The Impact of Transition Intervention in High School on Pathways Through College - Journal Article Findings

Oct 15, 2026

Objective: In 2009, Kentucky legislation created a diagnostic cycle that became the Targeted Interventions (TI) program, aiming to reduce costly remediation needs after high school. Using 11 years of Kentucky panel data and a difference-in-regression-discontinuity design, the study tracked seven student cohorts through college. Results: TI increased the chance students completed at least 15 credits in the first term, but showed no detectable effects on graduating credits or 2-to-4-year transfers.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages30

Reading Time1 h 16 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Objective, Method, Results, Contributions

Introduction

College degree attainment and developmental education

State transition intervention programs

Study focus: Kentucky Targeted Interventions (TI)

The Impact of Transition Intervention in High School on Pathways Through College Zeyu Xu 1, Ben Backes 1, and Dan Goldhaber 1,2 Community College Review 2023, Vol. 51(2) 216–245 © The Author(s) 2023 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[DOI: 10.1177/00915521221145325](DOI: 10.1177/00915521221145325)[ ](DOI: 10.1177/00915521221145325)[journals.sagepub.com/home/crw](journals.sagepub.com/home/crw) Abstract Objective: In 2009, the Kentucky General Assembly found unacceptable and costly the ongoing high numbers of high school students requiring remediation once they enter higher education. The state passed legislation to better align secondary and college education, establishing a diagnostic cycle that would become its Targeted Interventions (TI) program. Using 11 years of panel data, this study tracked college progression of seven cohorts of students in order to estimate the impacts of this program. Method: Using student-level administrative data from the state of Kentucky that tracks students from high school through college, a differencein-regression-discontinuity design was used to compare how students just below college readiness benchmarks fared relative to those just above once TI was implemented. Results: The TI program significantly increased the likelihood that students took at least 15 credits during their first term, a key predictive measure for college completion. However, these early effects did not translate into detectable impacts on the likelihood of earning enough credits to graduate from college or likelihood of transfers from a 2-year to a 4-year college. One possible explanation for this pattern is that TI appears to have crowded out other core courses in highschool, especially in math, without increasing total instructional time. Findings suggest that the standards used by high schools to judge student progress toward college readiness may be consistent with the skills needed to place out of developmental courses, but not sufficient to better prepare students for college-level instruction. Contributions: To our knowledge, this is the first study to explore how TI shapes longer term college outcomes. The transition curriculum, while helping students avoid the need for college developmental courses, did not help a measurable share of 1 American Institutes for Research, Washington, DC, USA 2University of Washington, Seattle, USA Corresponding Author: Ben Backes, American Institutes for Research, 1400 Crystal Drive, 10th Floor, Washington, DC 22202- 3239, USA. Email: [bbackes@air.org](bbackes@air.org) students develop necessary skills to progress through college relative to what they would have otherwise taken. A possible explanation for these findings is that highschool-to-college transition interventions that do not increase total instruction time do not sufficiently move the needle on the college preparedness among high school graduates. For states concerned with the number of students entering college deemed not college ready, it appears that high school-to-college transition interventions that supplant instead of supplement regular high school curriculum have a limited scope for impact on long-run college success. Keywords remedial/developmental education, student outcomes, work with K-12 schools, quantitative methods, student retention/achievement Introduction Many students who enroll in college do not earn a degree. Among first-time, full-time college students, only 30% graduate from 2-year colleges within 3 years of initial enrollment and only 60% graduate from 4-year colleges within 6 years.1 Weak precollege preparation is thought to be one of the main reasons for poor degree attainment (Bettinger et al., 2013) . Traditionally, entering underprepared college students wereplaced in developmental education (DE) before they were able to enroll in collegelevel courses. However, DE has been

FAQs

What was Kentucky’s Targeted Interventions (TI) program designed to do?

The program was created after legislation to better align secondary and college education and reduce the high numbers of students needing remediation after entering higher education.

How did the study estimate TI’s impact?

It used Kentucky administrative panel data and a difference-in-regression-discontinuity design comparing students just below and just above college readiness benchmarks after TI implementation.

What were the main findings on college outcomes?

TI increased the likelihood that students attempted at least 15 credits in their first term, but there were no detectable effects on earning enough credits to graduate or on transferring from a 2-year to a 4-year college.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by WPS_1790064749