College Promise Releases Reference Guide on the Evidence Behind the Promise Movement
This blog post is part of a series of introductions to recently released College Promise publications. This week, College Promise — with support from the College Promise Research Network — released its first-ever reference guide, Evolution of Promise: The Evidence Behind the Movement, which compiles historical evidence on the Promise movement.
The pursuit of evidence-based best practices for Promise programs has always been a core focus of College Promise’s work, and we have been fortunate to collaborate with some of the best researchers in the field to ensure that the voice of the academic community is represented well in the movement. Launched in 2019, the College Promise Research Network is composed of Promise researchers and evaluators, educational and workforce economists, state and federal financial aid experts, and program administrators with experience in research, policy, assessment, and evaluation. This unique and diverse set of scholars support the national College Promise movement by identifying, producing, and promoting high-quality research and evidence that:
- Makes a sound case for the need for College Promise programs
- Identifies research-based practices and program design features that promote access, persistence, and completion -- especially for students from groups that are historically underrepresented in higher education
- Guides programs in evaluating program participation and outcomes
- Makes research accessible and valuable to practitioners, policymakers, and other College Promise stakeholders, including a wider network of emerging Promise leaders
Over the past two years, College Promise has convened, supported, and collaborated with the College Promise Research Network to identify literature that can inform the design, implementation, and improvement of Promise programs. That literature has been compiled to create this reference guide, which includes blogs, books, conference papers, databases, dissertations, journal articles (peer-reviewed and non-peer reviewed), policy position papers (reports), research reports, and web documents.
We are proud to be able to share this reference guide, Evolution of Promise: The Evidence Behind the Movement, with all of our stakeholders. We hope that the literature collected here will be used to help inform the development and continual improvement of Promise programs around the country, as well as help identify gaps in the research to spur new evaluations, meta-analyses, and replications.
For more information on the evidence behind the movement, read the full reference guide.
If you are interested in other research from College Promise, check out our Stakeholder Resource page.