Uplifting Parents: Evaluating an Intervention to Promote Community College Persistence and Graduation Rates among Single Parents

Uplifting Parents empowers single parents and provides support for their education or job training. The program serves single parents in the Rapid City, SD area who are motivated to complete a degree and begin a professional career. Whether completing an education or learning a new skill, those enrolled in Uplifting Parents receive the support they need to launch meaningful careers and provide greater opportunities for their children.

Uplifting Parents includes financial and mentoring resources like scholarship funds and stipends, case management, parenting classes, financial counseling, and community engagement opportunities. Perhaps the most important part of Uplifting Parents is the focus on mentoring. Participants form strong relationships with their mentors at Catholic Social Services, and mentors help navigate potential crises that can hinder a parent’s success.

Single parents must be referred to Uplifting Parents by an employer or other social service agency in order to participate. After referral, parents must complete an in-depth application and interview process before receiving a spot in the program. Once admitted to the program, participants engage with their mentor and receive supports and wraparound services for two years.

2018-07-01

2024-06-30

a) College Completion -- degree or certificate obtained
b) College Persistence -- which is you are still enrolled in college and/or you have already received a degree

a) Future Outcomes - Earnings from unemployment insurance records
b) Outcomes of children in school

We have collected identifying information about the children of the parents in the program and we hope to use this match to public school records in the rapid city area sometime in the future. These outcomes are well off in the future as many of the children are of preschool age at the time their parents enter the program.

Among those deemed eligible for the program, a list with randomly-generated applicant IDs is sent to LEO, and the research team randomly assigns approximately half into treatment and the rest to the comparison sample. UP staff can handle 40 new applicants a year, so the capacity of the program determines how many applicants are assigned to the treatment group within each cohort. If there are 30 eligible candidates and 14 spots in UP, 16 candidates are assigned to the control group. If a person is assigned to the control group, they are ineligible for UP. There are currently no plans to open up enrollment in UP for this group.
Although there are similarities between UP and other programs that also incorporate mentoring, UP stands out for several key reasons: its focus on single parents, the ongoing, monthly financial support, the support provided by the coalition agencies in addition to the primary mentoring structure, and the low student-mentor ratio. UP’s $200 monthly stipend is paid to all participants for the full two years of the program, without any additional requirements or conditions.
During the application process, participants consent to be followed in administrative records. The key outcomes for this evaluation are centered on the parent: their level of education and labor market success. LEO plans to measure college enrollment and graduation through National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) data. All of the colleges that a student can attend in the Rapid City area are members of the NSC. LEO also plans to measure economic outcomes using earnings data and TANF and SNAP enrollment from the state of South Dakota. A data sharing agreement with the state is in progress. Earlier this year, LEO established a data sharing agreement with the local school district to track outcomes of the children of the parents, although this will most likely not be part of this initial study.

Not available

Randomization

Individual students

No

0 clusters

240 students

120 students control, 120 students treatment

We used data from the 2006-2010 American Community Survey (ACS) to estimate Associate Degree completion rates among single mothers aged 19-24 in South Dakota. Of those mothers without a college degree, 12.2 percent of them had gained an Associate Degree by the 2011-2015 period. We then use 12.2 percent as an estimate of our baseline completion rate. Assuming an experiment with 240 participants and half the group in the treatment sample, our sample will be powered to detect a statistically significant difference in graduation rates of 14.2 percentage points. This means that if 26.4 percent of the treatment group obtains an Associate Degree or higher, we will be able to reject the null hypothesis that the graduation rates are the same across the two groups.