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This paper estimates the patterns and sources of White-Black and White-Hispanic enrollment gaps in Advancement Placement (AP) and dual enrollment programs across several thousand school districts and metropolitan areas in the United States. By merging several data sources, the authors show that both AP and dual enrollment participation gaps vary substantially across districts. The vast majority of districts have racial/ethnic gaps in AP and dual enrollment participation, and about a quarter of districts have racial/ethnic gaps equal to or larger than 10 and 7 percentage points for AP and dual enrollment, respectively.

Available district-level characteristics and state-level policies explain much more of the geographic variation in AP participation gaps as compared with dual enrollment participation gaps, and local factors (either district-level or metro-level characteristics) dominate state-level factors in shaping these racial/ethnic participation gaps. Among all the available district-level characteristics, racial/ethnic composition and racial/ethnic income disparity are the strongest correlates of participation gaps, where districts with larger proportions of Black and Hispanic students and greater racial/ethnic income disparity are associated with larger racial/ethnic gaps in both AP and dual enrollment participation.

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Over the past three decades policymakers have been seeking new ways to secure improved performance from higher education institutions. One popular approach has been performance funding, which involves use of a formula to tie funding to institutional performance on specified indicators. This report reviews findings from studies on performance funding programs in a multitude of states. The studies suggest that tying funding to outputs has immediate impacts on colleges in the form of changes in funding, greater awareness by institutions of state priorities and of their own institutional performance, and increased status competition among institutions. Because of these immediate impacts, performance funding produces intermediate institutional changes in the form of greater use of data in institutional planning and policymaking and in changes in academic and student service policies and practices that promise to improve student outcomes. However, claims that performance funding does indeed increase ultimate outcomes - in the form of improved rates of retention, completion of developmental education, and graduation - are not validated by solid data. In the face of this finding, this report identifies obstacles to the effective functioning of performance funding, as well as unintended impacts. The report closes by providing recommendations for overcoming the many obstacles to the effective functioning of performance funding and addressing the unintended impacts documented by the studies reviewed.

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Stackable credentials - sequential postsecondary awards that allow individuals to progress on a career path - have been suggested as a way to enhance the labor market prospects of middle-skill workers. Yet, thus far, little evidence has been provided on the economic value of these credentials. In this paper, the authors report a series of estimates on the association between stackable credentials and earnings. They use national, survey, and college-system-level datasets. A significant body of evidence indicates that the labor market returns to certificates - along with those to college degrees - are positive. But the authors' estimates of stackable credentials show only weakly positive and inconsistent gains from these award combinations. Generally, these estimates are indistinguishable from the returns to only one postsecondary credential. There is no clear evidence of how earnings vary across types of stack - progressive, supplemental, or independent - or student characteristics. However, estimated earnings gains from stackable credentials may be imprecise. Few college students stack awards, the motives for stacking are unknown, and notably, the number of stacked awards depends on whether general vocational awards are included. Future research should examine why students stack awards and how they can choose combinations of awards that maximize their earnings gains from stacking.

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Enrolling more than 6 million students each fall, community colleges carry out a crucial function in higher education by providing access to college, including baccalaureate opportunities, occupational education, remedial education, and other educational services. At the same time, community colleges face great challenges that have elicited calls for major reforms. This paper begins by discussing the social roles and organization of community colleges in the United States, their main social contributions, and the challenges they face. It then describes and evaluates the sweeping policy proposals that have been made to address these challenges.

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High school graduates often delay college enrollment, but few studies have looked at the effects of this choice on their educational attainment and success in the labor market. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, this paper compares the academic and labor market outcomes of high school graduates who delay college enrollment ('delayers') and those who enroll in college immediately ('on-time enrollees') up to 13 years after high school completion. The results show that delaying college enrollment decreases individuals' likelihood of enrolling in college and increases their tendency to enroll in two-year colleges if they do return to school. Delayers experience early earnings benefits, but these fade out after their mid-20s and turn to significant losses over time. Differences in student characteristics only explain one third of the pay gap between delayers and on-time enrollees; 60 per cent of the pay gap is explained by delayers' reduced likelihood of attending and obtaining a degree at a four-year college.

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While the Pell Grant covers a substantial proportion of college tuition for low-income students, it has covered only two full-time semesters per year and has not included any support for summer courses through most of its history. As research has shown that continuous enrollment throughout the year increases college persistence and completion, the summer Pell (SP) program was added during the summer of 2009 and allowed eligible low-income students to receive an additional grant for summer tuition and eligible costs. The SP was eliminated in 2011 and then restored in 2017. Using administrative data on community college students in New York City, the authors' difference-in-differences analysis results from both periods show that SP-eligible students had a higher retention rate in the fall of the second year, had higher associate and bachelor's degree attainment rates, and had higher earnings gains up to nine years from college entry compared to SP-ineligible students. Heterogeneous analysis indicates that the SP benefits were driven by Black students and older students.

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Placement exams are high-stakes assessments that determine many students' college trajectories. More than half of entering students at community colleges are placed into developmental education in at least one subject, based primarily on scores from these assessments, yet recent research fails to find evidence that placement into remediation improves student outcomes. While this has spurred debate about the content and delivery of remedial coursework, another possibility is that the assessment process itself may be broken. In this paper we argue that the debate about remediation policy is incomplete without a fuller understanding of the role of assessment. We then examine: (1) the extent of consensus regarding the role of developmental assessment and how it is best implemented; (2) the validity of the most common assessments currently in use; and (3) emerging directions in assessment policy and practice. We conclude with a discussion of gaps in the literature and potential implications for policy and research.

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Dual enrollment - in which students take college credit-bearing courses when still in high school - is becoming increasingly popular. Community college programs account for about 70 per cent of the dual enrollment that more than one million high school students participate in each year nationwide. Yet dual enrollment can be a big financial burden for community colleges. In most parts of the country, community colleges receive less funding per dual enrollment student than they receive for their regular, non-dual-enrollment students. If community colleges are to continue to provide broad access to high-quality programs, they need to be able to sustain these programs. In this paper, we consider the economics of dual enrollment from the perspective of the community college. We illustrate how dual enrollment may not be financially sustainable in colleges and states where it is offered at a discount, but we also show how community colleges can structure their programs to be more efficient. To support our analysis, we describe case studies to show the conditions under which dual enrollment is affordable and efficient.

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Remediation is the most common policy designed to prepare students academically and socially during their early stages of college. But despite its profound importance and its significant costs, there is very little rigorous research analyzing its effectiveness. The goal of this paper is to provide a conceptual framework for evaluation of remedial education programs. Based on previous literature, we review a list of ingredients for successful interventions, present a number of approaches to remediation that make use of these ingredients, discuss alternative research designs for systematic evaluations, and enumerate basic data requirements.

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The past two decades have seen a noticeable increase in noncredit instructional offerings in postsecondary education. While noncredit programs have been advocated as a promising way to address educational equity, knowledge about the noncredit sector, such as the types of students enrolled in noncredit courses and their academic outcomes, is sparse. Drawing upon a dataset that includes transcript and demographic information on both for-credit and noncredit students in nine community colleges in one state in the US, this study explores the demographic and academic profiles of students enrolled in various fields of noncredit education, their academic outcomes and progress, and potential factors that influence noncredit course completion and transition to the for-credit sector.

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