The Research Catalogue
New Findings and Insights on Institutional Practices and Academic Success

This is a digest of sources on issues addressed by the AAAS Capacity Center. It is updated periodically, sometimes with commentary. Web links, some accessible only to subscribers, are provided wherever possible, though we cannot assure their viability.

September 28 2006

Measuring Up 2006: The National Report Card on Higher Education, The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, September 7, 2006, http://www.highereducation.org

“Measuring Up 2006” gauges the performance of the nation and of each state in providing education and training beyond high school. It is the first in the series to compare national and state higher education performance with other nations. The report evaluates, compares, and grades their performance in six key areas: (1) college preparation; (2) participation; (3) completion; (4) affordability; (5) benefits; and (6) learning. Their findings show that the United States has fallen behind other nations in the race to educate its young adults and workers.

Reducing the Racial Achievement Gap: A Social-Psychological Intervention, Geoffrey L. Cohen, Julio Garcia, Nancy Apfel, and Allison Master, Science Vol. 313, September 1, 2006, http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/313/5791/1307.pdf

A recent study examining the effects of “stereotype threat” on academic achievement found that an identity-affirming written exercise, administered at the beginning of a seventh grade school year, reduced the achievement gap between African American and White students by forty percent.  “The results suggest that the racial achievement gap could be ameliorated by the use of timely and targeted social-psychological interventions.” 

Promise Abandoned: How Policy Choices and Institutional Practices Restrict College Opportunities, Kati Haycock, The Education Trust, August 31, 2006, http://www2.edtrust.org/EdTrust/Promise+Abandoned+Report.htm

Education Trust reports on the “trends in federal, state, and college practices that discourage low-income and minority students from enrolling and graduating from college.”  Despite the perception of progress, the gaps “are actually wider than they were thirty years ago.”  The report addresses two commonly employed management strategies – financial-aid leveraging and tuition discounting.  While documenting the retreat from our national commitment, the report calls on policymakers and “provides examples and recommendations on what can be done to increase minority and low-income student enrollment and [retention].”

Assessing What Works for Whom: An Evaluation of the GE Foundation Math Excellence Initiative, Final Evaluation Report, August 2006.

This report evaluates forty of the projects funded under the GE Math Excellence (ME) Initiative, and “focuses on conclusions from the five-year study and the results supporting those conclusions.”  Among their conclusions, evaluators found a positive impact on ME participation for first year engineering college enrollment of under-represented minority (African American, Hispanic, and Native American) students, but no such impact for women students.

The first in a series called “Pathways to Competitiveness”, this report follows up on the Workforce Strategy Center’s 2002 study on career pathways, “Building on Career Pathways System: Promising Practices in Community College-Centered Workforce Development.”  It “lays out the economic justification for career pathways” and describes a multi-stage, Center-developed process for building career pathways (Analysis, Planning, Implementation, Improvement, and Expansion).