Ready or Not? California's Early Assessment Program and the Transition to College

• In Event: The Impact of State Programs to Improve High School Course-Taking and Decrease Postsecondary Remedial Course-Taking

Abstract

Despite widespread calls for more U.S. students to obtain a postsecondary degree, many students are unable to complete a college credential because they arrive at college unprepared for college-level work. California was one of the first states to offer statewide early college readiness assessments to all students attending public high schools prior to their senior year of high school. In 2004 California launched the Early Assessment Program (EAP), an academic preparation program created jointly by representatives from K-12 and higher education. EAP seeks to reduce the barriers students must overcome to successfully make the transition to credit-bearing college coursework. A byproduct of these efforts is enhanced curricular alignment between the secondary and tertiary sectors of public education. In this presentation I report on a five-year study investigating the impact of this statewide program.

The Early Assessment Program is an academic preparation program intended to bridge the gap between K-12 educational standards in English and mathematics and the requirements and expectations of postsecondary education at the California State Universities and Community Colleges. The primary component of the program is an assessment of English and math skills among California 11th graders. The basic nature of the intervention is to augment the mandatory California Standards Tests in 11th grade English and mathematics with a voluntary set of 15 additional questions. Based on their EAP scores, students receive a letter in the summer before their senior year with information about whether or not they are ready to do college-level work. If their score exceeds an upper threshold, they are exempted from remedial coursework and the college placement exams. If their score falls below a lower threshold they are considered non-exempt from the remediation placement exams. Students who are not exempt are advised about what courses to take in their senior year and directed to additional resources to improve their college readiness.

The study employs detailed administrative data on the census of California students that enroll at all twenty-three campuses of the California State University system or at one of California’s 112 community colleges. We use a variety of quasi-experimental methods to evaluate whether the program has reduced remediation rates at colleges statewide, and investigate whether program effects differ by student background. We find that participation in the Early Assessment Program reduces the average student’s probability of needing remediation at California State University by about 2-3 percentage points overall. Investigating heterogeneous treatment effects, we find the program effects are largely concentrated among students at the margin of remediation risk.

We also explore possible mechanisms by which EAP may affect the postsecondary careers of California youth. To do this we employ a regression discontinuity design comparing the application behavior and course-taking patterns of students just below and just above the EAP exemption signal cutoffs. We find that the program did not lead to any significant sorting out of California’s four-year college sector, nor did it lead to more advanced math course-taking in the 12th grade.

Author

• Michal Kurlaender, University of California - Davis