Occupational inheritance refers to the phenomenon where sons and daughters follow in the career paths of their parents. Historically this has been documented in the areas of engineering, medicine and education. This study investigated the phenomenon of occupational inheritance as it pertains to military service. Archival data provided by the…

Over the past thirty years, the modern workplace has radically changed, and the demands on those making the transition from the classroom to the workforce continue to rise. Students from Birmingham and Boston no longer compete against each other for jobs; instead, their rivals are well-educated students from Sydney and Singapore. But as…

Data from college admissions tests can provide a valuable measure of student achievement, but the non-representativeness of test-takers is an important concern. We examine selectivity bias in both state-level and school-level SAT and ACT averages. The degree of selectivity may differ importantly across and within schools, and across and within…

The Student Transitions Project (STP) studied the flow of a group of 2001/02 grade 12 graduates over five years, from 2002/03 to 2006/07 to track their movement into and among B.C. public post-secondary institutions and analyze their retention and credential completion outcomes. The primary research question of interest is: "What is the flow…

This is the second in a series of articles describing ongoing research that involves studying engineering college student graduation using Cox proportional hazards models. The first article, called "Proportional hazards models of graduation," was based on main effects models of graduation controlling for descriptors such as in-state residence,…

This commentary on articles in this special issue of "Psychology in the Schools" discusses the importance of school completion by identifying the individual and social costs associated with youths who fail to complete school. An appreciation of these various costs sets the stage for exploring an emerging key to school completion--engaging students…

A recent Web search returned more than 1.1 billion hits for the phrase "time management," a concept that school leaders hear in seminars, read about in books, and are trained in during professional development. But, like principals, students too need the advantage of a little more time. One high school in Indiana is giving students the…

The 2008 MetLife/NASSP High School Principal of the Year, Molly Howard, was working as a special education administrator in another part of the county when Jefferson County (GA) High School was being constructed in fall 1994. It was to be the only high school in the county, the consolidation of two high schools. In this article, the author…

In this study, productivity growth in 35 Australian universities is investigated using non-parametric frontier techniques over the period 1998-2003. The five inputs included in the analysis are full-time equivalent academic and non-academic staff, non-labor expenditure and undergraduate and postgraduate student load while the six outputs are…

A proposal eliminates the "single diploma" concept and creates three basic graduation certificates: standard diploma (with endorsements for academic or vocational achievement), certificate of attendance, and certificate of basic competencies. (Author/MLF)

In this paper, the authors present a complex set of interactions, agents, pressures, and contextual factors that intersect during the earliest years of major effort at education policy reform. While the focus of this analysis is exclusively on state policy changes and school district response in New York, the issues involved are all but universal…

A new Georgia program aims to give every high school a full-time educator dedicated to dropout prevention. This program is part of Georgia's highly visible new attempt to increase the state's graduation rate. Rather than giving school counselors or administrators one more task, Gov. Sonny Perdue's goal for the program, which was approved by the…

The Annual Condition of Education Report provides a wide range of state-level data, including shifts in student populations and demographics, teacher salaries and characteristics, student achievement results, and school financial information. A few examples of the categories presented in this 22nd edition report include: (1) Enrollment; (2) Early…

In the modern world, higher education is transitioning from enrollment mode to recruitment mode. This shift paved the way for institutional research and policy making from historical data perspective. More and more universities in the U.S. are implementing and using enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, which collect vast amounts of data.…

Under the George W. Bush U.S. presidential administration, the federal government pushed for greater accountability among institutions of higher education for educational outcomes. Graduation rate is a key performance indicator of institutional accountability. Previous researchers of student attrition focused primarily on the effects of student…