This knowledge brief is part of a continuing series designed to inform California education leaders about new research findings on key state policy topics. It summarizes recent findings on improving the access to, and the use of, teacher workforce data in California, and focuses on the importance of instituting a statewide teacher data system that…

Increasing the racial and ethnic diversity of the teacher workforce is vital to the success of all students nationally. Calls to prepare, recruit, and retain more teachers of color come from a variety of stakeholders, including policymakers, state and district leaders, as well as school community members. Yet, a growing body of evidence…

Governments around the world use grant and loan programs to ease the financial constraints that contribute to socioeconomic gaps in college completion. A growing body of research assesses the impact of grants; less is known about how loan programs affect persistence and degree completion. We use detailed administrative data from Chile to provide…

This research brief examines the impact of dual credit participation on second-year persistence and first-year GPA, broken down by gender. It also explores whether dual credit courses can help narrow the gap in outcomes between female and male students. The first brief in this series (ED611821) already revealed a gap in dual credit participation…

For several years in the United Kingdom, the retention and progression of Black, Asian, minority and ethnic students in higher education has remained a national challenge. Currently, postsecondary institutions are developing plans and initiatives to decolonize the curriculum by implementing inclusive teaching practices. While there are a variety…

Educating engineers should be for the benefit of students and their aspirations, whether that is helping their communities and/or environment, achieving financial stability, or achieving the goal of earning a degree in a lucrative field. Obtaining an engineering degree positions students as capable agents for societal change, which are not limited…

The importance of being mathematically literate in today's highly technologically complex society is essential as individuals strive to compete and function effectively. This study examines what the relationship looks like between students' perceived grit levels and their mathematics proficiency as viewed from the perspective of school leaders.…

The attrition of teachers working in mainstream public schools is a concerning trend. While some research on attrition with teachers in general or special education teachers is present, few studies exist within the field of Deaf education that explore the teacher attrition in mainstream schools and none are found that utilized a qualitative…

Latina students are the least likely to succeed in college. The purpose of this study was to investigate the factors that motivate and influence Latina students who are first-generation in college to enroll and stay in college. In this quantitative research the following questions were used to guide the study: (1) What are the key motivational…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of a pre-college summer program at Missouri University of Science and Technology known as Hit the Ground Running (HGR). It used a convergent mixed-methods research design, combining data from semi-structured interviews with HGR participants and institutional data on previous HGR participants…

Open enrollment postsecondary institutions serve as a primary pathway to higher education for many, including people who are formerly incarcerated. Still, over 95% of justice-impacted students do not obtain a college degree (Couloute, 2018). Therefore, additional research is needed among this underrepresented group to support their journey through…

The primary purpose of this study was to explore any relationship between pre- release Career and Technical Education (CTE) course participation outcomes and post- release employment status. The target population of this study was defined as offenders who were released from the custody of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice on supervision for…

This causal-comparative research project is a study examining a Tennessee community college's institutional services and programs designed to support African American students compared to those students' persistence to graduation. The results of this causal-comparative study employing mixed-methods of data collection revealed no significant…

Concerns about first-year students' retention rates and schools' programming for first-year college students are growing in higher education circles. In the United States, only about 59% of full-time, first-time bachelor's degree-seeking students graduate within six years (National Center for Education Statistics, 2012). Debates focused on tactics…

Encouraging students to persevere in problem solving can be accomplished using extended tasks where students solve a problem over an extended time. This article presents a structure for use of extended tasks and examples of student thinking that can emerge through such tasks. Considerations for implementation are provided.