Using a rich data set of all SAT test takers from the 2004 through 2008 high school graduation cohorts, we investigate the impact of state-specific school age-of-entry laws on students' pathways into and through college. We document that these laws do not impact the probability that a student takes the SAT; however, we find strong evidence…

Despite decades of policy intervention to increase college entry and success among low-income students, considerable gaps by socioeconomic status remain. To date, policymakers have overlooked the summer after high school as an important time period in students' transition to college, yet recent research documents high rates of summer…

This paper estimates the impact of New York City's Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP) on school attendance and other educational outcomes in the following school year for a large sample of low-income high school students. The program provides summer jobs and training to youth aged 14 to 21, and due to high demand allocates slots through a…

A key form of student-level accountability is the requirement for students to pass high school exit exams (HSEEs) in order to receive a diploma. In this paper, we examine the impact of HSEEs on dropout during a period when these exams became more common and rigorous. Further, we study whether offering alternate pathways to graduation for students…

This paper presents results from fiscal impact simulations of three national-level policies designed to prevent unintended pregnancy: A media campaign encouraging condom use, a pregnancy prevention program for at-risk youth, and an expansion in Medicaid family planning services. These simulations were performed using FamilyScape, a recently…

In this paper we investigate how participation in the Early Assessment Program, which provides California high school juniors with information about their academic readiness for college-level work at California State University campuses, affects their college-going behavior and need for remediation in college. Using administrative records from…

We use panel data on Florida high school students to examine race, poverty, and gender disparities in advanced course-taking. While white students are more likely to take advanced courses than black and Hispanic students, these disparities are eliminated when we condition on observable pre-high school characteristics. In fact, black and Hispanic…

On April 1, 1994, Ontario, Canada, instituted a new graduated driver license (GDL) system that effectively set the legal blood alcohol content (BAC) threshold at zero for the first few years of a youth's driving eligibility. I use data from the 1983-2001 Ontario Student Drug Use Surveys (OSDUS) to examine whether the Zero Tolerance (ZT) policy…

Variations in state welfare policies in the reform era may affect adolescents through two mechanisms: A competing labor market hypothesis posits that stringent state welfare policies may reduce adolescent employment; and a signaling hypothesis posits that stringent welfare policies may promote enrollment. To test these hypotheses, we use a dynamic…