This California study focuses on the economic impact of school suspensions at the district level. Every 10th grade student in California was tracked for three years to determine the degree to which suspensions predicted lower graduation rates at the state and district level. This estimated impact on graduation was then used to calculate the…

We use longitudinal data on high school students in Washington State to assess the relationships between English Language Arts (ELA) teacher value added and other qualifications and the high school and postsecondary outcomes of their students. We also investigate whether these relationships differ for students with and without disabilities. We…

Previous studies have shown the impact of parental involvement on a number of student achievement, motivation, and engagement outcomes, but the extent to which parental involvement influences high school completion and postsecondary attendance has received less attention in the literature. Filling that gap, this study replicates and extends…

Students' engagement and performance in their first year of high school offer strong signals about their prospects for earning a diploma 4 years later. These performance measures can be used to construct "on-track" indicators to measure a school's performance and to identify needs of specific students who are at risk of dropping out.…

This study is an evaluative analysis of 13 Music Education programs in Colombia that provide training for secondary school music teachers for 6th to 11th grade in the Colombian education system. The study utilized an analysis matrix from the International Research Project ALFA II-0448-A, which developed a similar study with Latin American and…

The transition into high school is a critical point in the educational pipeline, and ninth-grade can be characterized as one of its leakiest junctures. This policy brief examines how some states and districts are currently easing the transition into high school for students. It focuses on five key challenges that states, districts and schools…

This report uses a unique set of data obtained from the Kids Integrated Data System (KIDS), which is housed at the University of Pennsylvania's Cartographic Modeling Laboratory. The KIDS system merges individual-level data on young people from the School District of Philadelphia and the city's social service agencies, including the Department of…

This study explores the relationship between college graduation rates and student participation and success in Advanced Placement (AP) courses and exams. We reviewed three approaches to examining this relationship: 1) comparing the college graduation rates of AP and non-AP students; 2) comparing the college graduation rate of AP and non-AP…