The questions guiding this research seek to discover the factors that affect high school math course completion and college readiness in a Texas suburban public school district. The first research question examines the relationship between 8th grade completion of Algebra I and high school mathematics course taking patterns and college readiness.…

This third article in a series describing survival analysis of engineering student retention and graduation introduces accelerated failure-time as an alternative to the Cox proportional hazards model to the context of student data. The new survival analysis of graduation data presented here assumes different distributions including exponential,…

This article examines the association between school ethnic composition and immigrant students' intentions to finish high school and to move on to higher education. We used data from 1324 immigrant and 10,546 native students gathered in the school year 2004-2005 in a sample of 85 Flemish (Belgian) secondary schools. Logistic multilevel analyses…

This qualitative case study was designed to explore how master teachers in transfer high schools learn the competencies they perceive are required to engage at-risk students so that they persist and graduate. The study is based on the following assumptions: (1) The requisite teacher competencies can be defined and identified and, in fact,…

Institutional leaders, educators, and policymakers are challenged to improve educational outcomes for all students, including Latinos. "Excelencia" in Education responds to this challenge by linking research, policy, and practice that supports higher educational achievement for Latino students. Premier in this effort is Examples of…

The purpose of this study is to develop a preadmission predictive model of student success for prospective first-time African American college applicants at a predominately White four-year public institution within the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education. This model will use two types of variables. They are (a) cognitive variables (i.e.,…

Many adolescents experience peer victimization, which often can be homophobic. Applying the minority stress model with attention to intersecting social identities, this study tested the effects of general and homophobic victimization on several educational outcomes through suicidality and school belonging among 15,923 adolescents in Grades 7…

This is the second in a series of articles describing ongoing research that involves studying engineering college student graduation using Cox proportional hazards models. The first article, called "Proportional hazards models of graduation," was based on main effects models of graduation controlling for descriptors such as in-state residence,…

This commentary on articles in this special issue of "Psychology in the Schools" discusses the importance of school completion by identifying the individual and social costs associated with youths who fail to complete school. An appreciation of these various costs sets the stage for exploring an emerging key to school completion--engaging students…

A proposal eliminates the "single diploma" concept and creates three basic graduation certificates: standard diploma (with endorsements for academic or vocational achievement), certificate of attendance, and certificate of basic competencies. (Author/MLF)

In this paper, the authors present a complex set of interactions, agents, pressures, and contextual factors that intersect during the earliest years of major effort at education policy reform. While the focus of this analysis is exclusively on state policy changes and school district response in New York, the issues involved are all but universal…

A new Georgia program aims to give every high school a full-time educator dedicated to dropout prevention. This program is part of Georgia's highly visible new attempt to increase the state's graduation rate. Rather than giving school counselors or administrators one more task, Gov. Sonny Perdue's goal for the program, which was approved by the…

The purpose of the descriptive qualitative study was to examine the successful strategies, accommodations, and interventions utilized for students with emotional behavior disorder (EBD) and the influences they have on the students' academic achievement (GPA, passage rates of courses, passage rates of state mandated assessments, student…

The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and its companion projects serve colleges and universities committed to monitoring and improving the quality of the undergraduate experience. While participating institutions receive detailed customized reports, the "Annual Results" series presents noteworthy aggregate findings from the…

International students constitute an important cohort in the United States (U.S.) colleges and universities. In order for the U.S. colleges and universities to better accommodate the significant number of international students and to recruit them in the future, it is critical to identify factors that influence these students' acculturation and…