T he price of college is rising, making college feel out of reach for a rising share of Americans. Families can borrow to be sure, but with total student loan debt now above $1 trillion nationally, the situation seems unsustainable. Meanwhile, we face a long-term decline in our international ranking on college attainment and the disparities in college access by race and income-disparities that financial aid and loans are supposed to address-seem larger than ever. It is no surprise then that in the campaign for U.S. President in the 2016 election, nearly all candidates of both major political parties raised the issue of college affordability. Increasing financial aid to students is one obvious potential solution. Once limited to discussions of the size of need-based aid programs such as Pell grants and state-based merit aid programs, new forms of aid have emerged. Place-based "promise scholarships" provide funds to students attending schools in certain cities and states. Others have proposed changes on a national scale, increasing and redesigning financial aid to eliminate student loan debt, called debt-free college, or going even further by eliminating tuition, fees, and/or some share of living expenses-free college. This study examines one of the first randomized control trials of a program similar to many free college and promise scholarship proposals. The Degree Project was launched in Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) in 2011. Students in 18 randomly selected high schools were promised up to $12,000

Background Promise programs are a quickly spreading policy tool in the free college movement. Despite their rapid spread, promise programs remain generally untested and there is even less information about how they are implemented. Research Questions (1) In what ways were The Degree Project's (TDP) theory of change and intents represented in messaging materials to students and to school staff? 1(a) In what ways did these messages shape conditions (or not) for sensemaking? (2) In what ways did these messages support (or not) students and school staff in changing their practice? (2a) What changes in practice did we see (or not) for students and school staff? Intervention TDP, which was implemented in Milwaukee Public Schools between 2011–15, is the nation's first randomized control trial of a promise program. Freshmen in the treatment group were offered $12,000 for college if they met particular requirements (e.g., average 2.5 GPA, 90% attendance). TDP leaned heavily on marketing materials and personalized letters to students, families, and school staff to communicate its requirements and to provide college access tips. Research Design We analyze messaging materials, climate and exit survey data, and student and school staff interviews to understand how TDP's theory of change and intents were packaged into messaging materials and ultimately enacted among target students and staff. Findings TDP implementation was successful to a point. School staff handed out messaging materials; students understood the requirements and demonstrated an increase in motivation and desire to go to college. However, TDP failed to meet its goal of sending more students to college. Expectations for school staff (hand out flyers and speak to students) versus students were misaligned, contributing to a lack of substantive conversation and structures for students to convert their increased motivation to go to college into actionable practices over time. School staff were already stretched thin and, with no added structural support, were unable to interact more meaningfully with students. Conclusion TDP failed to send more students to college because it targeted change at the individual rather than organizational level. Students exhibited change in their motivation to attend college, but this was not met with the support needed to convert this motivation to meaningful action. To achieve their full potential, such programs will have to not only address financial barriers, but also leverage broader structural supports in schools to help channel increased student motivation in more productive directions.

Background Promise scholarship programs designed to increase college access and success are proliferating across the country. However, little research has investigated how such programs are implemented or how differences in program design, such as the inclusion of merit requirements, could affect the success of these initiatives. Project/Research Design This study is part of a randomized control trial examining outcomes of the Degree Project (TDP), a $12,000 promise scholarship for students in a Midwestern urban school district. TDP was designed with GPA and attendance merit requirements in order to understand the impact of a targeted scholarship design. Purpose We set out to understand how school staff tasked with implementing the Degree Project scholarship made sense of the program, its merit requirements, and data on students meeting those requirements and how this sensemaking may have affected the attitudes and actions of staff in ways that could alter the impact of the program on students. Data collection/Analysis Over the first two program years, we conducted interviews in over 90% of treatment schools (year 1 N = 17; year 2 N = 15). Using theories of sensemaking and attribution, we analyzed how staff used data from the merit requirements as evidence to frame the program as a success or failure. Findings We find that some school staff used data on the number of students still on track for the scholarship as evidence that TDP was succeeding or—more often—failing. Moreover, they mainly attributed this success or failure to characteristics of the students themselves and rarely to their own work practice. Staff who saw the program as failing were in schools that already had lower academic achievement, and there is evidence that they took fewer actions to support student access to TDP than did staff in higher-performing schools. Conclusions These findings raise concerns that staff sensemaking around TDP may be reinforcing low expectations of students and deficit discourses of youth from low-wealth communities of color, as well as stratification of access to college-related support. Additionally, it raises important implementation and equity concerns about both promise programs’ use of merit requirements and data use in schools in general.