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FLIGHT is a program based on partnership of a private non-profit (Taking Stock in Children) and local educational agencies with the goal of increasing the extent to which low-income students with academic promise are prepared for, enrolled in, and successful in college. Specifically, FLIGHT provides school-based mentoring, college prep, and wrap-around services for at-risk students who show potential to be successful in postsecondary education endeavors.

Many talented students in under-resourced schools do not reach their full potential. Research shows that by sixth grade, children born into poverty have likely spent 6,000 fewer hours learning than their middle-class counterparts. Higher Achievement, an intensive summer and after-school program, aims to close that learning gap. It offers participants more than 500 hours of academic enrichment activities a year to help them meet the high academic standards expected of college-bound students. Known as "scholars"; Higher Achievement students enter the program during the summer before either fifth or sixth grade and commit to attending through eighth grade. The summer program consists of six weeks of morning classes in English Language Arts (ELA), math, science, and, in some centers, social studies, followed by enrichment activities in the afternoon, including chess, cooking, art, and soccer. During the school year, in addition to the program's regular study hall and enrichment activities, a cadre of mostly young professionals volunteer one day a week, delivering 75-minute ELA or math lessons to small groups of scholars. These volunteers receive detailed lesson plans and training so they can successfully execute the program's rigorous curricula. Part of what makes Higher Achievement affordable is its use of volunteers in this way. An earlier experimental evaluation of Metro DC, Higher Achievement's flagship affiliate in Washington, DC, and Alexandria, Virginia, found that the program was effective in improving academic performance two years after students applied. Since then, Higher Achievement has expanded to three new cities: Baltimore, Maryland; Richmond, Virginia; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Keenly aware that many effective flagship programs fail to be effective in new locations, the federal government funded an experimental validation study to examine the impacts at these expansion sites. Eligible students were randomly assigned either to a program group that could participate in Higher Achievement, or to a control group that could not enroll in the program. Comparing the two groups' outcomes provided an estimate of the program's impacts. The study found that the expansion sites experienced many of the implementation challenges common to school-based, out-of-school-time programs (for example, staff turnover, coordination with the host school, and lower-than-hoped-for attendance by middle school students), as well as those often seen in new programs (such as a lack of strong relationships with key partners and difficulty recruiting volunteers). Even so, Higher Achievement was found to be at least adequately implemented in all three cities. The study found that the program's detailed lesson plans, with scripted questions and student instructions, enabled the volunteers to deliver rigorous academic lessons. This report addresses the following questions: (1) How did the Higher Achievement centers operate during the study and what lessons are there for similar programs?; (2) Did scholars receive more academic enrichment over the two-year study period than they would have received without Higher Achievement?; and (3) How did Higher Achievement impact scholars' grades and test scores over the two years since they applied?

One crucial decision that middle schoolers (and their families) make is where they will attend high school. Many districts employ school choice systems designed to allow students to pick a high school that will meet their needs and interests. Yet most students prefer high schools that are close to home, and for youth in low-income neighborhoods, this often means attending a more disadvantaged, lower performing school (Nathanson et al. 2013). Youth who defy these odds and choose a competitive high school instead have much to gain. Cullen et al. (2005), for instance, found that Chicago public middle school students who chose to attend a higher-achieving high school were substantially more likely to graduate. However, even as eighth graders, these students already differed in many ways from their peers who chose a neighborhood school--they had better self-reported grades and higher expectations for the future, felt more prepared for high school, and were more likely to have spoken with their parents about what school to attend. These findings raise the question of how we can prepare more disadvantaged students to take the many steps necessary-throughout the middle school years-to successfully transition to a competitive, high-quality high school that can ultimately launch them toward college and careers. The Washington, DC-based Higher Achievement program is taking on this challenge. Higher Achievement targets rising fifth and sixth graders from "at-risk communities" and serves them throughout the middle school years. Its goal is to strengthen participants' academic skills, attitudes and behaviors, reinforce high aspirations and help students and their families navigate the process of applying to and selecting a high-quality high school. In 2006, the authors began a comprehensive multi-year evaluation of Higher Achievement to test its impact on participants' academic performance, attitudes and behaviors and on their high school enrollment. The evaluation used random assignment-the most rigorous design available to researchers-to assess program impacts. This brief summarizes the study's findings. Findings suggest that the program does appear to expand the options available to its students by making them more likely to apply to and attend private schools and less likely to apply to and attend weaker public magnet and charter schools. This, in turn, may position youth for better outcomes in high school and beyond. [This research was made possible by grants from The Atlantic Philanthropies, Bank of America, the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, The Wallace Foundation and the William T. Grant Foundation.]

Too many talented students who go to under-resourced schools do not achieve their full potential. Though they may perform very well relative to their classmates, these students do not receive the same kinds of academically challenging opportunities throughout their educational journey as do their counterparts in better-resourced public and private schools. Rather than matriculating to competitive high schools and from there to selective colleges they are qualified to attend, these students often go to less academically competitive high schools and on to colleges where graduation rates are low. Some even forgo college altogether. To address this problem, Higher Achievement offers an intensive, academically oriented program for middle school students in under-resourced schools. Starting in the summer before fifth or sixth grade, Higher Achievement offers its participants, called "scholars," 650 extra hours of academic enrichment and instruction after school and during the summers through the eighth grade. The program includes English and math instruction as well as field trips to competitive high schools and colleges, achievement test preparation, and assistance in applying for financial aid. This short report presents the results of a randomized controlled trial of Higher Achievement that started in 2005, comparing the outcomes of students who were offered the opportunity to participate in Higher Achievement (the program group) and students who were not (the control group). It presents the impacts of the program one, two, and four years after enrollment, as well as its long-term impacts on college attendance. The study found that Higher Achievement was successful at changing the educational trajectory of students through middle school and improved the academic quality of many students' high school experiences, but did not affect the colleges to which they matriculated. By Year 2, there were positive impacts on students' math and reading test scores. In Year 4, the impacts on math test scores remained statistically significant. Higher Achievement had a small impact on the types of high schools its scholars ultimately attended. Program group students were more likely than control group students to matriculate to private or parochial schools and less likely to go to nonacademically competitive charter or magnet schools. By 2019, there was no difference in college going. More than 70 percent of both program and control group students had ever attended college. There were no differences in the academic quality of the colleges Higher Achievement's scholars ultimately attended, as measured by being a two- or four-year college; a college having a lower acceptance rate; or a college whose freshmen on average had higher SAT math or reading scores. Higher Achievement's college impacts did not differ by whether a student's parent had attended college or by student characteristics. The study shows that Higher Achievement is a very effective middle school program, improving students' middle school trajectories. However, the impacts did not persist after the program through high school and college.