Nearly 39 million adults in the United States lack a valid high school credential and face a significant barrier to both higher education and employment opportunities. High school equivalency exams, primarily the General Educational Development (GED) exam, are the primary gateway to college for high school dropouts, but relatively few people are…

Although high school completion rates have slowly increased over the past several decades, nearly 30 million adults today still lack a high school credential and, as a result, face a significant barrier to both higher education and employment opportunities. Policymakers and practitioners in the adult education field are searching for ways to…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the mediation effects of children's cognitive and noncognitive traits on the relationship between dropout mothers' traits and their children's educational expectations and to examine the interaction effects of dropout mothers' General Education Development (GED) on children's traits and educational…

This article presents evaluation data regarding the MAPIS3 architecture which is proposed as a solution for the data-transfer among various tools to promote flexible collaborative learning designs. We describe the problem that this architecture deals with as "tool orchestration" in collaborative learning settings. This term refers to a…

The goal of this research study has been to develop, implement, and evaluate a school reform design experiment at a continuation high school with low-income, low-performing underrepresented minority students. The complexity sciences served as a theoretical framework for this design experiment. Treating an innovative college preparatory program as…

This applied dissertation was designed to identify the characteristics of students enrolled in a GED® preparation program who transitioned to postsecondary programs at the same institution after passing the GED® test. The characteristics studied included age; gender; ethnicity; prematriculation scores in reading, language, and math in the Test of…

Most of the authors in this issue of "Future of Children" focus on a single strategy for helping both adults and children that could become a component of two-generation programs. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, on the other hand, look at actual programs with an explicit two-generation focus that have been tried in the…

I survey the evidence on patterns in U.S. high school graduation rates over the period 1970-2010 and report the results of new research conducted to fill in holes in the evidence. I begin by pointing out the strengths and limitations of existing data sources. I then describe six striking patterns in graduation rates. They include stagnation over…

Almost 7 million young Americans (age 16-24) are insufficiently attached to school or work. Based on conservative estimates, we can generate over $1 billion just by helping a mere 0.1 percent earn a high school credential and complete their first year of college through Back on Track Designs. This brief lays out the cost of setting up these GED-…

The Business-Higher Education Forum's (BHEF's) Securing America's Leadership in STEM Initiative has broken new ground in addressing one of the nation's most critical challenges--increasing the number of students who are interested in and pursue careers in science, technology, engineering or mathematics, the so-called "STEM" fields. The…

The economic and employment outlook for individuals without a high school diploma is bleak. For many of these individuals, passing the General Educational Development (GED) Test is the first step in competing in the increasingly demanding job market. GED test-taking policies vary across test centers and jurisdictions, and have the potential to…

"Focus on Policy" is NCSALL's (National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy's) newest publication. Its purpose is to synthesize research findings and highlight policy implications of these findings. "Focus on Policy" forgoes the usual academic conventions to provide its readers with an easy-to-understand summary…