Online credit recovery (OCR) courses are the most common means through which students retake courses required for high school graduation. Yet a growing body of research has raised concerns regarding student learning in these courses, with low quality assessments posited as one contributing factor. To address this concern, we reviewed every…

Career and technical education (CTE) has dramatically changed over the last 50 years. Because of this major shift of understanding in purpose and benefits, the role of the education system is vitally important in raising awareness and reshaping the perception of CTE. This research focused on the influence of high school stakeholders, specifically…

A quantitative nonexperimental ex post facto approach studied the relationship between student characteristics and online course retention over three different periods. The research reviewed online student characteristics like gender, ethnicity, Pell eligibility, previous online experience, GPA, total credit hours, and age to test for pre, intra,…

The problem is the decrease in educational continuance of New Mexico high school students to college or university. The purpose of the qualitative exploratory case study was to gain insight into how educational administrators in New Mexico high schools, colleges, and universities perceive what factors influence students in Advancement Placement…

Certification in the public health workforce is key to professionalizing public health. However, professionals who are certified in public health (CPH) are allowing certification to lapse by failing to report earned public health continuing education (PHCE) credits. As a result, the National Board of Public Health Examiners (NBPHE) is not able to…

Offering core academic credits (e.g., math, science) for completing agriculture, food, and natural resources (AFNR) coursework at the secondary school level has the potential to increase the strength of the AFNR program as well as student interdisciplinary learning. Informed by the Career and Technical Education Student Typology, we explored the…

The problem this study explored was that despite the various methods of differentiating professional development content to meet the needs of K-12 teachers, teacher professional development programming does not meet the career growth needs of many professional educators. The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore how ten K-12…

Recent educational policies in the United States have fostered the growth of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) career-focused courses to support high school students' persistence into these fields in college and beyond. As one key example, federal legislation has embedded new types of "applied STEM" (AS) courses…

Personalization for academic and social-emotional learning (PASL) is a systemic approach to high school reform that works to strengthen and bridge preexisting academic and social-emotional systems within schools and classrooms. Analyzing student administrative records from 12 schools in a large Florida urban district, we found that, on average,…

This study examines the impact of early Algebra I coursework on advanced Carnegie credits among 12th graders from diverse racial/ethnic backgrounds, using data from the NCES HSTS (1990-2019). Findings indicate that early Algebra students, particularly Black and Latinx, earn more advanced credits, revealing a widening gap in advanced course…

Engrossed House Bill 1121, signed into law during the 2021 Legislative session and codified in RCW 28A.230.320, provides the State Board of Education (SBE) the authority to establish an emergency waiver program to allow school districts and local educational agencies (LEAs) to waive certain high school graduation requirements on an individual…

The problem addressed in this study was the high dropout rate and the resulting low graduation rate in alternative virtual school settings. This quantitative correlational case study examined the influence of three instructional modalities on students' credit accrual and graduation rates in one alternative education virtual high school. The three…

This Fact Sheet highlights English learner students in secondary schools who are career and technical education participants (received at least one CTE credit in that year) and concentrators (received three credits within a career cluster during high school).

Mathematics is an important and hotly contested aspect of U.S. postsecondary education. Its importance for academics and careers and the extent and impact of math achievement disparities are all subject of longstanding debate. Yet there is surprisingly little research into how much and what types of mathematics courses are taken by U.S.…

This dissertation advances the field of education economics by describing the limits of competition between traditional and alternative postsecondary credentials in the United States. The results and conclusions contained in this set of three papers forms a substantive basis for change in policy, research, education provider behavior, and…