In this video, our research teams discuss the benefits of participating in the College Completion Network, with a focus on how collaborating with fellow researchers and higher education practitioners is helping the teams provide high-quality, actionable evidence that can help move the dial on college completion.

This journal article investigates the research and policy implications of test optional practices, considering both sides of the debate. Drawing on the expertise of higher education researchers, admissions officers, enrollment managers, and policy professionals, it provides a much-needed evaluation of the use and value of standardized admissions tests in an era of widespread grade inflation.

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.

AIR supported the annual reports and information staff in preparing three major annual reports, as well as a variety of other analytic, indicator, and tabular reports and studies on education statistics. The aim of this work was to support NCES’ annual reports and information staff in compiling, maintaining, and analyzing survey data; writing reports; and disseminating the information gathered and maintained by NCES, the U.S. Census Bureau, and other federal and nonfederal education data sources.

AIR, in collaboration with Quality Education for Minorities and the Kapor Center, is examining learning environments that enable undergraduate students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to thrive and subsequently attain doctoral degrees in science and engineering (S&E). The goals of the study are to (a) identify unique characteristics of S&E learning environments at the 21 HBCUs ranked as top producers of Black baccalaureate degree recipients who earn S&E doctorates (“anchor institutions”), (b) identify HBCUs that have similar characteristics as the anchor institutions and have a high potential to graduate students who go on to earn doctoral degrees, and (c) develop and disseminate a model that builds HBCU capacity to produce graduates who go on to earn S&E doctorates. Click here to access the project website.

AIR, in partnership with the Competency-Based Education Network (CBEN) is administering the CBE Program Model Mapping Survey to gather information on a set of dimensions on which Competency Based Education (CBE) programs vary, and information on how CBE programs have implemented those dimensions. The aims of the survey are to develop a CBE Program Model Mapping resource to help facilitate conversations among practitioners, and support researchers’ ongoing work to look structures and practices that serve learners and support positive outcomes, including low-income learners, adult learners, and Black and Latino learners.