Assessment of the Florida College and Career Readiness Initiative: 2018 Final Technical Report
Author: Mokher, Christine
Date: 2018-05-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Career Readiness,College Readiness,Grade 11,Grade 12,Mathematics Achievement,Language Arts,Academic Achievement,Student Evaluation,School Districts,Program Implementation,Compliance (Legal),School Involvement,Scores,High School Students,Graduation,College Attendance,Developmental Studies Programs,Enrollment Trends,Program Effectiveness,Outcomes of Education,Costs,State Standards,Achievement Tests,Standardized Tests

Florida enacted legislation in 2008 for a statewide program known as the Florida College and Career Readiness Initiative (FCCRI), which was intended to reduce the need for postsecondary remediation. The FCCRI consisted of testing grade 11 students to determine their college readiness and offering math and English college readiness and success (CRS) courses in grade 12 for students who did not test college-ready the year before. The theory of action for the FCCRI is that providing college readiness testing and CRS courses in high school may raise students' awareness of their academic deficiencies and motivate them to further develop college-level skills in their senior year. We found considerable variation across districts and schools in the initiative's implementation and level of compliance with state requirements for participation. We estimated program impacts using two different methods. First, we used a regression discontinuity design to compare outcomes for students scoring just above and below test score cutoffs for assignment to the FCCRI. Among the two cohorts of students required to participate in the FCCRI, we found little to no impact on short-term outcomes including high school graduation, college enrollment, and enrolling in or passing non-developmental courses. There is little evidence for improved enrollment or pass rates in for-credit coursework among the highest- and lowest-performing targeted students. However, enrollment and pass rates in transition and degree credit courses were similar for students on the margins of assignment to college readiness courses in either subject, indicating that students just below college-ready were able to &quot;catch up&quot; by the time they enrolled in college. There were also few differences between marginal targeted and non-targeted students on longer-term outcomes including persistence, transfer, non-developmental enrollment and pass, and degree completion rates. Second, we examined the impact of offering the FCCRI to students from a wider range of academic performance levels by using regression analysis to compare student outcomes for targeted students in schools before and after the schools implemented the FCCRI. As with the regression discontinuity analyses, we found little to no effect of the FCCRI on most short-term student outcomes. We did find that the treatment group was more likely to both take and pass nondevelopmental courses in math and English. Although the average effects were small, the magnitudes of these effects were quite large for some portions of the achievement distribution, with impacts of up to 10.7 percentage points for the treatment group. Finally, we estimated the cost for the FCCRI's ongoing implementation at $57 per targeted student in 2014/15, with about 63 percent of per-student program costs incurred at the school level ($36), 33 percent at the district level ($19), and 3 percent at the state level ($2). We also found that while net costs exceeded benefits for the FCCRI as a whole, program impacts and costs varied both within and between districts.