Educational authorities have questioned whether middle schools provide the best school climate for 7th and 8th grade students, and proposed that other grade configurations such as K-8th grade schools may provide a better learning environment. The purpose of this study was to compare 7th and 8th grade students' perceptions of 4 key features of…

In recent years there has been a proliferation of massive open online courses (MOOCs), which provide unprecedented opportunities for lifelong learning. Registrants approach these courses with a variety of motivations for participation. Characterizing the different types of participation in MOOCs is fundamental in order to be able to better…

Research is just beginning to describe with precision determinants of racial and ethnic achievement gaps. Work by Reardon, Kalogrides, and Shores found that factors such as parental income, parental education, and segregation are the strongest predictors of achievement gaps. In this study we expand this line of inquiry to examine the role of…

Throughout the college retention literature, there is a recurring theme that students leave college for a variety of reasons making retention a difficult phenomenon to model. In the current study, cluster analysis techniques were employed to investigate whether multiple empirically based profiles of nonreturning students existed to more fully…

This study sought to establish a baseline for understanding the epidemiology of online K-12 students with special health care needs, determine the prevalence in K-12 online schooling of students from certain racial/ethnic backgrounds, those with socioeconomic disadvantages, and determine how these students perform in online classes compared to…

Despite extensive research on sleep and psychosocial functioning, an important gap within the literature is the lack of inquiry into the direction of effects between these 2 constructs. The purpose of the present 3-year longitudinal study was to examine bidirectional associations between sleep (quality and duration) and 3 indices of psychosocial…

The purpose of this descriptive study was to describe Missouri middle-level school principals' perceptions of their instructional leadership practices. The Principal Instructional Management Rating Scale (PIMRS) by Philip Hallinger was used to define the measured leadership tasks (www.philiphallinger.com). There were a total of 77 middle-level…

College student degree attainment has been identified as a national issue, and recently has become a topic of emphasis for institutions of higher education. In the past, research has focused on retaining students from year one in college to year two. With the demand for baccalaureate-prepared graduates increasing and the charge to compete in a…

In response to the increasing challenge for community colleges to uphold their mission of accessibility with an open door policy, while being held accountable for student success, higher education administrators and counselors need to have a better comprehension on the relationship among community college students, institutional enrollment…

Student success is vitally important. Without academic achievement student self-efficacy is lost, persistence is blocked, and matriculation is unachievable. Exponential growth at online institutions necessitates the inquiry into factors that play a role in student success. In this study, approximately 15,000 cases from the Top 20 enrolled courses…

Multi-group discriminant analysis was used to identify the pre-enrollment demographic and academic factors that best separate the success classes in the first-year examinations of science students at the University of Benin. The predictor of success was performance in specialist subjects of the matriculation examination. (Author/MLW)

Data from a 20-year longitudinal study of 125 males and 126 females born to Black teenage mothers in a Baltimore hospital between 1966 and 1968 were analyzed to identify early childhood, middle childhood, and early adolescence determinants of functional literacy. All 251 subjects were interviewed in 1987, and 202 of them completed a document…