This study will examine the implementation of Ramp-Up to Readiness, a schoolwide guidance intervention aimed at increasing the college readiness of students. The intervention (called phase one) is at present being implemented in 34 high schools in Minnesota, and the developers intend to make the intervention available to a much larger set of Minnesota schools. No independently gathered high-quality evidence exists, however, on whether schools are able to implement this comprehensive intervention as intended or how its core components compare to the college-readiness supports in other high schools. The project for which OMB clearance is requested will attempt to gather such evidence from 22 public Minnesota high schools through the least burdensome means. The school-level implementation study will focus on assessing whether Ramp-Up school staff implement the program as intended, on identifying the extent to which the Ramp-Up program differs from the college-readiness supports offered in schools without Ramp-Up, and on the validity of a measure of personal college readiness, which the developers hypothesize is a key mechanism through which the program impacts later outcomes. The study will collect data from school staff in the following activities: administrative data collection, focus groups in January and June, extant document collection, instructional logs, student and staff surveys, and student personal readiness assessment. The findings produced through analysis of these data will help (1) state education agencies seeking strategies and programs to endorse as a potential means of improving students college readiness and college enrollment, (2) local education agencies that are considering the challenges of implementing Ramp-Up, (3) the developer of this intervention (the College Readiness Consortium at the University of Minnesota) and developers of other college readiness interventions who continually seek to improve their programs by using information from studies like this, and (4) a group of education stakeholders in the Midwest interested in considering whether to conduct a study of the impacts of the Ramp-Up internvetion on student outcomes.The revision to the collection being requessted is to add a phase two to the evaluation. For this second phase, the impact of the program is being examined in addition to the implementation of the program. Data will be collected from an additional 54 schools for this second phase of the evaluation.
This is a revised collection adding phase 2 to the currently approved collection (phase 1). The data collected from the 54 new schools being added in phase 2 increases the number of responses annually by 15,487 (a program change) over the currently approved responses from phase 1. Phase 2 generates a burden hour increase (a program change) of 4,839. There is also a reduction of 8 burden hours annually (considered an adjustment) because the Administrative Data Request from phase 1 was found to take 1.5 hours by School Administrators rather than the 2 hours originally figured for each respondent.
On behalf of this Federal agency, I certify that the collection of information encompassed by this request complies with 5 CFR 1320.9 and the related provisions of 5 CFR 1320.8(b)(3).
The following is a summary of the topics, regarding the proposed collection of information, that the certification covers:
(i) Why the information is being collected;
(ii) Use of information;
(iii) Burden estimate;
(iv) Nature of response (voluntary, required for a benefit, or mandatory);
(v) Nature and extent of confidentiality; and
(vi) Need to display currently valid OMB control number;
If you are unable to certify compliance with any of these provisions, identify the item by leaving the box unchecked and explain the reason in the Supporting Statement.
Evaluation of the Early Warning and Intervention Monitoring System (EWIMS)