This document consists of the first two issues of a new newsletter of the National Clearinghouse for Profession in Special Education (NCPSE). The following articles are featured: "Diversity in the Special Education Teaching Force" (Judy L. Wald), which discusses reasons for the lack of teachers in special and general education from…

In May 1993, the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges adopted goals and attainment measures for improving the participation of people of color in system colleges, focusing on enrollment, retention, completion, and employment rates of ethnic groups compared to their proportions in the state's population. An analysis conducted…

Prince George's Community College, in Maryland, has developed a typology of student academic outcomes which takes into account the possibilities inherent in an open enrollment student body. The outcomes in the typology are award and transfer; transfer/no award; award/no transfer; traditional achievers, a summary of these three outcomes; sophomore…

Information about school dropouts and those who complete their high school educations late is summarized in a table and two graphs using information from the High School and Beyond Survey and the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988. In 1990, 7 percent of the eighth-grade class of 1988 were dropouts; they were not enrolled in school and…

This paper explores Hong Kong secondary teacher supply patterns related to teacher retention using data collected from 1991-99. Secondary teachers are classified into five categories by initial educational qualifications: registered Graduate Master (trained GM), who are university graduates with majors in a subject discipline; permitted Graduate…

Drawing on data collected from students attending Australian rural- and urban-based universities, structural modeling was used to test the validity of a model of student persistence and satisfaction in agricultural courses. The model placed personal and environmental factors as predictors of student persistence and satisfaction and was comprised…

An exploratory study was the first part of an extensive study of retention in vocational education and training (VET) modules in Australia. These four major categorical variables were used to explore patterns in the withdrawal rate: year, gender, state/territory, and area of study/discipline. Withdrawal rates declined significantly from 1995-97.…

This speech by Chancellor Thomas J. Nussbaum deals with the state of California Community Colleges. The document begins by noting successes in three main areas: restoring access, improving funding per student, and improving the performance of California's community colleges. Between fall 1995 and fall 1999, California's community colleges…

This paper discusses degree attainment statistics and their analyses, particularly when applying time censors to the equation. The author describes at the High School and Beyond Sophomore Cohort Longitudinal Study, which followed a high school graduating class of 1982, from the time of its graduation until 1993, when most of the cohort was 29 or…

According to this paper, distance education exists as a means to provide access to students who might otherwise not participate in higher education due to any number of constraints, whether internal or external. Sinclair Community College is an urban, commuter college located in Dayton, Ohio. It has a fall headcount of roughly 20,000 students,…

This is a report on the measurements of institutional effectiveness indicators at Northern Virginia Community College from 1992 to 1997. The report looks at the following indicators: (1) persistence rate of first-time students; (2) persistence rate of full-time first-time students; (3) persistence rate of part-time first-time students; (4)…

This study explored the role of financial aid in promoting year-to-year persistence over a five-year period following reauthorization of the Higher Education Act in 1992. The study cohort included 6,711 full-time beginning freshmen in the fall 1993/1994 terms at Arizona State University. Variables examined were (1) effects of receiving any…

This study addressed the question of how much graduation rates would improve if new students were followed for 10 instead of four or six years from their date of first enrollment; it also compared enrollment and graduation patterns of new freshmen and new transfers to see if graduation rates were similar after 10 years. Participants were all…

This study was designed to measure the performance of academically underprepared students who complete remediation, compared with underprepared students who do not complete remediation. The study was conducted on 766 full-time students at Ivy Tech State College, a two-year technical institution in Indiana. All of the students included were…

This report presents retention and graduation patterns of full-time undergraduate students at Maryland's public four-year colleges and universities from 1979-98, and specifically the number and percentage of students who were retained at their original public four-year campus and those who graduated from any senior college or university in the…