Last week, Brian Jacob, Susan Dynarski and two colleagues from Michigan State released a new paper, "Are expectations alone enough? Estimating the effect of a mandatory college-prep curriculum in Michigan." The paper examines the effect of the 2006...
Research shows that recent high school grads who attend a four-year college are 50 percent more likely to earn a bachelor’s within six years than those starting at community colleges. In a new NBER Working Paper, Kevin Stange and Jonathan Smith of...
Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy
Betty Ford Classroom
Free and open to the public. Abstract: The U.S. high school graduation rate rose markedly during the first 70 years of the 20th century. This contributed to the human capital development that fueled economic growth and increases in standards of living. Since 1970, the U.S. high school graduation rate has stagnated, while those of other industrialized nations have risen. Do the patterns differ by gender, race, or ethnicity? Why should we care about these trends and patterns? Why did they occur?
This paper examines the impacts of the Michigan Merit Curriculum (MMC), a statewide college-preparatory curriculum that applies to the high school graduating class of 2008 and later. We use a student, longitudinal database for all public school...
Students starting at a two-year college are much less likely to graduate with a college degree than similar students who start at a four-year college but the sources of this attainment gap are largely unexplained. In this paper we simultaneously...
Community colleges serve those whose labor market productivity is critical to national economic progress: first-generation college students, displaced workers, minority students, and low-income students. Yet we know relatively little about...
In order to understand the educational landscape in which the Michigan Merit Curriculum (MMC) was enacted, we examine the attainment trajectory of high school students in Michigan. These findings will provide a baseline against which we can...
In 2006 the state of Michigan adopted a comprehensive set of high school graduation requirements known as the Michigan Merit Curriculum (MMC). These requirements were designed to increase the rigor of high school course taking in Michigan and better...
School choice has become an increasingly prominent strategy for enhancing academic achievement. Evaluating the impact of such programs is complicated by the fact that a highly select sample of students takes advantage of these programs. To overcome...
Susan Dynarski discusses the state of education in Michigan and how college-going rates throughout Michigan are affected by race, income, and quality of high school education.
Michael S. McPherson, President of the Spencer Foundation, talks about students who are "undermatched" and raises questions of fairness as well of resource waste. November, 2011.
Richard J. Murnane discusses high school graduation rate patterns and explanations using evidence from several national and state data sets. September, 2011.
