K-12 Education

College Board: Helping Students to Succeed in High School and Prepare for College

Metis Associates is helping the College Board to evaluate two of its initiatives that seek to promote high school success and create a college-going culture in schools where students must overcome barriers to college preparation. One of these, the New York Education Initiative (NYEI), involves opening new secondary schools in low-income, high-minority areas. With funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates and Michael and Susan Dell Foundations, the College Board has opened 17 schools in New York City, Buffalo, Rochester, and Yonkers. These schools, which serve students in grades 6-12, have a rigorous academic program and focus on college preparation starting in the critical middle school years. In addition, with funding from the Gates Foundation, the College Board has launched an initiative in several large school systems to capture students at risk of failure. The EXCELerator Initiative, located in Chicago, Denver, and Florida’s Duval and Hillsborough counties, aims to create a college-going culture among students who could be the first in their families to have the opportunity to go to college. An important component of EXCELerator is an expansion of the number of Advanced Placement classes (a College Board product) in schools and of the number and diversity of students taking these classes.

Metis Associates has teamed up with the College Board’s research and analysis unit to evaluate both of these initiatives. Together they developed a set of research questions to assess how well the schools in both initiatives are implementing College Board products and programs, what they are gaining from the initiatives’ professional-development activities, and how well students are achieving. Analyses of program effects for both initiatives included propensity-score matching—a rigorous method that involves the use of advanced statistical techniques to identify comparisons from within the school district for students who are enrolled in the College Board or EXCELerator schools.

Results from the NYEI, which began in 2004, indicate that students from the College Board Schools are taking Regents exams earlier in their high school years and doing better on them than their comparison counterparts. Furthermore, College Board Schools that have already graduated their first seniors (which are all located in New York City) are graduating more of their students than the average for the city, a particularly important milestone given that all of the schools are located in high-poverty and high-minority neighborhoods.

Results from the EXCELerator Initiative, which started in 2007, are also promising. Overall, the schools are offering more AP courses and are increasing the number and diversity of students who are attending these courses, a key first step in preparing students for the rigor of college.