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In this paper we compare two approaches to measuring the average rate at which students learn in a given school or district. One type of measure--longitudinal growth measures--relies on student-level longitudinal data. A second type--cohort growth measures--relies only on repeated aggregated, cross-sectional data. Because student-level data is often not readily available, cohort growth measures are sometimes the only type available. The estimated school and district learning rates reported in the Stanford Education Data Archive (SEDA), for example, are cohort growth measures based on aggregated data. Understanding how much researchers and policymakers can rely on these cohort growth estimates requires one to know how well, and under what conditions, the estimates obtained from this approach align with those based on longitudinal data. In this report we address these questions. We do so by using longitudinal student data from three states (Massachusetts, Michigan, and Tennessee) to construct both average gain score measures (longitudinal growth) and change-in-average measures (cohort growth) for each public school district and school serving students in any of grades 3-8 in the three states. We then compare the two sets of estimates in order to assess how well the latter replicates the former. We do this separately for districts and schools. We find that the longitudinal and cohort growth measures are generally highly correlated in these three states. On average, the cohort growth measures largely rank schools and districts similarly to longitudinal growth measures. The correlations at the district-level (r=0.87) are somewhat higher than the school-level correlations (r=0.80), which reflects the fact that there is less student mobility among districts than among schools. Additionally, in cases where student mobility in and out of schools or districts is high, the measures are less well aligned. Mobility rates are higher, on average, in small schools and districts, schools with long grade spans, and in charter schools. As a result the alignment of the two measures is weaker in these cases. We conclude that the cohort growth measures are useful proxies for longitudinal growth measures in most, but not all cases. [This work was completed in collaboration with Michigan's Center for Educational Performance and Information (CEPI) and the Tennessee Education Research Alliance (TERA).]

Given the time and money invested in higher education by students, parents and governments, there is considerable interest in the economic outcomes of postsecondary graduates. Most assessments of recent graduates have focused on their short-term, early labour market results. As new entrants to the labour force, recent postsecondary graduates may be particularly vulnerable to the economic cycle. Consequently, comparisons of short-term outcomes across graduating cohorts may be highly dependent on prevailing economic conditions and may not reflect the longer-term returns on investments. This is the first study to compare the long-term labour market outcomes of two cohorts of young postsecondary graduates using linked census and tax data. Specifically, graduates who were 26 to 35 years old in 1991 were followed from 1991 to 2005 (when they were 40 to 49 years old) and compared with a similarly aged 2001 cohort, which was followed from 2001 to 2015. The results suggest that median cumulative earnings were higher among members of the more recent cohort of male and female postsecondary graduates. Increases were observed across all postsecondary levels and across most major disciplines where sample sizes were large enough to permit analysis. Also, no discipline registered a decline in cumulative earnings. Although the economic conditions faced by the 2001 cohort over the 15-year study period were generally more favourable, this cohort also registered higher earnings than the 1991 cohort during the latter portion of the period (i.e., when the 2001 cohort was faced with an economic recession). Furthermore, the initial labour market conditions upon graduation (an important determinant of career earnings) were similar for both cohorts. The improvements in long-term earnings for postsecondary graduates are important in light of the significant increase in the number of graduates over the period. However, the results also indicate that the number of years of union membership declined or remained steady across cohorts of male and female postsecondary graduates. Furthermore, while women with postsecondary qualifications registered increases in the number of years of employer-sponsored pension plan coverage, their male counterparts experienced mixed results depending on their level of postsecondary studies.

While destination-country education provides many potential advantages for immigrants, empirical studies in Australia, Canada and the United States have produced mixed results on the labour outcomes of immigrants who are former international students. This study uses large national longitudinal datasets to examine cross-cohort trends and within-cohort changes in earnings among three groups of young university graduates: immigrants who are former international students in Canada (Canadian-educated immigrants), foreign-educated immigrants who had a university degree before immigrating to Canada and the Canadian-born population. The results show that Canadian-educated immigrants on average had much lower earnings than the Canadian-born population but higher earnings than foreign-educated immigrants both in the short term and in the long term. However, Canadian-educated immigrants are a highly heterogeneous group, and the key factor differentiating their post-immigration earnings from the earnings of the Canadian-born population and foreign-educated immigrants is whether they held a well-paid job in Canada before becoming permanent residents.

There is no comprehensive database of U.S. district-level test scores that is comparable across states. We describe and evaluate a method for constructing such a database. First, we estimate linear, reliability-adjusted linking transformations from state test score scales to the scale of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). We then develop and implement direct and indirect validation checks for linking assumptions. We conclude that the linking method is accurate enough to be used in analyses of national variation in district achievement, but that the small amount of linking error in the methods renders fine-grained distinctions among districts in different states invalid. Finally, we describe several different methods of scaling and pooling the linked scores to support a range of secondary analyses and interpretations.

A growing body of research provides evidence that quality early childhood experiences can affect a host of life outcomes. Equally well documented is the variation in the quality of prekindergarten programs (pre-K) offered to children. In this study I employ a fuzzy regression discontinuity approach to evaluate the efficacy of Transitional Kindergarten (TK) on student outcomes in the San Francisco Unified School District. TK is a highly regulated, state funded, early education program. Importantly, universal prekindergarten was already established in San Francisco, making this study a comparison of prekindergarten opportunities. This study tests whether a more highly regulated pre-K program, situated solely in schools, can provide benefits to young five year olds over a modern, robust universal pre-K market. I find that students who attended TK outperform their peers on a variety of foundational literacy skills, with some evidence that the gains are larger for minority children. TK, however, had little effect on the rate of absences in kindergarten and first grade

This study assesses the changing lifestyles, values, and preferences of American youth on a continuing basis. Each year since 1975, at least 13,000 seniors have participated in the annual survey, which is conducted in some 130 high schools nationwide. Since 1991, the study's annual surveys also have included surveys of similar nationally representative samples of eighth- and tenth-grade students. In addition, subsamples of high school seniors from previously participating classes receive follow-up questionnaires by mail each year. This report presents the objectives and theoretical Foundation of the Monitoring the Future Study. [For the designs and the procedures for the Monitoring the Future Study, see "The Monitoring the Future Project after Four Decades: Design and Procedures. Monitoring the Future Occasional Paper Series. Paper 82," ED578425.]

I investigate the determinants of high school completion and college attendance, the likelihood of taking science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) courses in the first year of college and the probability of earning a degree in a STEM field. The focus is on women and minorities, who tend to be underrepresented in STEM fields. Tracking four cohorts of students throughout Florida, I find that large differences in math achievement across racial lines exist as early as elementary school and persist through high school. These achievement differences lead to higher drop-out rates in high school and a reduced probability of attending college for black students. However, conditional on immediately attending a four-year college after high school, black and Hispanic students are more likely than whites to take STEM courses during their first year in college. Increased exposure to Hispanic math and science teachers in middle and high school tends to increase the likelihood that Hispanic students take STEM courses during their first year in college, though pairing black students and black math/science teachers does not have the same positive effect. For all students, having high school math and science teachers with a degree in biology, chemistry or math (as opposed to education) is associated with a higher likelihood of taking STEM courses as college freshmen. When pre-college differences in income and math achievement are taken into account, black and Hispanic students are at least as likely as white students to successfully complete a STEM major. Racial/ethnic pairing of students and college instructors in first-year STEM courses does not increase the likelihood of majoring in a STEM field. In contrast to underrepresented minorities, women perform nearly as well as men on math achievement tests through high school and are more likely to finish high school and attend college than males. Among college students, however, women are less likely than men to take courses in the physical sciences in their first year and are less likely to earn a degree in physics or engineering, even after adjusting for pre-college test scores. Gender matching of students and math/science teachers in middle and high school tends to increase the likelihood that female college freshman will take at least one STEM course, However, conditional on first-year coursework, neither gender matching at the secondary or college levels appears to have any effect on the likelihood of completing a major in a STEM field. Tables are appended.

We study the link between parental selection and children criminality in a new context. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, East Germany experienced an unprecedented temporary drop in fertility driven by economic uncertainty. We exploit this natural experiment to estimate that the children from these (smaller) cohorts are 40 percent more likely to commit crimes. We show that women who gave birth at this period were negatively selected. Investigation of the underlying mechanisms reveals that emotional attachment and risk attitudes play important roles in the fertility-crime relationship. Finally, results for siblings support a causal interpretation of our findings. [This research was partially funded by a grant from the Graduate School of Business and Economics (GSBE), Maastricht University.]

Substantial numbers of students who earn an associate degree from a community college accumulate more college credits than are required. This is an important phenomenon for at least two related reasons. First, it raises the issue of efficiency: Are students getting their degrees in the most expeditious manner, both in terms of time out of the labor market and in terms of the monetary cost of attaining the degree? Second, to what extent is the extra work undertaken by students beneficial to them, even when it does not contribute to degree attainment? This paper documents the phenomenon of excess credits by examining the credit distributions of six recent cohorts of students in one state's community college system. The analysis is limited to the records of those students who completed associate degrees. The main contribution of this paper to the existing literature is that it considers excess credits in the context of particular degree programs. I first examine the extent of excess credits overall in the community college system. Then I present case studies of individual degree programs to better understand the details of what may be generating the excess credits within these programs. The paper finds that excess credits accounted for about 12 percent of all college-level credits earned by students who completed a degree, with substantial variation among students in different programs. Among the excess credits of students enrolled in particular programs, most were spread out over a wide variety of subject-specific and general courses. Finally, while this paper does not seek to make any normative judgments on the value of excess credits, I discuss possible reasons that may contribute to excess credits and conclude with methodologies that individual colleges and college systems could employ to assess the extent and nature of excess credits for their students, thereby allowing practitioners to ascertain the relative value of excess credits in their systems. (Contains 9 tables and 4 footnotes.)

This paper presents the findings from a follow-up quantitative analysis of the Community College of Baltimore County's Accelerated Learning Program (ALP). The results suggest that among students who enroll in the highest level developmental writing course, participation in ALP is associated with substantially better outcomes in terms of English 101 completion and English 102 completion (college-level English courses), which corroborates the results of a similar analysis completed in 2010. Moreover, using a larger number of cohorts and tracking students over a longer period of time, we also found that ALP students were more likely than non-ALP students to persist to the next year. In addition to specific subgroup analyses, we compared college-ready students enrolled in ALP sections of English 101 with their counterparts in wholly college-ready sections, and found that those in ALP sections had equivalent performance within English 101 itself, but slightly lower subsequent college-level course enrollment and completion. (Contains 2 figures, 8 tables, and 7 footnotes.)

One of the lightning rods in the discourse over teacher pay has been the question of "how much" teachers should be paid. What the "how much" debate does not directly address, however, is the question of "how" teachers should be paid. This paper attempts to help lay groundwork for a better understanding of what exactly teachers want in terms of how they should be paid. Nontraditional teacher pay (NTTP), which is considered here to be pay systems that diverge from exclusive reliance on the traditional salary schedule, continues to be a high-profile and controversial issue. Often lost in the debate over NTTP is a thorough assessment of what teachers "actually prefer" in a pay system, which has important implications for teacher recruitment, retention, and motivation. While teachers are sometimes broadly described as resisting NTTP, the truth is much more nuanced. Using data collected in 2005 from over 2,500 unionized teachers in a single state, this paper explores: (1) whether teachers favor or oppose four different bonus-based NTTP systems, and the demographic and attitudinal characteristics associated with these preferences; (2) levels of teacher support for traditional (i.e., education, service) and nontraditional (e.g., standardized test score) criteria for salary increases, as well as teacher characteristics related to this support; and (3) changes over time in NTTP preferences, as additional survey data from six years earlier allow for a unique opportunity to examine possible cohort versus service effects. Some of the main findings are the following: (1) Teachers supported an emphasis on education and service as the basis for salary increases, preferring these criteria to student test scores and performance evaluation; (2) Merit-based bonus plans were the least favored of the four bonus plans presented, as only 28% of teachers favored their adoption; and (3) Evidence indicated that the average teacher becomes less NTTP-friendly over time, growing less likely to favor the adoption of the bonus-based NTTP plans or to support the use of NTTP criteria in salary increases. (Contains 5 figures, 6 tables, and 11 endnotes.)

There are many ways to use student test scores to evaluate schools. This paper defines and examines different estimators, including regression-based value-added indicators, average gains, and successive cohort differences in achievement levels. Given that regression-based indicators are theoretically preferred but not always feasible, we consider whether simpler alternatives provide acceptable approximations. We argue that average gain indicators potentially can provide useful information, but differences across successive cohorts, such as grade trends, which are commonly cited in the popular press and used in the Safe Harbor provision of federal school accountability laws, are flawed and can be misleading when used for school accountability or program evaluation. (Contains 5 tables, 2 figures and 7 endnotes.)

This paper examines late career mobility and retirement decisions for a cohort of mid-career Missouri public school teachers. Specifically, the paper follows a cohort of teachers whose combined age and experience totaled 45 or more years in fall 1991 through the 2005-06 school year. Like many public employee pensions, Missouri has a system that permits teachers to receive full benefits if the sum of their age and experience is at least 80 ("rule of 80"). Thus, the sum of age and experience for most of the teachers in this cohort will hit 80--full retirement eligibility--in the 16-year window studied. Traditional benefit (DB) pension systems provide teachers with a large annuity value on retirement. The accrual of this annuity value occurs over the teacher's entire work life; however, the rate of accrual is highly nonlinear and back-loaded with most of the gain occurring in the final years prior to retirement. In addition, these pension systems have various rules that introduce kinks or discontinuities in the rate of accrual after 30 years. This paper explores the effect of these pension rules on retirement patterns, as well as general descriptive data on retirement patterns. Like many states, Missouri permits teachers to continue teaching part-time while collecting benefits (e.g., DROP plans). Teachers can also retire from one pension system and begin teaching in another. The paper examines both types of behavior. The primary source of data for this study is administrative teacher records maintained by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. These records include data on teacher experience, demographics, teaching field, compensation, retirement, and workforce exit, as well as the employing school and district. The paper also compares teacher retirement data from the Missouri administrative records with data from the 2000-01 Teacher Follow-up Survey. (Contains 16 figures, 1 table and 12 footnotes.)

This paper describes the school mobility rates for elementary and middle school students in North Carolina and attempts to estimate the effect of school mobility on the performance of different groups of students using student fixed effects models. School mobility is defined as changing schools at times that are non-promotional (e.g., moving from middle to high school). We used detailed administrative data on North Carolina students and schools from 1997 to 2005 and followed four cohorts of 3rd graders for six years each. School mobility rates were highest for minority and disadvantaged students. School mobility rates for Hispanic students declined across successive cohorts, but increased for Black students. Findings on effects were most pronounced in math. School mobility hurt the math performance of Black and Hispanic students, but not the math performance of white students. School mobility improved the reading performance of white and more advantaged students, but had no effect on the reading performance of minority students. "Strategic" school moves (cross-district) benefitted or had no effect on student performance, but "reactive" moves (within district) hurt all groups of students. White and Hispanic students were more likely to move to a higher quality school while Blacks were more likely to move to a lower quality school. The negative effects of school mobility increased with the number of school moves. Tables are appended. (Contains 1 exhibit, 9 footnotes, 5 figures, and 15 tables.)

Recent news articles and studies have generated concern among New England policy makers and others that the region's supply of young, highly educated professionals is disappearing. The fear is that comparatively high housing and other costs may be driving away many within this highly mobile group. This paper explores trends in the stocks and flows of young professionals, defined as people 25 to 39 with at least a bachelor's degree. The goal is to help policy makers better understand this important demographic story, giving them the facts about how various factors, including migration, are affecting the region's supply of young, educated labor. The story about young professionals turns out to be much more nuanced than headlines suggest. The region has a strong base of young professionals. As of 2005, New England had the largest population of young professionals of any U.S. region, relative to its population of young people and its total household population. At the same time, New England should not take this strong base of young professionals for granted. While the region's young professional population is holding steady, this cohort is growing in all other regions. Many articles and reports conflate young people and young professionals. While it is true that fewer people between 25 and 39 live in New England today than at any time during the past 15 years, the number of those in the specific category of young professionals has not declined, thanks to steady increases in the share of young people who complete college. Additionally, while this decline in young people is often attributed to out-migration, it is due, at least in part, to a large number of individuals who are aging out of the cohort, rather than leaving the region. Finally, stories about out-migration from New England generally consider only domestic migration. While it is true that New England is losing more young professionals to the rest of the nation than it receives domestically, this domestic outflow of young professionals may be offset by young professionals moving to New England from abroad. Though the net number of international immigrants is not available, New England would have to retain only half of those who arrive from abroad in order to replace the flow of young professionals moving to other parts of the nation. In short, a careful analysis of the data indicates that reports of a major "brain drain" from the region are overstated. However, this does not mean that policy makers should take for granted that the region will continue to retain a solid base of young, educated professionals. (Contains 4 footnotes, 4 figures and 3 tables.)

The goal of this paper is to introduce education researchers to a new approach for measuring the impact of whole-school reform. The approach is based on interrupted time-series analysis, which has been used to evaluate programs in many fields, but has not been used widely to study education initiatives. The application presented measures program impacts on student performance by comparing standardized test scores for a number of annual student cohorts in a specific grade after a reform is launched (its followup period) with the scores of cohorts from several years before the reform was launched (its baseline period). The approach is used to measure impacts on three facets of student performance: (1) average (mean) test scores, which summarizes impacts on total performance; (2) the distribution of scores across specific ranges, which helps identify where in the distribution of student performance impacts were experiences; and (3) the variation (standard deviation) of scores, which indicates how the disparity in student performance was affected. To help researchers use the approach, the paper lays out its conceptual rationale, describes its statistical procedures, explains how to interpret its findings, indicates its strengths and limitations, and illustrates how it was used to evaluate a major whole-school reform modelAccelerated Schools. (Contains 4 tables, 3 figures, and 24 references.) (Author/SLD)

This paper examines how predictive modeling can be used to study application behavior. A relatively new technique, artificial neural networks (ANNs), was applied to help predict which students were likely to get into a large Research I university. Data were obtained from a university in Iowa. Two cohorts were used, each containing approximately 20,000 records. The results of the new techniques were compared to those from the traditional analysis tool, logistic regression modeling. ANNs have several advantages over traditional statistical methods. ANNs do not require knowledge of the functional relationship between the independent variables and the dependent variables to estimate the model. Unlike traditional statistical techniques, ANNs learn from examples with a small number of prior assumptions about structural relationships. Other advantages and disadvantages are discussed. The addition of artificial intelligence models is an exciting new area that may be used to explore the complex processes in educational institutions. (Contains 3 figures, 7 tables, and 48 references.) (SLD)

This paper offers recommendations to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) on the development of the background questionnaire for the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL). The recommendations are from the viewpoint of a researcher interested in applying sophisticated statistical models to address important issues in adult literacy. The paper focuses on five issues, each of which is the subject of a section of the paper: sampling; selection bias; measurement; policy modeling; and gauging cohort effects. Each section considers the scope of the issue and then makes recommendations to NCES. These recommendations include providing all appropriate sampling weights in NAAL data; examining contextual effects on the distribution of literacy ability in the population; considering relevant auxiliary variables that would constitute the selection equation; considering the hypothesized number of factors and including at least four variables measuring each factor in the questionnaire; obtaining retrospective data on general and job-specific literacy-related activities; and exploring the possibility of linking NAAL with existing longitudinal surveys. (Contains 21 references.) (YLB)

The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort 2000 (ECLS-B) is a study that will assess children's health status and their growth and development in domains that are critical for later school readiness and academic achievement. This paper is one of several that have been prepared in support of ECLS-B design efforts. It is anticipated that three waves of data will be collected from families of children born between January and December 2000, with supplementary data collected from child care providers. Several options remaining to be decided are addressed, including identifying the primary respondent and other respondents, the assessments to be used, and how to collect data on variables such as other children in the family. The following eight major domains have been identified for the study: (1) demographic background; (2) family organization, composition, history, and turbulence; (3) family processes; (4) child care; (5) child characteristics; (6) child outcomes; (7) early health care, feeding patterns, nutrition, and insurance; and (8) distal constructs, such as neighborhood characteristics. Each of these domains is discussed. (Contains 485 references.) (SLD)

Data from the 1811 and 1851 census in England and Wales as well as other data from those countries in 1891 and 1921 were analyzed to investigate individuals' timing and extent of departure from the parental home. The authors found the following: (1) there was a gradual increase in the ages at which children left the parental home; (2) the pace of departure became more rapid over the entire period studied for males, although for females, the pace was increased in the twentieth century; (3) there was a decline in non-familial residence; and (4) there was a rise, especially in the twentieth century, in post-marriage co-residence with parents. The trends were attributed to a general decline in farm employment and domestic service (where employees had traditionally been given room and board) and the subsequent rise in urbanization and industrialization. The period from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century increasingly witnessed a divergence between the experience of leaving the parental home and entry into the labor market. The author suggested further research on the changing patterns of the timing of entry into the workplace. (Contains 17 tables and 73 references.) (AJ)

Moving from high school into young adulthood is a critical developmental transition, a time of both continuity and discontinuity in health and well-being. How well one negotiates this transition, as evidenced by one's course of well-being and substance use, depends in part on historical cohort, gender, and life-path. Using U.S. national panel data from 17 consecutive cohorts from the Monitoring the Future study, this paper examines age-related change in well-being and substance use during the first four years following high school. It examines whether the changes varied as a function of cohort group, gender, and life-path group. Findings show that well-being and substance use increased during the transition to young adulthood. Although there were no overall differences in well-being among the three cohort groups, findings show that the course of self-efficacy and fatalism during the transition differed somewhat among the cohorts. Men reported higher levels of well-being and substance use, except for cigarettes, than women. Overall differences in well-being and substance use were found across the life-paths. Limitations of the study and future directions for research are also discussed. (Contains 9 tables, 21 figures, and 68 references.) (MKA)

In this paper, research from several traditions is synthesized to discern causes of change in the level of formal educational attainment in the United States for cohorts during the first half of the twentieth century. Two sources of educational growth are considered: (1) changing population composition on family background factors that affect how far individuals go in school; and (2) changing characteristics of the labor market and educational organization that are experienced uniformly within cohorts but vary over time such as to alter incentives to stay in school. Pertinent individual and societal causes of change in educational attainment are considered simultaneously in the analysis of occupational change surveys and published economic and schooling data. Grade progression rates are found to respond to change in the labor market value of schooling. School quality indicators also strongly affect educational growth. Levels of educational expenditures, teacher salaries, within-year attendance, and school consolidation all vary directly with grade progression and, in places, mediate the effects of economic incentives. (Author/KR)

Current data for the State of New York and the nation as a whole are reviewed to determine the status of women in postsecondary education in New York. Areas of progress are noted and other areas where problems still exist are described. It is hoped that this paper will serve as a background document for reviewing statewide policy and will assist those who must respond to the provisions of Title IX. Included in this report are data on: population profiles by age cohorts and educational attainment; college participation by age groups, by level of enrollment, and by degree level attainment; participation by type of attendance and by sector; faculty hiring patterns and salaries; administration; and programs. It is concluded that women have made progress in access to postsecondary education, although they are more likely than men to be part-time students. At the advanced degree levels, they have historically received fewer degrees and rank correspondingly lower among faculty and other educational staff. More women are needed on faculties, particularly at the upper levels, and an expanded curriculum is needed in which sex role stereotyping is no longer an issue. (LBH)

The National Governors' Association is urging states to develop a standardized cohort graduation rate definition and to develop data systems with quality data that can in turn be used to produce a reliable indicator. This paper is an examination of one state's graduation rate using the cohort method. The statistics generated are compared to a panel based graduation rate, the Average Freshmen Graduation Rate (AFGR) produced by the National Center for Education Statistics and the Cumulative Promotion Index (CPI) published in Education Week. The cohort, panel and AFGR methods generated similar results across all years while the CPI produced a lower rate for two of four years examined. The CPI appears to be more susceptible to population fluctuations than those that use four years of data. (Contains 4 tables and 2 figures.)

Effects of the high school environment, part-time university instructors, and classroom ethnic/racial diversity on first-year student preparation and enrollment persistence are estimated via hierarchical linear and logistic regression. After controlling for student socio-demographic characteristics and motivation to enter college, high school attributes bear little relevance to level of academic preparation at the start of the first year of study. In contrast, academic performance of low-income students at the end of the first year is negatively associated with several features of the high school environment. There is little evidence that student persistence is negatively affected by exposure to part-time instructors during the first year in college. Ethnic/racial diversity in the classroom appears to slightly enhance persistence of non-Asian minority students, but shows no positive relationship with cognitive growth. Unmet financial need marginally increases the dropout risk of students taking greater course loads net of socio-demographic background, academic preparation, first-year grades, on-campus residency, and type of aid received. Results are based on institutional matriculation records of 2,800 first-year students at a moderately selective public university and official high school accountability reports collected by the state's department of education. (Contains 8 tables and 6 footnotes.)