Welcome to the Reading Room
While exploring the reading room, you will be able to find research on early college high school, college and career readiness, and other related subjects.
New Mexico Career Cluster Guide
This Career Clusters Guide (3rd edition) targets the career pathways needed to meet educational and employment goals. This guide, designed around career clusters and related pathways, portrays a common set of knowledge and skills required for career success in each career path, and help all students identify available career options. (Guide updated Fall 2020)
State Leadership in Improving High Schools for More Students
A 1998 study on the, then, emerging vision for improvement in the achievement of high school students was examined through the analysis of a 5-year cycle. This 5-year period yielded strong returns and illustrated the great potential for student achievement in regard to advanced-level academic and technical concepts. Students in 1998, the 5th year of the analysis, showed a 15%-20% increase in student assessments for reading, mathematics, and science compared to those taken in 1993-94.
A Meta-Analysis of Dropout Prevention Outcomes and Strategies
This study provides an overall estimated effect size of dropout prevention efforts on dropout and graduation rates and to provide estimated effect sizes of research-based strategies on these two outcome variables. More than 500 model dropout prevention programs were pared down to fewer than 30, and were self-reported from local education agencies, state education agencies, and national organizations that nominated their successful lighthouse programs to be included in the prestigious and user-friendly database. Over the most recent seven years, 42 states have, on average, increased their averaged freshman graduation rates by up to 2.4% per year.
Adult Viewpoints 2017: Online Learning & The Back-to-School Decision
U.S. adults ages 23 to 55 were surveyed about their perception of the value of higher education, the motivators and barriers for them to return to school, and the quality of online learning. Adult students are consistently overlooked in national conversations defining quality, accessibility, and success in a higher education environment. This data intends to promote better understanding of the new majority of college-going students, their perceptions of higher education, and the obstacles they must overcome in order to pursue a degree.
College Credit in High School: Working Group Report
This Working Group Report, composed of program experts, addresses program quality and accountability, valuations for time and money utilized in programs, equity in and access to programming, and transparency around credit transfer. These topics addressed were identified as four factors essential to strong College Credit in High School programs.
The College Payoff: Education, Occupations, Lifetime Earnings
The College Payoff uses in-depth data analysis to identify, illuminate and elucidate the ways in which education and earnings interact. This analysis provides a breakdown of the rules that shape education, occupational choices, and lifetime earnings, and examines industries and occupational choices and the ways in which education shapes career outlooks and earnings.
New Mexico Legislative Finance Committee Program Evaluation: Longitudinal Student Performance Analysis-Impact of School, Teacher and Program Interventions
This evaluation reviewed long term student outcome including the impact of poverty, language, and mobility on student performance. This evaluation addresses prospective changes to three key areas–access, administration, and accountability–to improve student achievement to improve student success and academic achievement for the long term.
Use of Individualized Learning Plans: A Promising Practice for Driving College and Career Readiness Efforts
The U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) commissioned a five-year research study to determine whether Individualized Learning Plans (ILPs) should be considered a promising college and career readiness practice. This report summarizes the findings, and two overarching patterns: (1) ILPs share a common set of characteristics, and (2) ILPs are increasingly understood to be the lynchpin linking the twin goals of college and career readiness.
Jobs Lost, Jobs Gained: Workforce Transitions in a Time of Automation
This report assesses both the potential labor market disruptions from automation and some potential sources of new labor demand that will create jobs.
Next Generation Career Pathways: A Manufacturing Case Study
This case study discusses the current gap between occupational skills and skills attainment be student and the American workforce. This study seeks to address the changing job market and its impact upon education’s impact on job placement and occupational choice.
Career Academies
Career academies serve an increasingly wide range of students. This paper examines the contemporary profile of students entering career academies in a large, diverse school district and estimates causal effects of participation in one of the district’s well-regarded academies on a range of high school and college outcomes. Exploiting the lottery-based admissions process of this technology-focused academy, we find that academy enrollment increases the likelihood of high school graduation by about 8 percentage points and boosts rates of college enrollment for males but not females. Analysis of intermediate outcomes suggests that effects on attendance and industry-relevant certification at least partially mediate the overall high school graduation effect.