Retain summer-and-fall immediate enrollment as the headline metric while supplementing it with reporting on spring first-time enrollees¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 2 claims (2 for) · 1 study (1 associational), q2 · 0 of 1 report an effect size · 2 claims rest on one study

Description¶

Because spring first-time enrollees are few and including them would delay annual data release, the To&Through Project kept its summer-and-fall definition of immediate college enrollment. However, given systematic differences by race/ethnicity, gender, and GPA between fall and spring enrollees, the authors plan to "find more opportunities to report rates of spring enrollment and outcomes for spring enrollees" alongside the historical immediate fall enrollment rates.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Access to National Student Clearinghouse data capable of identifying first enrollment term, including spring starts

Constraints¶

• The To&Through immediate enrollment rate will continue to be lower than the CPS rate because spring enrollment is not counted
• Including spring enrollees would push back the annual reporting timeline and delay data availability for practitioners

Target Learners¶

• Chicago Public Schools high school graduates

Target Learning Goals¶

• Monitoring immediate college enrollment and understanding enrollment pathways for all student groups

Claims¶

• Spring first-time college enrollees differ from fall enrollees in race/ethnicity, gender, and high school GPA, but the impact on group enrollment rates is small [+W]
• Including spring first-time enrollees changes CPS graduates' immediate college enrollment rates by no more than two percentage points in any cohort [+W]

Related Strategies¶

• Adopt a third-semester point-in-time persistence definition to report second-year college re-enrollment data up to six months earlier

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Mahaffie, S., Nagaoka, J., & Usher, A. (2024). Measuring Patterns of Immediate and Continued College Enrollment among CPS Graduates. University of Chicago Consortium on School Research and the To&Through Project. https://consortium.uchicago.edu/publications/measuring-patterns-of-immediate-and-continued-college-enrollment-among-CPSs-graduates