ACT for All: The Effect of Mandatory College Entrance Exams on Postsecondary Attainment and Choice

Hyman, Joshua

doi:10.1162/edfp_a_00206

Cited by 65 publications

(58 citation statements)

References 33 publications

(38 reference statements)

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“…First, with the exception of Bird et al (2017), the interventions in these studies still tend to cost several dollars per student, which can be a barrier to large-scale implementation for budget-constrained states and school districts. Second, most focus on students who have already taken concrete steps toward applying to college, for example students who have taken a college entrance exam (Hoxby & Turner, 2013) or signed up with the Common Application (Bird et al, 2017), thus missing the large fraction of highachieving, low-income students who never make it to these points in the college application process (Hyman, 2017a). Finally, a key concern with light-touch policies is that they may reduce informational and administrative hurdles to the college application process, but not provide students with any lasting improvements in their skills or knowledge, thus potentially inducing marginal students to attend but not persist through college.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can Light‐Touch College‐Going Interventions Make a Difference? Evidence from a Statewide Experiment in Michigan

Hyman¹

2019

J Policy Anal Manage

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I conduct a statewide experiment in Michigan with nearly 50,000 high-achieving high school seniors. Treated students are mailed a letter encouraging them to consider college and providing them with the web address of a college information website. I find that very high-achieving, low-income students, and very high-achieving, minority students are the most likely to navigate to the website. Small changes to letter content affect take-up. For example, highlighting college affordability induces 18 percent more students to the website than highlighting college choice, and 37 percent more than highlighting how to apply to college. I find a statistically precise zero impact on college enrollment among all students mailed the letter. However, low-income students experience a small increase in the probability that they enroll in college, driven by increases at four-year institutions. An examination of persistence through college, while imprecise, suggests that the students induced into college by the intervention persist at a lower rate than the inframarginal student.ABSTRACT I conduct a statewide experiment in Michigan with nearly 50,000 high-achieving high school seniors. Treated students are mailed a letter encouraging them to consider college and providing them with the web address of a college information website. I find that very high-achieving, lowincome students, and very high-achieving, minority students are the most likely to navigate to the website. Small changes to letter content affect take-up. For example, highlighting college affordability induces 18 percent more students to the website than highlighting college choice, and 37 percent more than highlighting how to apply to college. I find a statistically precise zero impact on college enrollment among all students mailed the letter. However, low-income students experience a small increase in the probability that they enroll in college, driven by increases at four-year institutions. An examination of persistence through college, while imprecise, suggests that the students induced into college by the intervention persist at a lower rate than the inframarginal student.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can Light‐Touch College‐Going Interventions Make a Difference? Evidence from a Statewide Experiment in Michigan

Hyman¹

2019

J Policy Anal Manage

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“…One recent study of 11 states found that offering the ACT or SAT to all students in a state boosted college-going rates, particularly among students who were less likely to take a college entrance exam before the policy and students in the poorest high schools. The requirement to take one of the college entrance exams was more effective in improving higher education attainment than traditional financial aid (Hyman, 2017). Students on the Jump Start TOPS Tech Pathway may replace the ACT requirement with the ACT-aligned WorkKeys exam, which is a career-readiness assessment measuring skills such as applied mathematics, business writing, teamwork, and more (LDOE, undated-h).…”

Section: Alignment Of Louisiana Graduation Requirements the Tops Unimentioning

confidence: 99%

Raising the Bar: Louisiana's Strategies for Improving Student Outcomes

Kaufman¹,

Cannon²,

Culbertson³

et al. 2018

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This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited. Permission is given to duplicate this document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions.The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest.RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.Support RAND Make a tax-deductible charitable contribution at www.rand.org/giving/contribute www.rand.org Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for this publication.ISBN: 978-1-9774-0065-9 For more information on this publication, visit www.rand.org/t/RR2303Published by the RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, Calif. © Copyright 2018 RAND CorporationR® is a registered trademark. Cover: caption/source information.iii PrefaceThis report provides an in-depth description of Louisiana's approach to improving educational experiences and student outcomes. Louisiana has received recent attention for some of its new policies and promising early results. Thus, its approaches could merit closer study. As we document, Louisiana's most recent reforms have focused not only on K-12 academics but also on the systems that coexist and interact with K-12 academics, including teacher preparation, early childhood education, and graduation pathways. We particularly focus on the reform strategies that the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) has been implementing since 2012, when a new state superintendent of schools was appointed by the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. Since that time, LDOE has utilized a range of policy levers to work toward its goals. These policy levers include accountability but also emphasize resources, tools, and incentives intended to support and build capacity for accountability mandates. What is perhaps most notable about Louisiana's approach is the systematic, focused, and frequent communication and planning processes LDOE has set in motion to support its reform efforts.This overview of Louisiana's education reform strategies should be of interest to those seeking to keep track of the vast changes being made in the state, as well as education stakeholders in other states who are interested in making system-wide changes to affect educational outcomes. However, we have not yet collected any data on how Louisiana's strategies are being perceived and implemented by stakeholders at the ground level, such as teachers, school leaders, and child care agencies. In ad...

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“…Recent research in the economics of education shows that the college application behavior of high-achieving, disadvantaged students do not match what would be predicted based on their academic performance (Avery & Hoxby, 2013;Radford, 2013;Hyman, forthcoming;Dillon & Smith, forthcoming). In other words, past achievement is less predictive of college application behavior among disadvantaged groups.…”

Section: Ivb: Comparing Selection Corrections' Performance With Diffementioning

confidence: 99%

Data vs. Methods: Quasi-Experimental Evaluation of Alternative Sample Selection Corrections for Missing College Entrance Exam Score Data

Garlick

Hyman

2016

SSRN Journal

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In 2007, Michigan began requiring all high school students to take the ACT college entrance exam. This natural experiment allows us to evaluate the performance of several parametric and semiparametric sample selection correction models. We apply each model to the censored, prepolicy test score data and compare the predicted values to the uncensored, post-policy distribution. We vary the set of model predictors to imitate the varying levels of data detail to which a researcher may have access. We find that predictive performance is sensitive to predictor choice but not correction model choice. All models perform poorly using student demographics and school-and district-level characteristics as predictors. However, all models perform well when including students' prior and contemporaneous scores on other tests. Similarly, correction models using group-level data perform better with more finely disaggregated groups, but produce similar predictions under different functional form assumptions. Our findings are not explained by an absence of selection, the assumptions of the parametric models holding, or the data lacking sufficient variation to permit useful semiparametric estimation. We conclude that "data beat methods" in this setting: gains from using less restrictive econometric methods are small relative to gains from seeking richer or more disaggregated data.JEL codes: J01, I20, C10 1 We thank Susan Dynarski, John Bound, Brian Jacob, and Jeff Smith for their advice and support. We are grateful for helpful conversations with

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ACT for All: The Effect of Mandatory College Entrance Exams on Postsecondary Attainment and Choice

Cited by 65 publications

References 33 publications

Can Light‐Touch College‐Going Interventions Make a Difference? Evidence from a Statewide Experiment in Michigan

Can Light‐Touch College‐Going Interventions Make a Difference? Evidence from a Statewide Experiment in Michigan

Raising the Bar: Louisiana's Strategies for Improving Student Outcomes

Data vs. Methods: Quasi-Experimental Evaluation of Alternative Sample Selection Corrections for Missing College Entrance Exam Score Data

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