Preparation

This study explores graduates of a baccalaureate-level program in Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) Engineering Technology, and aims to determine the experience of graduates after they completed their degrees and began work in the field for which they were trained. The authors surveyed on-campus and on-line graduates, and their low response rate resulted in a non-representative sample. The authors found that graduates felt the program was useful in their employment, and that they had positive perceptions of the faculty and curriculum.

This report summarizes the results of a study that examined the impact of college preparatory transition courses on students who tested below ACT benchmarks in math and reading in 11th grade. The study found most students in the approaching benchmarks category do not enroll in college preparatory transition courses. In both math and reading nearly all students who take college preparatory transition courses pass them.

This publication from the Institute of Education Sciences is a guide that is intended to assist schools and school districts develop practices to increase access to higher education. This publication contains specific steps on how to implement the recommendations that are targeted at school- and district-level administrators, teachers, counselors, and related education staff. The guide also indicates the level of research evidence demonstrating that each recommended practice is effective.

This report reviews the research on how students who are far off track in preparing for college can catch up in four years. The study examined data from four nationwide cohorts of students whose EXPLORE scores were 1 standard deviation below the benchmark scores associated with being on track. The authors found 10 percent or fewer students who were far off track in eighth grade met ACT College Readiness Benchmarks by twelfth grade.

This report details ACT's findings that the level of academic achievement students attain by the eighth grade has a larger impact on their college and career readiness by the time they graduate from high school than anything that happens academically in high school. ACT examined data from 216,000 high school graduates who had taken all three programs that make up the longitudinal assessment component of ACT’s College Readiness System.

This report examines the characteristics of Florida career academies in the 2006/2007 school year. Student and school-level data, as well as the Department of Education’s Common Core of Data from a nonrandom sample of 12 districts are analyzed. The findings reveal the types and locations of career academies, characteristics of the high schools offering career academies, and the number and characteristics of students enrolled in career academies.

This study reviews the alignment of ACT and the American Diploma Project (ADP) national college readiness standards with the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for English language arts and reading (TEKS ELAR). The study assessed alignment based on both content and cognitive complexity. Findings reveal that the majority of the content in the ACT and ADP standards sets is also in the TEKS ELAR standards, and that the TEKS ELAR standards requires greater cognitive complexity than the ACT and the ADP.