Attrition rates are an indicator of a school's holding power, or ability to keep students enrolled in school and learning until they graduate. This study examines regional trends in Texas for the number and percent of students lost from public high school enrollment prior to graduation. A comparative analysis of 1985-86, 2005-06, 2006-07,…

Despite the national emphasis on assessment and accountability for student learning, it is unclear whether day treatment and residential schools are participating in current reform efforts. On average, responding principals reported that 87% of students participated in state assessments. Although 80% of schools use local education agency or state…

This article discusses the evaluation of programmatic interventions to enhance postsecondary STEM education for students with disabilities. SciTrain University, a federally funded project to provide instructor training on accessible teaching according to universal design principles, is presented here as a case study on evaluation for similar…

In this essay, Rosa Bruno-Jofre and George Hills examine two major Ontario policy documents: 1968's "Living and Learning" and 1994's "For the Love of Learning." The purpose is, first, to gain insight into the uses of the term "excellence" in the context of discourse about educational aims and evaluation, and, second,…

Since its inception in 1993, Georgia's HOPE Scholarship Program has provided thousands of state residents the opportunity to pursue a college education. This study examines the history and recent changes to the merit-based program along with interesting consequences resulting from its implementation. This study demonstrates how the program has…

Investigations of why students with emotional disturbance (ED) are underidentified in special education have often focused on economic factors and problems with the definition of ED. The present study focuses on variation in underidentification across states and its relationship to political ideology. State-level political, economic, and…

The work reported here takes place in the educational domain. Learning with Computer-Based Learning Environments changes habits, especially for teachers. In this paper, we wish to demonstrate through examples how learning sessions set up in a Game-Based Learning environment may be regulated by the teacher thanks to observation facilities.…

This paper introduces a generalization of the regression-discontinuity design (RDD). Traditionally, RDD is considered in a two-dimensional framework, with a single assignment variable and cutoff. Treatment effects are measured at a single location along the assignment variable. However, this represents a specialized (and straight-forward)…

At first glance, closing the achievement gap seems fairly straightforward. It is a difficult task to accomplish, but it does not seem an especially complex one to conceptualize. How educators look at achievement gaps will determine their success in reducing them. When designing interventions, the author suggests that educators need to remember the…

Fixed effects models are often useful in longitudinal studies when the goal is to assess the impact of teacher or school characteristics on student learning. In this article, I introduce an alternative procedure: adaptive centering with random effects. I show that this procedure can replicate the fixed effects analysis while offering several…

Few documents in higher education have enjoyed the influence or longevity of the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the 1960 law that transformed the state's public colleges and served as a blueprint for public systems across the country. Even today, almost 50 years after it was written, the master plan retains a mythic status in…

Public schools are currently operating in a pressure-cooker of accountability systems in which they must teach students to high standards and meet ever increasing targets for student proficiency, or face increasingly severe sanctions. Into this mix is thrown educational technology and the funding for that technology. The literature espouses the…

There is growing momentum all across the country for substantial change to the accountability provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Pending Congressional reauthorization of the NCLB Act presents an opportunity for change. At the same time, the Obama administration has signaled its understanding of the need for change by proposing…

The signing of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002 has created "potholes" for elementary school administrators as they seek to make Adequate Yearly Progress on the Pennsylvania School System Assessment (PSSA). This study includes three rural Pennsylvania elementary school administrators implementing the mandates of the No Child Left…

In this brief, the authors share what they are learning from looking beneath the averages. They identify public and private four-year institutions that appear to serve their black and white students equally well--that is, where both groups graduate at similar rates. They also identify public and private institutions that have a lot of work to do…