Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

California has been at the forefront of the efforts to align K-12 assessments with indicators of college success. As part of their implementation of Common Core State Standards, all California 11^thgrade students receive a “college readiness” signal based on their performance on the state’s standardized tests for accountability. Students, parents, and schools are provided with information about their college readiness status (not yet ready, ready, or conditionally ready) in mathematics and English respectively. These signals are attached to the state’s two largest public higher education systems—the California Community Colleges (CCC) and the California State University (CSU). Students deemed college ready are exempt from any further developmental coursework, whereas students “conditionally ready” are provided with information about what courses they can take during their senior year to become “college ready”. To date, we know very little about whether these measures of college readiness align with what is actually required for success during college, or whether students use the information provided in these signals to take steps in order to become better prepared for higher education. Being identified as “college-ready” could encourage students to take more rigorous classes while still in high school. It is also possible, however, that early negative information about a student’s readiness could discourage students from attending college, or push them into attending a less academically demanding college (Jackson, 2014).

Our paper answers the following research questions:

1) What is the causal effect of receiving a signal that one is college ready? How does this differ by key student demographics (e.g. race and gender), and by school characteristics?

2) Mechanisms: Do college readiness signals affect course taking behavior, academic performance, and college application and enrolment behavior among 12th graders?

To answer our research questions, we draw from multiple administrative data sets of the census of California high school students. We utilize test score data to determine students’ college readiness status in English and math respectively and high school course level information. We merge these data to applicant and enrollment information from the California Community Colleges and the State Universities. We employ regression discontinuity design to test the causal effect of the readiness signal on a host of student outcomes. Our preliminary findings suggest that information about college readiness from 11^thgrade assessments does not impact college enrollment decisions. We find no difference in the likelihood of enrolling in CCCs or CSUs for students who were deemed “college ready”, relative to students who just missed the “college-ready” cut-off. While we find that “conditionally ready” students use information from these tests to take courses during senior year and take remediation early on during college, it is still too early to tell whether doing so better prepares students for long-run success. We believe these preliminary results suggest that information about not being “college-ready” does not deter students from enrolling in college, but does encourage students to undertake activities that will help them become college ready (i.e. developmental coursework upon college entry).