The Significance of High School Practices on Students’ Four-Year College Enrollment

............................................................................................................................. 2 Introduction & Motivation ................................................................................................. 3 Background And Literature .............................................................................................. 3 Research Questions .......................................................................................................... 5 Data and Methods .............................................................................................................. 6 Setting ......................................................................................... 6 Data ............................................................................................ 6 Sample ......................................................................................... 7 Measures ...................................................................................... 7 Student Characteristics ................................................................... 7 High School Control Variables .......................................................... 7 Outcomes Measures ...................................................................... 8 Analytic Approach ........................................................................... 9 Results.............................................................................................................................. 11 Research Question One: How much school-level variation in four-year college enrollment is there across high schools? ................................................. 11 Research Question Two: How much of the between-school variation is associated with the incoming characteristics of students? ......................................... 15 Research Question Three: After accounting for compositional effects, which malleable institutional practices and policies explain any remaining between-school variation in the rates of in a four-year college enrollment? ........................... 16 Discussion and Conclusion ............................................................................................ 18 Limitations ................................................................................... 21 Next Steps ................................................................................... 22 References ....................................................................................................................... 23 Appendix 1: Additional Figures ...................................................................................... 25