A little less than half of the students of higher Ed institutions in the US graduate in four years, and only around 60% finish in six years. Retention rates are also less than ideal. Colleges have been experimenting with a variety of programs and policies to address this issue, especially less selective institutions whose rates are significantly…

The purpose of this study was to explore potential effects of a 12-week therapeutic mentoring program targeting social, emotional, and behavioral concerns in 52 children and adolescents between 11 and 17 years of age. Self-reported scores on a norm-referenced behavioral questionnaire were tracked across the span of a mentoring program, and then…

The purpose of this program evaluation was to evaluate the impact of CORE District's Breakthrough Success Community (BTSC) Program at an urban Title I high school located in Southern California. BTSC aims to improve the ninth-grade experience through a focus on five key change drivers and the implementation of improvement science. Through teacher…

Community and School-Based Behavioral Health Service (CSBBH) was developed through a collaborative process that included schools, behavioral health providers, counties, and a payor. The clinical model within CSBBH relies on a common factors approach. To evaluate the effectiveness of CSBBH to meet the needs of students across a diverse state,…

Evaluating teachers' professional development initiatives (PDI) is one of the main challenges for the teacher professionalisation field. Although different studies have focused on the effectiveness of PDI, the obtained effects and evaluative methods have been found to be widely divergent. By means of a narrative review, this study provides an…

In the past decade, there has been a proliferation of community- and school-based college readiness programs designed to increase the participation of students who have traditionally been underrepresented in higher education. However, few of these college readiness programs have been empirically evaluated. This study examines the impact of one…

As demand for skilled labor increases, policymakers in an increasing number of developing countries have turned toward vocational education and training (VET) to educate and prepare students. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) published a 2012 report "acknowledging the need for [VET] to contribute to…

Although assessment has been an integral part of the development and expansion of learning communities, much of the assessment was focused on investigating student satisfaction, retention, and graduation. This chapter provides a case study illustrating one learning community's efforts to create assessments focused on student learning.

Little work is being undertaken in South Africa to systematically and intentionally prepare undergraduate students to pursue postgraduate studies. This is concerning given the shortage of postgraduate students and the small scale of postgraduate studies. The few programmes and endeavours that exist to prepare students for postgraduate studies are…

Around the world during the last decade, policymakers increasingly emphasize the use of data in education to enhance student achievement. As a result, the number of reform initiatives to promote "data-based decision making" (DBDM) or "data-driven decision making" (DDDM) has increased rapidly. At the University of Twente in the…

In their article, "The Common Core is a Change for the Better," Gardner and Powell (2013) make an argument in support of implementing the Common Core to improve teaching and student learning. They opine the Common Core will enable students to become more college and career ready and state the Common Core standards will provide…

Communities in Schools is one of the nation's oldest and largest providers of integrated student supports, also known as "wraparound services." Started in New York City in the 1970s, the agency now works with more than 2,300 schools in 25 states and the District of Columbia. The model is straightforward: Communities in Schools recruits,…

The commentaries in this special issue as well as the articles they address contribute to the knowledge base about advanced learners, how they are identified, and how they are best served. In our Editors' commentary, we have organized our thoughts following the same order in which the commentaries appear in the remainder of this issue. As the…

This chapter describes the impact of an alternative spring break program on students at the Savannah College of Art and Design over a set of years as well as its effectiveness as a service-learning tool.

MemphiSTEP is a five-year STEM Talent Expansion Program (STEP) at the University of Memphis sponsored by the National Science Foundation. The project focuses on retention and persistence to graduation to increase the number of STEM majors and graduates. The project includes a range of student retention programs, including a Summer Mathematics…