Continuing our examination of college enrollment rates across four of the largest urban school districts in the U.S. (New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston), we take a closer look at how ‘college enrollment’ is defined across several RPP reports and discuss the ramifications of different definitions both on policymaking and any attempted comparisons of enrollment rates across studies/districts.
Research Insights
WHAT IS YOUR DISTRICT’S COLLEGE ENROLLMENT RATE? …IT DEPENDS [PART I]
Examining college enrollment rates across four of the largest urban school districts in the U.S. (New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston), we go deep into how the seemingly straightforward question “What’s your district’s college enrollment rate?” can have vastly different answers depending on who’s asking, why they’re asking, and how they’re asking – all of which makes for different policy implications, and for findings that may not lend themselves to direct comparison.
EXPLORING ENGLISH LEARNERS’ TIME TO PROFICIENCY THROUGH TWO RESEARCH-PRACTICE PARTNERSHIPS
We bring together work on English learners, highlighting two studies done by NNERPP members – in Philadelphia, PA, and New Mexico – that assess students’ progress towards English proficiency. Findings around initial English (and Spanish, in one of the studies) proficiency, around students’ time to proficiency, around which students were more likely to reach English proficiency, and around the relationship between English/Spanish proficiency and other measures of student achievement can help inform district and state efforts in understanding how best to support English learners.
TRANSITIONING TO KINDERGARTEN: WHAT 3 RPPs FIND ON DISTRICT-LED PROGRAMS
Taking a closer look at the connections across early childhood education research produced by three NNERPP members – in Portland, OR, Madison, WI, and San Francisco, CA – we examine different versions of district-led kindergarten transition programs and what the partnerships’research tells us about how each program approaches the preparation of students for kindergarten. We also highlight policy implications and use in practice of the research studies. Bringing together these related studies allows insight into the spectrum of possibilities for how a district might approach the transition to kindergarten and illuminates how partnership research can impact such efforts.
