Full report can be accessed by selecting the link to the right.

The Major Conclusion. The Ohio College Access Network Project appears to be having an appreciable positive effect on the rates of Ohio’s high school students going to college. With potential confounding factors held constant, high schools with an OCAN program had an 3.8% increase in average rate of going-on to college among its graduates -- 35% as opposed to 31.2% per school among high schools without a program. This study combined data provided by OCAN, the Ohio Board of Regents, and the Ohio Department of Education (via its website) to study the graduating cohort of the 2004-05 academic year. Rates of starting college by graduates were studied in relation to characteristics of the high schools and characteristics of the school districts in which the schools are located. We had planned a slightly different path to the conclusions presented here, but the findings dictated the different path as they unfolded. There are several additional noteworthy conclusions suggested by the analyses and this overview will briefly bring them to your attention. Also, ODE’s effort to acquire and make data available to the public on their website is a developing and difficult task, and there are substantial gaps in their data. Thus, we must add a caveat to our conclusions – it is based on available data.

Additional Important Findings. The table below offers a simple comparison of some of the school and district features that we have studied. The rates of going-on to college (for graduates) seem to contradict our major conclusion. On the surface, the project does not appear to make a difference in the 23% of the studied schools that had a program. This finding is misleading, however. As the table shows OCAN conducts programs more often in schools with features that traditionally contribute to lower rates of college going. [Note that sophisticated, multivariate (logistic) regression analysis corroborates this conclusion about features associated with the OCAN programs.] Programs are in high schools with notably larger shares of blacks, larger shares of economically disadvantaged students, and with larger senior classes. These are three school features that have a marked impact on rates of college going (and rates of graduation for that matter). We found that they dominated other school and district features in their influence. Net of these factors, OCAN has the upward pressure of increasing high school rates of college going by the mentioned 3.8%.

Another important conclusion was suggested by analyses – OCAN programs may impact the rates of going-on to college by increasing the rates of graduation among senior classes. With potential confounding factors held constant, high schools with an OCAN program had a 4.5% higher average rate of graduation – 91.6% as opposed to 87.1% per school among high schools without a program. OCAN program effects are markedly reduced in equations where rates of graduation are added to other features predicting rates of going-on to college. Taken together, the facts in the two previous sentences suggest the conclusion that OCAN may operate on rates of going-on to college via influencing graduation rates. 

Conclusion. We reiterate the conclusion that names this report – the OCAN Project is working. All the sizeable evidence that we examined supports it.