Panel Paper: Missed Signals: The Effect of ACT College-Readiness Measures on Post-Secondary Decisions

Thursday, November 6, 2014 : 1:40 PM
Galisteo (Convention Center)

*Names in bold indicate Presenter

Lisa Schulkind, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Teny M. Shapiro, Santa Clara University and Andrew Foote, University of California, Davis
In the face of shrinking government budgets and a growing need to train a high-skilled labor force, policymakers have become increasingly interested in cost-effective measures that induce more students to apply to and enroll in college. In this paper, we use a regression discontinuity design to identify the causal effect of students receiving information about their own college-readiness after taking the ACT on their subsequent enrollment decisions. Using data from Colorado, we find that students who receive information that they are college-ready in a subject are no more likely to attend college than those that do not receive this information. We discuss possible reasons for this finding, such as the lack of visibility or salience of the signal.