RESEARCH
Kallie is a former high school teacher and college counselor in Chicago. Kallie received her PhD in Social Service Administration from the University of Chicago’s Crown School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice where she was an Institute of Education Sciences Predoctoral Fellow. Kallie’s research examines how policies and practices within human service organizations contribute to life course inequalities for structurally marginalized communities. Kallie’s areas of expertise include K-12 and higher education, and basic needs insecurity such as access to food, housing and mental health services. Kallie’s research has been featured in numerous media outlets including the New York Times, The Washington Post, and Forbes magazine. Kallie is the author of Decoding College: Stories, Strategies, and Struggles of First-Generation College Students, and the producer and host of the podcast Separate and Unequal: Education in America. Kallie is currently a Research Scientist Supervisor with the State of California’s Behavioral Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission. Before joining the Commission, Kallie was a researcher at Temple University’s Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice, and a Research assistant with the University of Chicago’s Consortium on School Research.
Links to select articles can be found below:
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High School GPAs and ACT Scores as Predictors of College Completion
*In this study, we directly addressed questions about the variability in HSGPAs across high schools as predictors of college readiness, examining whether students with the same HSGPAs are systematically more likely to graduate college if they came from particular high schools and whether the slope of the relationship differs by high school. We then conducted the same tests with ACT scores; they are generally assumed to be equivalent, but we are not aware of any published evidence that this is the case. We also discerned the extent to which there are high school effects on college graduation that are not captured in either students’ HSGPAs or ACT scores.
Read the article in Educational Researcher here.
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Homelessness and Housing Insecurity Among Community College Students
Housing insecurity and homelessness among American community college students are widespread problems that reduce the odds of college attainment and undermine students’ health and well-being. In 2014 Tacoma Community College and the Tacoma Housing Authority launched the College Housing Assistance Program (CHAP) to address this challenge by offering housing choice vouchers to local community college students experiencing or at serious risk of experiencing homelessness. If students could successfully navigate the application process and local housing market, the vouchers offered a short-term subsidy to reduce their rent and hopefully promote degree completion. Over the next several years, CHAP received national and regional awards and became a model for affordable college housing programs. This evaluation examines its effects on students before the housing authority ended the program in 2022.
Read the report published by Education Northwest here.
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Self-reported COVID-19 infection and implications for mental health and food insecurity among American college students
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This study examines self-reported COVID-19 infection rates among American college students enrolled during fall 2020 (n = 100,488). While some colleges and universities collect information about which of their students contracted COVID-19, the majority do not. As college students are returning to classes this fall, this study offers insights into which students have been affected by the disease, and its association with their health and well-being. Conditions brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic are associated with increased anxiety and depressive symptoms, and food insecurity among college students. The effects of COVID-19 infection, including perceived infection, are much less clear.
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Read the article in PNAS here.
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Supporting the Whole Community College Student: The Impact of Nudging for Basic Needs Security
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Community colleges have started to support students’ basic needs in multiple ways. Campus-based hubs offering services like public benefits access, emergency aid, food pantries and case management have become increasingly popular. However, limited evidence exists on whether connecting with these hubs improves academic success. The Advocacy and Resource Center (ARC) at Amarillo College (AC) in Texas is a well-established example of how a college can care for its students. In 2018, The Hope Center published a detailed case study of the college’s approach to AC’s “culture of caring” embodied by the ARC. At the time, the ARC served 13% of Amarillo College students, well short of the estimated two-thirds who endured basic needs insecurity. This report details the partnership with the college to conduct an evaluation advancing two institutional goals: (1) Increase utilization of the ARC, particularly among students most at risk of leaving college, with a low-cost technology-enabled approach; and (2) Estimate the academic impacts of connecting students to the ARC. The authors identified students who might benefit from the ARC: those from low-income households and those enrolled in developmental education coursework. Placement in developmental education signals insufficient K-12 preparation and/or gaps in enrollment, both of which are associated with poverty. The authors targeted personalized emails to a randomly selected group of these students informing them of and inviting them to the ARC for support. These emails had positive impacts on students at AC: (1) Rates of visiting the ARC more than doubled from 22% to 56%; and (2) Developmental education students were 20% more likely to pass developmental education courses, a crucial milestone. However, the authors did not find clear evidence that nudged students completed more credits, received higher grades, or passed other courses at higher rates. While they saw promising trends regarding retention and graduation, that may be due to chance.
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Read the report published by the Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice here.
Postsecondary Pathways in Chicago Public Schools
Dissertation
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This dissertation hypothesizes that school feeder patterns are a hidden mechanism of pervasive inequalities in four-year college completion rates for marginalized students including students of color, students with disabilities, and students from higher poverty neighborhoods. Specifically, this dissertation examines the relationship between elementary to high school feeder patterns and college enrollment on the four-year college completion rates of 8th graders in Chicago Public Schools. To do so, this dissertation seeks to identify the role that elementary to high school to college feeder patterns play in shaping inequities in college graduation for marginalized students and whether elementary school type predicts later college outcomes. This dissertation also examines high school graduation, four-year college enrollment and four-year college completion for male students, who increasingly, are less likely than their female counterparts to complete a 4-year college degree.
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Read it here.
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IN THE MEDIA
The Mortarboard, October 19th, 2021
Is Your Campus Student Ready? Helping Students Navigate a Life, not Just a Classroom
Washington Post, August 14th, 2020
Decline of SAT and ACT sparks dubious fears of high school grade inflation
Inside Higher Education, February 10th, 2020
Grades Predict College Success Better Than ACT Scores
Forbes, January 29th, 2020
It’s GPAs Not Standardized Tests That Predict College Success
The New York Times, December 10th, 2019
University of California Is Sued Over Use of SAT and ACT in Admissions
Diverse Education, January 28th, 2020
Study Finds GPA Stronger Than ACT in Predicting College Success
UChicago News, February 5th, 2020
Test scores don’t stack up to GPAs in predicting college success
Separate and Unequal: Education in America podcast
Episode 1: No Place Like Home. Guest: Dr. Sara Goldrick-Rab, Professor of Higher Education Policy and Sociology at Temple University. Airdate June, 2018
Episode 1: Roundtable discussion. Guests: Bridgette Davis, Darnell Leatherwood. Airdate: June, 2018.
Episode 2: Vanishing Children. Guests: Dr. Desmond Patton Associate Professor at The Columbia School of Social Work, Principal of Tilden High School Maurice Swinney, and Andre Johnson, M.S.W. Airdate: June, 2018.
Episode 2: Roundtable discussion. Guests: Shango Johnson, Liam Bird. Airdate: July, 2018.
Episode 3: Gloria’s Dilemma. Guests: Dr. Emily Ruehs, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Elmhurst College, and Dr. Daysi Diaz-Strong, Assistant Professor of Social Work at Aurora University. Airdate: July, 2018.