Grant recipient: College Forward
Term: 2015 –2024
Principal Investigator: Ben Castleman, Ph. D., University of Virginia
Funding: $98,377 from LJAF (the Greater Texas Foundation is providing $24,000 in co-funding)
Summary: This study is a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of College Forward —a program that provides individualized coaching from trained AmeriCorps volunteers to help low-income students get into and graduate from college. The program is backed by promising evidence from a prior quasi-experimental study, which found positive impacts on college enrollment and persistence. This RCT will be a large, multi-site study measuring college enrollment, persistence, and completion with a sample of approximately 2,000 high school students from Houston and Austin, Texas. The students will be tracked over an eight-year period using administrative data from the National Student Clearinghouse to measure key college-related outcomes.
The study’s pre-specified analysis plan is linked here.
