Each year, hundreds of thousands of students leave higher education without earning their degree. Helping these students return and complete their degree is an enormous opportunity for higher education to propel social and economic mobility for students and their broader communities. With limited resources at postsecondary institutions, however,…

The National Guard Youth ChalleNGe program is a residential, quasi-military program for youth ages 16 to 18 who are experiencing difficulty in traditional high school. The program provides classroom instruction and other structured activities to young people at 40 different sites. The focus of this report is on determining how sites can measure…

The Texas Education Code (§ 29.051) requires school districts to provide every language minority student with the opportunity to participate in either a bilingual or English as a second language (ESL) program. This evaluation report summarizes the performance of students who participated in the district's bilingual and ESL programs during the…

This report reviews the characteristics of students who are most likely to drop out of school. Most studies have found that dropping out is related to risk factors in four different domains: individual, academic, family-related, and school-related. Local [Miami-Dade County Public Schools] M-DCPS District data were used to examine certain…

Even after significant education turnaround efforts supported by federal and state agencies, achievement gaps between white students and students of color and students not living in poverty and students living in poverty persist (McFarland et al., 2018). Student academic outcomes are often driven by factors unrelated to teaching in classrooms…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate Achievement Mentoring, a school-based mentoring program designed to enhance high school student retention and achievement once identified as being at-risk for dropping out before graduation. We present findings from an individual-level randomized controlled trial that included 393 10th and 11th-grade…

This paper investigates the effectiveness of a small experimental pilot addressed to foreign adolescents with low language skills and high dropout risk in lower secondary school in Turin, North-West Italy. The intervention aims at reducing Early School Leaving while supporting standard school curricula. In order to facilitate students'…

According to a recent What Works Clearinghouse review, the most effective dropout-prevention strategy is to directly connect schoolwork to students' career aspirations. Towpath Trail High School in Akron is a real life embodiment of that strategy. Author Lyman Millard of the Bloomwell Group offers a fascinating look at a school that engages…

High-school exit exams have fallen out of favor in recent years, after research showed that pinning graduation to passing a high-stakes test can push some students to drop out. The future can be grim without a diploma: dropouts have higher rates of unemployment, earn far less money on the job, have poorer physical and mental health, and are more…

Readiness for online learning has been established as a key component of student success in online classes. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic has underscored how vital being prepared for online can be. This paper highlights an orientation technique widely used in the business field, namely Realistic Job Preview (RJP), as a method to prepare…

The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences of African American male high school dropout students towards their academic achievements via an alternative asynchronous online learning platform after their unsuccessful attempt to complete a traditional public-school setting requiring the GMA (Georgia…

Research Finding: The present study estimates the long-term effects of Chile's national public Early Childhood Care and Education program (ECCE) on children academic achievement, grade retention and school dropouts, to better understand if ECCE is helping reduce the socioeconomic achievement gap. The present study uses a quasi-experimental design…

Madison Park Technical Vocational High School in Boston is attempting a turnaround and has been for decades. In 2016, after having been designated a Level 4 school by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), a stamp that branded it "underperforming," school officials created a plan they began…

The objective of this study was to identify those activities that re-engage out-of-school youth who enrol in the so-called 'recovery' schools now operating in Chile. Recovery schools can offer different kinds of activities in order to engage their students; are some activities more effective than others? Is their effect moderated by the type of…

As an independent school district, Houston Independent School District (HISD) contracted with four operators of seven External Performance Contract Campuses, or contract campuses. Houston ISD contract campuses receive funding through the district. HISD has implemented a comprehensive performance accountability and compliance monitoring system that…