The 2009 SOAR (Student Outcome and Achievement Report) relies upon two sets of data, the academic performance data (which are collected directly from the colleges and universities) and the SAT (Scholastic Assessment Test)/ACT (American College Testing Program) data, to examine the relationship between students' academic achievements and…

To improve performance, Connecticut must: (1) Increase student access and success in all types of postsecondary education (4-year, 2-year, training), particularly in critical workforce fields; (2) Reach consensus on what constitutes a "college-ready" curriculum for high school students; (3) Improve college graduation rates; and (4)…

In nearly two decades as a community-college leader, Martha J. Kanter has earned acclaim for a strong record helping disabled and low-income students graduate from college and for her bold efforts to overhaul curricula to help more students master basic skills. After working for more than 30 years at nearly every level of the California community…

We investigate graduate school outcomes for students who entered economics Ph.D. programs in Fall 2002. Students in Top-15 ranked programs and those with higher verbal and quantitative GRE scores are less likely to have dropped out, but no more likely to have graduated. Those with undergraduate degrees from Top-60 U.S. liberal arts colleges and…

Each edition of the IDRA Newsletter strives to provide many different perspectives on the issues in education topics discussed and to define its significance in the state and national dialogue. This issue focuses on Student Engagement and includes: (1) Texas Public School Attrition Study, 2007-08: At Current Pace, Schools Will Lose Many More…

This paper reviews state cross-institutional policies designed to better integrate state community colleges with traditional four-year colleges and university system schools, commonly referred to as "transfer and articulation policies," and examines how patterns of college attendance, transfer, and degree earning vary across states with different…

Our study examined the factors related to the retention/academic success of African American males at a mid-sized, regional, predominantly white university in the south. The selected university has an African American male graduation rate, of approximately twenty three percent, which is thirteen percentage points below the national Black male…

In British Columbia, K-12 school Aboriginal students' completion rates are far from equivalent to those of their non-Aboriginal peers. In addition, there is a high degree of variability in Aboriginal students' school completion rates across schools and communities. Administrative data associating approximately 1.5 million school census records of…

This article presents an interview with two people who had responsibility for leading the development of the Voluntary System of Accountability (VSA)--a joint project of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC) and the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), supported by the Lumina…

This article presents the findings from a narrative inquiry exploring the perceived outcomes associated with a high school service-learning graduation requirement from a diverse group of college students. In particular, we were interested in participants' stories related to their experiences meeting the requirement, the meaning they made of the…

Despite decades of interest in Ph.D. student outcomes, there have been few comprehensive studies of doctoral student completion. Compared to research on undergraduate students, longitudinal studies of doctoral student completion in multiple disciplines at multiple institutions are exceptionally rare. As a consequence, there is relatively scant…

The City College of New York (CCNY) is one of the most diverse campuses in the country--approximately 90 foreign languages are spoken on campus. Educating recent high school graduates to working adults, CCNY also ranks among the leading schools conferring bachelor's degrees to African-Americans. The University of Maryland, College Park, celebrated…

Students enter college exceedingly confident that they will earn high grades and engage themselves fully in their courses. However, students' grades and academic behaviors often do not match their expectations. This is especially true in introductory science courses, where grades and academic engagement are often low, even in courses taught by…

In a comprehensive action intended to change how the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) law is carried out, the U.S. Secretary of Education formally proposed a package of new regulations that would require state and local school officials to provide more and better information about high school graduation rates, student test performance, and the…

"The Condition of Education 2018" is a congressionally mandated annual report summarizing the latest data on education in the United States. This report is designed to help policymakers and the public monitor educational progress. This report contains indicators on the state of education in the United States, from prekindergarten through…