress (SAP)—meeting minimum academic
standards similar to those proposed in models of performance-based scholarships. It is not clear
how many students are affected by failure to meet SAP standards, or how the policies shape
student outcomes. In this study, we draw from literature on performance-based funding and
academic probation to consider the potential implications of SAP standards. We describe federal
guidelines and illustrate how SAP is evaluated in a statewide community college system. Using
administrative data with term-by-term measures of Pell receipt, student grades, attempted and
earned credits, persistence, degree attainment, and transfer, we employ regression discontinuity
and difference-in-differences approaches to examine the magnitude of SAP failure and its
effects. Our results suggest that a substantial portion of Pell recipients at community colleges are
at risk for Pell ineligibility due to their failure to meet SAP grade point average (GPA) or credit
completion requirements. Approximately a quarter fail to meet the GPA standard alone. When
the credit completion requirement is taken into consideration, the first-year SAP failure rate
approaches 40 percent. Our preferred difference-in-differences estimates show mixed effects of
SAP standards: Failing to meet the GPA requirement has a negative impact on persistence into
the second year, but it may improve associate degree attainment and transfer among students
who are not discouraged from reenrolling
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Performance Standards in Need-Based Student Aid
College attendance is a risky investment. But students may not recognize when they are at risk for failure, and financial aid introduces the possibility for moral hazard. Academic performance standards can serve three roles in this context: signaling expectations for success, providing incentives for increased student effort, and limiting financial losses. Such standards have existed in federal need-based aid programs for nearly 40 years in the form of Satisfactory Academic Progress (SAP) requirements, yet have received virtually no academic attention. In this paper, we sketch a simple model to illustrate not only student responses to standards but also the trade-offs faced by a social planner weighing whether to set performance standards in the context of need-based aid. We then use regression discontinuity and difference-in-difference designs to examine the consequences of SAP failure. In line with theoretical predictions, we find heterogeneous effects in the short term, with negative impacts on persistence but positive effects on grades for students who remain enrolled. After three years, the negative effects appear to dominate. Effects on credits attempted are 2–3 times as large as effects on credits earned, suggesting that standards increase the efficiency of aid expenditures. But it also appears to exacerbate inequality in higher education by pushing out low-performing low-income students faster than their equally low-performing, but higher-income peers