Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

California has been at the forefront of the efforts to better align K-12 standards to the expectations of postsecondary institutions. Over a decade ago California launched the Early Assessment Program (EAP) to bridge the gap between K-12 and the requirements and expectations of postsecondary education by providing, on a voluntary basis, students (and schools) with information about their level of college and career readiness prior to their senior year of high school. Several years later, California adopted Com- mon Core State Standards (CCSS), and more specifically the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium assessments, to better align K-12 educational standards with the demands of postsecondary schooling by implementing more rigorous assessments aligned with CCSS. To date, however, we have very limited information about how schools fare under these new standards. More specifically, it is unclear whether effective schools are in fact better at preparing students for postsecondary schooling.

This paper explores high school quality in California after the transition to the new college readiness standards, assessments, and signals. Using a longitudinal panel of students’ standardized test scores, we calculate high school value added estimates for the 2015-2017 cohorts of 11th grade students. We control for each student’s 8th grade test score to account for differences in student ability, and estimate high school quality following the drift methodology outlined in Chetty, Friedman and Rockoff (2014). After calculating each school’s value added estimate, we then link high school student-level data to application and enrollment records from the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office and the California State University Chancellor’s Office in order to examine the impact of school quality on early college outcomes such as enrollment, remediation status, first year grade point average, and second year persistence.