This journal article discusses a study investigating the short- and longterm impacts of "GO Centers," a student-run, college information program that provides information about all aspects of the college-going process to academically prepared Texas public school students on the margin of attending college. The results indicate that GO Centers led to a large increase in college application rates and a small increase in college enrollment rates but no increase in college completion rates.

This brief presents findings from interviews with North Texas juniors and seniors on the factors, influences, and resources that impact students’ decision-making process as they make post-high school plans.

This report highlights survey and focus group findings from AIR’s investigation of the usefulness of the Future Focused TX platform to counselors in North Texas and the potential use of the Future Focused TX platform and its resources in out-of-school time (OST) programs in North Texas.

In this journal article, researchers estimate the effects of Washington’s College Bound Scholarship program on students’ high school grades, high school graduation, juvenile detention and rehabilitation, and incarceration in state prison during high school or early adulthood. The findings indicate insignificant and substantively small or negative effects on these outcomes, calling into question the rationale for such early commitment programs.

This paper from the CALDER Center examines how different measures of teacher quality are related to students’ long-run trajectories. Comparing teachers’ test-based value-added to nontest value-added – based on contributions to student absences and grades – they find that test and nontest value-added have similar effects on the average quality of colleges that students attend. However, test-based teacher quality measures have more explanatory power for outcomes relevant for students at the top of the achievement distribution such as attending a more selective college, while nontest measures have more explanatory power for whether students graduate from high school and enroll in college at all.

This journal article uses student-level data to investigate how the college application behavior of underrepresented minorities (URMs) changed in response to the 1998 end of affirmative action in admissions at the University of California (UC). The results show that all URMs experienced a drop in their probability of admission to at least one UC campus.

AIR worked with the Communities Foundation of Texas (CFT) to learn more about how the foundation can extend high school counselors’ reach to better support students’ post-high school transitions. Specifically, AIR developed and conducted surveys and focus groups with high school counselors and out-of-school time (OST) staff regarding the extent to which resources developed for Future Focused TX were being used by counselors and might be used by OST programs. AIR also developed and conducted interviews with high school juniors and seniors about the factors, influences, and resources that impact students’ decision-making process as they make post-high school plans. 

AIR engaged in an evaluation of non-traditional occupations (NTOs) for women. The purpose of the NTO study was to: (1) identify barriers to NTOs and promising strategies for addressing those barriers, (2) design and implement a demonstration of a promising strategy, and (3) evaluate the effectiveness of the strategy implemented under the demonstration. The research team initiated a randomized-control trial (RCT), in which a treatment group received gender-themed recruitment content designed to increase awareness of NTOs among women and to address misperceptions women may have about NTOs and a control group received non-themed, generic recruitment content.

To improve equity in access, AIR will utilize US Census Data to examine the characteristics of veterans eligible for the Post- 9/11 GI Bill (PGIB) who do not use it (“GI Bill skippers”). AIR will then build on the above analysis to do a deeper dive on why veterans with characteristics of particular interest to the foundation (e.g., students of color) or particular combinations of characteristics from the factor analysis (e.g., women of color with dependents), did not use their benefits. By collecting and analyzing additional qualitative interview data from these groups, AIR could identify needs as well as policies and practices that might help veterans with these characteristics use their PGIB benefits and pursue postsecondary education going forward.

AIR conducted a randomized controlled trial to determine the effects of Early College High Schools, which allow students to take a mixture of high school and college-level courses. The study examined the impacts of Early College High Schools on college enrollment and degree completion up to 6 years after expected high school graduation, in addition to a cost-benefit analysis of Early College High Schools. The goals of the study were to estimate the longer-term impacts of Early College High Schools on student postsecondary outcomes and compare the financial costs and benefits of these schools.