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State Data Analysis

NCPR is conducting studies using state administrative data on dual enrollment, postsecondary remediation and financial aid. These analyses have focused on data from two main states: Florida and Tennessee.  Bridget Terry Long of Harvard University is leading this work.

Florida Remediation Study

For this project, we use an administrative data set obtained from the Florida Department of Education to estimate the impact of developmental/remedial courses on community colleges student outcomes, such as passing college-level courses, retention, degree attainment, transfer to a four-year university, and credits earned, and on overall institutional performance. The dataset focuses on the universe of first-time students who enrolled at any of the 28 Florida community colleges from fall 1997 to fall 2000 and sought at least an Associate (two-year) degree. Student’s enrollment is tracked term-by-term for a total of six years for each cohort.

The evaluation design take advantage of the Florida statewide placement policy, implemented exclusively at community colleges, to estimate the impact of this program using a quasi-experimental regression discontinuity design. In addition, we use different statistical techniques to deal with two methodological threats to the regression discontinuity design: noncompliance and endogenous sorting around the cutoff.

Tennessee Remediation Study

During the past year, NCPR has made significant progress in assembling, cleaning, and beginning to analyze data from the Tennessee Higher Education Commission (THEC) and the Tennessee Board of Regents (TBR). The sample covers all students in the public higher education system and includes data from admissions, transcripts, and remedial/developmental placement tests. Because the state has one clear policy to determine placement in remedial, developmental, or college-level courses (they have three levels) and we have data on this process, researchers are using a regression discontinuity research design to estimate the causal impact of such courses on student outcomes.

At the current time, researchers are estimating preliminary results using the placement test scores as the predictor of participation in remedial or developmental courses. Our initial analyses have focused on first year to sophomore year persistence and graduation rates, but we intend to expand the list of outcomes in the coming months.

NCPR will publish three research papers on the impact of remediation, two using the Florida data and another using the Tennessee data.

Florida Dual Enrollment Study

NCPR is currently undergoing an analysis of high school students who have participated in dual enrollment in Florida. In the past year, NCPR has examined summary statistics of the data and looked at how dual enrollment participation varies across school districts. Researchers have compared participation to high school GPA to explore whether schools are using the 3.0 and 2.0 GPA eligibility requirements. NCPR is now expanding the original dataset to include more information on high school grades, test scores, and details on the location of students’ dual enrollment courses. Using the new data, NCPR researchers will estimate the strength of the causal relationship between dual enrollment and those outcomes.

ASSOCIATED PUBLICATIONS:

The Impact of Postsecondary Remediation Using a Regression Discontinuity Approach: Addressing Endogenous Sorting and Noncompliance (An NCPR Working Paper) By: Juan Carlos Calcagno and Bridget Terry Long (April 2008). [This paper has also been released as NBER Working Paper 14194 (July 2008).]