The percentage of students retaking college admissions tests is rising (Harmston & Crouse, 2016). Researchers and college admissions offices currently use a variety of methods for summarizing these multiple scores. Testing companies, interested in validity evidence like correlations with college first-year grade-point averages (FYGPA), often…

Most students finish high school with low levels of financial knowledge, yet they are months away from important decisions about how to finance college. Students may not know about family finances, even though parental income is a key determinant of financial aid for college. This study measures the financial knowledge of high school students by…

Some high schools are moving towards standards-based grading in an attempt to produce consistent grading practices; however, the change's impact on college readiness is not clear. The purpose of this study was to explore the effect of high school's grading practices as it relates to ACT scores and grade point averages (GPAs). Existing data were…

A significant gap exists between the graduation rate of students with disabilities and their nondisabled. The purpose of this quantitative correlation study was to determine the relationship self-determination had on college and career readiness using ACT scores of students with high incident disabilities. This study was guided by the following…

One primary goal of many science courses is for students to learn creative problem-solving skills; that is, integrating concepts, explaining concepts in a problem context, and using concepts to solve problems. However, what science instructors see is that many students, even those having excellent SAT/ACT and Advanced Placement scores, struggle in…

This study examined the trends in enrollment numbers and academic quality of first-year Tennessee students on the merit-based portion of the Tennessee Education Lottery Scholarship (TELS) upon HBCU's and religiously focused institutions in Tennessee from 2005-2014. The researchers hypothesized that the merit-based portion of the TELS was a…

This paper examines the effects of requiring and paying for all public high school students to take a college entrance exam, a policy adopted by eleven states since 2001. I show that prior to the policy, for every ten poor students who score college-ready on the ACT or SAT, there are an additional five poor students who would score college-ready…

This study is an extension of two previous studies that provided profiles of persisting STEM majors overall (regardless of academic performance) and persisting STEM majors who earned semester GPAs of 3.0 or higher (Westrick, 2016, 2017). Using data from 25 four-year institutions, this study compared the mean ACT assessment scores, HSGPAs, and ACT…

Proficiency with written communication (WC) is critical for success in college and careers. As a result, institutions face a growing challenge to accurately evaluate their students' writing skills to obtain data that can support demands of accreditation, accountability, or curricular improvement. Many current standardized measures, however, lack…

There are concerns about the increasing demands placed on students not only within the classroom but outside it as well. Parents and educators alike are faced with the daunting challenge of balancing the educational and extracurricular pressures that students face. In light of student needs and limited time educational leaders along with parents…

The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium is one of two multi-state consortia that have built new assessment systems aligned to the Common Core State Standards. The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium is composed of 18 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands that have worked together to develop a comprehensive assessment system aligned to the…

Focusing on a cohort of high school students from a Midwest metropolitan region, this study combines multiple sources of data and uses a multinomial logistic regression to model student postsecondary choices with respect to whether and where to attend college. Specifically, we examined the enrollment patterns by proximity to the home region and…

In the summer of 2013, the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) issued public, highly-visible ratings of teacher education programs as part of their ambitious and controversial Teacher Prep Review. We provide the first empirical examination of NCTQ ratings, beginning with a descriptive overview of the ratings and documentation of how they…

We use statewide administrative data from Missouri to examine the role of high schools in explaining students' initial college and major placements at 4-year public universities. To facilitate our investigation of postsecondary sorting, we develop a "preparation and persistence index" (PPI) for each university-by-major cell in the…

Acid-base chemistry is central to a wide range of reactions. If students are able to understand how and why acid-base reactions occur, it should provide a basis for reasoning about a host of other reactions. Here, we report the development of a method to characterize student reasoning about acid-base reactions based on their description of…