**Contents**

1**Background**

2**Program Funding**

2**Outcomes**

7**Participants**

8**Target Schools**

# Background

The Talent Search (TS) program is one of the federal TRIO programs, a group of eight outreach programs funded by the U.S. Department of Education that are designed to support and assist students from disadvantaged backgrounds to progress through the academic pipeline from middle school to attainment of a postbaccalaureate degree.

The TS program identifies and assists individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds who have the potential to succeed in higher education. The program provides academic, career, and financial counseling to its participants and encourages them to graduate from high school and continue on to the postsecondary institution of their choice. Talent Search also serves high school dropouts by encouraging them to reenter the education system and complete their education. The goal of Talent Search is to increase the number of youths from disadvantaged backgrounds who complete high school and enroll in institutions of postsecondary education of their choice.

In the past, the TS program has funded projects through grant competitions held every four years; the  program completed one grant cycle with the 2005–06 academic year and began a new cycle with the 2006–07 academic year. Although most grantees received four-year awards, the applicants whose peer review scores were in the top 10 percent received five-year awards, so there is some overlap between grant cycles. 

(Under the *Higher Education Opportunity Act,* signed into law in 2008, in the future TS and six other TRIO programs will award all grants for five-year periods and will therefore hold competitions every five years.) As appropriate, this report will examine program characteristics and outcomes at up to four points: the first year of the previous grant cycle (2002–03), the last year of the previous grant cycle (2005–06), the first year of the current cycle (2006–07), and the most recent year for which data is currently available (2007–08).

Every year, the grantee for each funded project is required to submit an Annual Performance Report (APR) that includes data about the participants served and the status of those participants at the end of the reporting period. Reporting periods correspond to academic years, and for most grantees run from September through the following August. For the TS program, grantees report the total number of participants that fit into a number of different categories, rather than the status of each individual participant. The APR was redesigned for the new grant cycle (beginning in 2006–07) and reflects the standard objectives introduced in the FY 2006 competition; these objectives concerned secondary school promotion and graduation, application for postsecondary admission and financial aid, and, most important, enrollment in postsecondary education.  The APR also incorporates improved consistency checks designed to reduce data entry errors.

# Program Funding 

Table 1 shows the major funding characteristics of the TS program: number of grantees, funding number of participants that the project was funded to serve and actually served, and program funding, along with the mean funding per project, mean participants served per project, and mean spending per participant served. 2002–03 reflected a significant increase in the program’s grantees, from 360 in 2001–02 to 474 at the outset of the 2002–06 cycle, with 117 first-time awards made.  Slightly fewer participants were actually served in 2002–03 than the projects were funded to serve; as the 117 new projects gained experience in providing program services, in subsequent years the number of participants served increased beyond the number the projects were funded to serve.  Similarly, in the 2006 competition, 68 projects were awarded a grant for the first time; in 2006–07 the number of participants actually served was smaller than the number the projects were funded to serve, but by 2007–08 the number served once more exceeded the number the projects were funded to serve.

# Outcomes

The TS program’s APR captures five important measurable outcomes that indicate progress toward the ultimate program goal of increasing postsecondary enrollment for low-income, potentially first-generation college students. These outcome measures are presented in the next five figures.

For the two funding cycles covered in this report, the all-important objective of postsecondary enrollment was calculated with “college-ready” participants as the denominator. In APRs prior to the 2006–10 grant cycle, the term “college-ready” referred to high school graduates, high school equivalency graduates, and 12th-grade students. As of 2006–07, however, the definition of “college-ready” was changed to include all groups of participants that aligned with the enrollment objective established for the 2006 grant competition. Thus, in the current grant cycle, the term “college-ready” refers not only to those included in the previous cycle, but also to certain categories of participants listed in the APR: participants not older than 18 years enrolled in an alternative education program at an academic level equivalent to that of a high school senior; adults withouthigh school diploma or equivalency credentials (19 years or older) who have reentered high school as a senior or enrolled in an alternative education program at an academic level *equivalent* to that of a high school senior; postsecondary dropouts; and potential postsecondary transfers. These additional categories, however, accounted for less than 1 percent of all participants.

Figure 1 shows rates of enrollment in postsecondary education by “college-ready” participants from the beginning of the previous grant cycle (2002–03) to the most recent year for which data are available (2007–08). Projects were to report participants who had enrolled during the reporting period or the following fall term. The small drop in enrollment in 2006–07 reflects that the 68 projects new to the TS program reported substantially lower percentages of college-ready participants than did continuing grantees.

Figure 2 compares the percentages of “college-ready” program participants who applied for admission to an institution of postsecondary education. This outcome measure appears to be fairly consistent across the years reported. 

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, Federal TRIO Programs, Talent Search performance reports, 2002–03, 2003–04, 2004–05, 2005–06, 2006–07, and 2007–08.

NOTE:  Figure reflects two four-year funding cycles in TS:  2002–06 and 2006–10.  The percentage of postsecondary enrollment was derived by dividing the number of “college-ready” participants enrolled in a program of postsecondary education by the number of “college-ready” participants.  Prior to the 2006–10 grant cycle, “college-ready” referred to high school graduates, high school equivalency graduates, and 12th-grade students.  In 2006–07 and 2007–08 (the first two years of the current cycle), however, the definition of “college-ready” also included participants not older than 18 enrolled in an alternative education program at an academic level equivalent to a high school senior; adults without high school diploma or equivalency credentials who reentered high school as a senior or enrolled in an alternative education program at an academic level equivalent to a senior; postsecondary dropouts; and potential postsecondary transfers.  The additional categories accounted for less than 1 percent of all participants.

SOURCE:U.S. Department of Education, Federal TRIO Programs, Talent Search performance reports, 2002–03, 2005–06, and 2007–08.

NOTE:  Figure reflects two four-year funding cycles in TS:  2002–06 and 2006–10.  The percentage of “college-ready” TS participants who applied for admission to a program of postsecondary education was derived by dividing the number of “college-ready” participants who applied for postsecondary admission by the number of “college-ready” participants.  Prior to the 2006–10 grant cycle, “college-ready” referred to high school graduates, high school equivalency graduates, and 12th-grade students.  In 2006–07 and 2007–08 (the first two years of the current cycle), however, the definition of “college-ready” also included participants not older than 18 enrolled in an alternative education program at an academic level equivalent to a high school senior; adults without high school diploma or equivalency credentials who reentered high school as a senior or enrolled in an alternative education program at an academic level equivalent to a senior; postsecondary dropouts; and potential postsecondary transfers.  The additional categories accounted for less than 1 percent of all participants.

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, Federal TRIO Programs, Talent Search performance reports, 2002–03, 2005–06, and 2007–08.

NOTE:  Figure reflects two four-year funding cycles in TS:  2002–06 and 2006–10.  The percentage of “college-ready” TS participants who applied for student financial aid was derived by dividing the number of “college-ready” participants who applied for such aid by the number of “college-ready” participants.  Prior to the 2006–10 grant cycle, “college-ready” referred to high school graduates, high school equivalency graduates, and 12th-grade high school students.  In 2006–07 and 2007–08 (the first two years of the current cycle), however, the definition of “college-ready” also included participants not older than 18 enrolled in an alternative education program at an academic level equivalent to a high school senior; adults without high school diploma or equivalency credentials who reentered high school as a senior or enrolled in an alternative education program at an academic level equivalent to a senior; postsecondary dropouts; and potential postsecondary transfers.  The additional categories accounted for less than 1 percent of all participants.

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, Federal TRIO Programs, Talent Search performance reports, 2002–03, 2005–06, and 2007–08.

NOTE:  Figure reflects two four-year funding cycles in TS:  2002–06 and 2006–10.  The percentage of participants who attained secondary school promotion was derived by dividing the number of secondary school participants who were promoted to the next grade in secondary school (except those who graduated) by the number of secondary school participants (except 12th-grade students).  Secondary school refers to the sixth through 12th grades, which are those specified in the TS program’s regulations as allowable grades for participants’ enrollment.

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, Federal TRIO Programs, Talent Search performance reports, 2002–03, 2005–06, and 2007–08.

NOTE:  Figure reflects two four-year funding cycles in TS:  2002–06 and 2006–10.  In 2002–06 cycle, the percentage of participants who attained high school graduation was derived by dividing the number of participants who received high school diplomas or high school equivalency credentials by the number of high school seniors and secondary school dropouts.  In the 2006–10 cycle, the denominator was defined as the number of high school seniors and their equivalents in alternative education programs.

Figure 3 compares the percentages of “college-ready” program participants who applied for financial aid for attendance at an institution of postsecondary education; these figures are even more consistent than those for application for admission. As Figures 1, 2, and 3 indicate, rates of applying for admission and financial aid are higher than those for actual enrollment. The difference may result in part from difficulties projects sometimes encounter in compiling complete information on participants’ enrollment by the time annual performance reports are due in late fall. In addition, some students who apply for admission and/or financial aid in a given reporting period may not actually enroll until after the fall semester, and thus would not be included in the count of enrollees.

Although Figures 1, 2, and 3 present the most direct measurements of the Talent Search program goal of increasing postsecondary enrollment for low-income, potentially first-generation college students, those measures only take into account “college-ready” program participants, who represent about one-fifth of the program participants served each year. The next two figures examine whether the bulk of the program participants made satisfactory progress toward this program goal.

Figure 4 displays the percentage of non–senior program participants in secondary school (defined in the figure as sixth through 12th grades) who were promoted to the next grade level; the rate remained stable across grant cycles.

Figure 5 shows the rate at which 12th-grade program participants and certain other participants graduated from high school or received a certificate of high school equivalency. In 2002–03 and 2005–06, this rate was defined as the percentage of high school seniors and secondary school dropouts who graduated from high school or received a high school equivalency credential, while the 2007–08 calculation reflects the percentage of high school seniors and their equivalents in alternative educational programs who graduated from high school or received a high school equivalency credential. This change in which groups of participants are being measured likely accounts for the rise in the calculated graduation rate in 2007–08 compared to the rates of the two earlier years; secondary school dropouts are presumably less likely to receive a high school diploma or GED than senior-equivalent students in alternative educational programs.

SOURCE:  U.S. Department of Education, Federal TRIO Programs, Talent Search performance report, 2007–08.

NOTE:  Table reflects the current funding cycle in TS:  2006–10. Percentages may not add to 100 due to rounding. 

*Participants in this category are referred to as “college-ready”; participants in all other categories in this section are referred to as not “college-ready.”

**Participants**

The Talent Search program primarily seeks to increase postsecondary enrollment for low-income, potentially first-generation college students (although grantees also serve a small percentage of students who do not fit this profile). The TRIO programs define low-income students as those whose families’ taxable income for the preceding year did not exceed 150 percent of the poverty level amount established by the Census Bureau based on family size, with adjustments for determining poverty status of residents of Alaska and Hawaii. Potentially first-generation college status refers to an individual neither of whose natural or adoptive parents received a baccalaureate degree, or a student who, prior to the age of 18, regularly resided with and received support from only one natural or adoptive parent and whose supporting parent did not receive a baccalaureate degree. The program’s regulations require that at least two-thirds of participants be both low-income individuals and potentially first-generation college students.

Table 2 shows the numbers and percentages of 2007–08 program participants who were considered low-income, potentially first-generation college students, low-income only, potentially first-generation college students only, and neither low-income nor potentially first-generation college students; the number and percentage of program participants considered “college-ready”; and the distribution of 2007–08 program participants by academic status. These percentages have remained stable between years and grant cycles. The categories used to describe participants’ academic status changed in the revised APR first used in 2006–07, but the general distribution was similar to the academic status of program participants in the previous grant cycle and APRs.

Table 3 displays the gender and age distribution of program participants served in each of the past three years (2005–06, 2006–07, and 2007–08).  The proportion of male participants has increased slightly relative to female participants over the course of this period.

The Talent Search program normally serves students who are as young as 11 years old (or who have completed five years of elementary education) but not older than 27, with approximately 71 percent of participants being between ages 14 and 18.  An individual older than 27, however, may participate in a TS project if he or she cannot be appropriately served by a project of the Educational Opportunity Centers (EOC) program (the sister program to TS within TRIO, which primarily serves participants ages 19 and older), and if the individual’s participation would not dilute the TS project’s services to its primary recipients.  Table 3 indicates that the proportion of high school-age participants (ages 14–18) has increased slightly while the proportion of older participants (ages 19 and older) has decreased slightly across the three years shown.  The Talent Search program’s participants include a small percentage who are age 19 or older (less than 3 percent in each year).  In contrast, in EOC, 17.2 percent of participants in 2007–08 were younger than 19.  Talent Search, then, serves participants outside its primary age group to a much lesser extent than does EOC.

SOURCE:  U.S. Department of Education, Federal TRIO Programs, Talent Search performance reports, 2005–06, 2006–07, and 2007–08.

NOTE:  Table reflects two four-year funding cycles in TS:  2002–06 and 2006–10.  Percentages may not add to 100 due to rounding.

SOURCE:  U.S. Department of Education, Federal TRIO Programs, Talent Search performance reports, 2005–06, 2006–07, and 2007–08.

NOTE:  Table reflects two four-year funding cycles in TS:  2002–06 and 2006–10.  Categories are those used in the APRs for the years indicated; 2007–08 reflects Department-wide guidance on collecting and reporting data on race and ethnicity issued Oct. 19, 2007.  Percentages may not add to 100 due to rounding.

Table 4 displays the race and ethnicity of the program participants served in each of the past three years; for 2007–08, the figures reflect new guidance on collecting and reporting data on race and ethnicity issued Department-wide in late 2007 and incorporated into the 2007–08 APR1.  The drop in the percentage of Hispanic or Latino participants in 2006–07 is largely attributable to a project that had served an unusually high number of Hispanic participants that was not funded in the 2006 competition

**Target Schools**

Talent Search projects typically serve participants at middle or high schools designated by the project as foci of project services and referred to as target schools. Table 5 displays the number of target schools reported as being served by TS and EOC projects in each of the past three years for which data was available: the final year of the previous grant cycle (2005–06) and the first two years of the current grant cycle (2006–07 and 2007–08). This section will discuss the characteristics of all target schools served by TS and EOC projects, as EOC projects served a much smaller number of target schools than did TS projects, as seen in Table 5. Because the focus of the EOC program is on adult participants, most EOC projects do not serve any target schools, and EOC projects may serve target schools only if the eligible students cannot be appropriately served by a Talent Search project.

The application instructions for the fiscal year 2006 grant competition asked applicants to “provide information that addresses how the project will serve students at all proposed target schools and ensure that sufficient resources are available to effectively and efficiently serve the proposed number of target schools” (p. 69) and specified that the “number of proposed target schools should be determined based upon the ability of the project to efficiently and effectively deliver services within the proposed project budget” (p. 65).2  Table 5 indicates that many grantees may have responded to these directions by focusing on serving fewer target schools in order to increase the quality of service at each school; the total number of target schools served and the mean number of target schools served per project both declined between 2005–06 and 2006–07 and again between 2006–07 and 2007–08. 

1 Information on the guidance may be found in the instructions to the APR (http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ope/trio/tseoc-aprinstr-07-08.pdf, pp. 7–9). 

2http://www.ed.gov/programs/triotalent/2006-044.pdf

Two possible explanations for the decrease in average number of schools served per TS grantee both stem from the FY 2006 grant competition, in which 63 grantees from the 2002–06 grant cycle did not receive a new grant, and 67 new grantees were funded (68 new grants were awarded but one new grantee subsequently withdrew). In 2007–08, the 67 grantees funded for the first time in 2006–07 served an average of 8.0 target schools, compared to an average of 12.6 target schools served by the 404 grantees funded prior to 2006–07. Of the 63 prior grantees that did not receive a new grant, 21 were funded through 2005–06, 37 were funded through 2006–07, and five were funded through 2007–08; the discontinuation of service by these grantees likely contributed to the decline in both total number of schools served and average number of schools served per grantee, as they were counted in the calculation of average number of schools served by grantees funded prior to 2006–07 above. The combination of new grantees serving a smaller than average number of target schools, and discontinued grantees no longer serving target schools likely accounts for part of the observed reductions in target schools served.

Table 5 also shows a steady increase in the mean number of TS participants served per target school. Projects that serve fewer schools but more students per school may be working more efficiently, which may be further evidence of the effect of the directions in the application instructions for the FY 2006 grant competition.

In order to better understand the characteristics of the target schools served by TS and EOC projects, target schools were matched to the most recent version of the National Center for Education Statistics’ (NCES) Common Core of Data (CCD) available at the time. The CCD Public Elementary and Secondary School Universe file contains basic demographic information reported by state education agencies (SEAs) on more than 100,000 public schools in the United States and outlying territories.

SOURCE:  U.S. Department of Education, Federal TRIO Programs, Talent Search and Educational Opportunity Centers performance reports, 2005–06, 2006–07, and 2007–08.

NOTE:  Table reflects two four-year funding cycles in TS and EOC:  2002–06 and 2006–10.  Total number of target schools served is the sum of the number of schools reported by each project; a school served by two projects is thus counted twice in this table.  In 2007–08, 281 schools were served by two or more projects; similar proportions were served by two or more projects in prior years.

Using data from the 2006–07 CCD, table 6 compares target schools served by 2007–08 TS and EOC projects and all middle and high schools across several dimensions:  percentage of students in the schools who were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch under the National School Lunch Program, percentage of minority students enrolled in the schools, and distribution of the schools by locale.  Table 6 indicates that target schools served by TS and EOC projects tend to have higher percentages of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunches and of minority student enrollment compared to the national average of middle and high schools in the CCD.  Regarding locale (as determined by the CCD’s locale codes based on the location of the school’s address relative to urbanized areas), while 22 percent of all middle and high schools in the nation were located in urban areas, about 31 percent of target schools served by TS and EOC projects were located in those areas.  NCES has reported that 2004 college enrollment rates were generally lower in rural areas than in all other locales3; given the intent of the TS and EOC programs to assist disadvantaged individuals in entering and succeeding in postsecondary education, the extent of TS and EOC projects’ service to rural schools should therefore be examined.  Table 6 shows that higher percentages of all target schools were found in the two most remote rural locales than were percentages of all middle and high schools in the CCD found in those locales (13.7 percent compared to 11.8 percent in “rural, distant” and 12.1 percent compared to 9.9 percent in “rural, remote”).

3 Provasnik, S., KewalRamani, A., McLaughlin Coleman, M., Gilbertson, L., Herring, W., & Xie, Q. (2007).  *Status of education in rural America.*  (NCES 2007-040).  Washington, D.C.:  U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics.

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, Federal TRIO Programs, Talent Search and Educational Opportunity Centers performance reports, 2007–08, and National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data, 2006–07.

NOTE:  Table reflects the current funding cycle in TS and EOC:  2006–10.  Middle and high schools were identified in the CCD as *LEVEL06* = 2 (middle-school) or 3 (high school).  In the CCD, locale codes are reported at the four major groupings (city, suburb, town, and rural) based on schools’ locations relative to urbanized areas.  The three rural codes (fringe, distant, and remote) together constitute the locale: rural major grouping.  For further information, see http://nces.ed.gov/ccd/rural_locales.asp.  For full documentation of the CCD variables, please see http://nces.ed.gov/ccd/.  Percentages may not add to 100 due to rounding.  

**U.S. Department of Education**Arne Duncan*Secretary*

**Office of Postsecondary Education**Daniel T. Madzelan*Delegated the Authority to Perform the Functions and Duties of the Assistant Secretary for Postsecondary Education*

**September 2009**

This publication is in the public domain. Authorization to reproduce it in whole or in part is granted. The publication’s citation should be: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Postsecondary Education,*****A Report on the Talent Search Program: 2007–08, With Select Comparative Data, 2002–07*, Washington, D.C., 2009.

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