Description:

The Achieving Collegiate Excellence and Success (ACES) program is a collaboration between MCPS, Montgomery College, and the Universities at Shady Grove to create a seamless pathway from high school to college completion; it targets students who are underrepresented in higher education, the first in their family to attend college, or both. As one of a series of reports about ACES, this document reports on differences in outcomes between ACES students and a comparison group of students at MCPS.

There was evidence for a positive impact of ACES on promotion and graduation, with the strongest evidence related to high school graduation. Further, there was evidence that ACES positively impacted students' decisions while in the program, including school attendance and completing the ACT or SAT. However, there was no evidence that the ACES program improved students' high school grades or scores on college-readiness tests (i.e., ACT, SAT, ACCUPLACER). It is worth noting that these measures reflect students' decisions, achievement, coursework, and other experiences prior to their entry into the ACES program and that, during Year One, the 12th graders in ACES participated in the program for only one year.

File Name: FINAL Comparative ACES MCPS Year One and Two.pdf (744KB PDF)