Implementation and Assessment of the Ascend Policy Acceleration Partnerships
Project Overview
More than 3.8 million U.S. undergraduate college students (22 percent) were parents of dependent children as of academic year 2015–2016. Despite the importance of education for students who are parents, their educational outcomes significantly lag behind their peers; just 17 percent of student parents earned an associate’s or bachelor’s degree within 6 years of enrolling in college. To address this issue, Ascend at the Aspen Institute (Ascend) recently awarded Policy Acceleration Partnership (PAP) grants to six public sector entities to aid building and improving policies and programs that support postsecondary attainment among student parents.
The purpose of this contract is for Insight’s educational experts to provide the grantees technical assistance and evaluation support. Specifically, we will engage grantees throughout their grant cycle to provide the following:
- Develop logic models and action plan
- Assist grantees in implementing action plan
- Hold quarterly convenings of PAP grantees
- Develop an evaluation plan.
- Collect outcome data at routine intervals
- Track and analyze grantee progress and outcomes
Throughout the project, we will submit interim and final evaluation reports detailing results from the implementation and outcome assessments and lessons learned.
Products
Final report