This paper employs a stochastic production frontier model to assess the efficiency of the senior secondary schools in the Gambia. It examines their efficiency in using and mixing the educational inputs of average teacher salary, average teacher education, average teacher experience and students-to-teacher ratio in producing the number of students…

This research targeted elementary education graduates of a large Southwestern university who were transfer students, and compared them to native students on selected variables. These variables included retention in teaching, and perception of supports and obstacles at the university. The sample consisted of 143 respondents: 73 native and 70…

In 2006, the National Center for Postsecondary Research, of which is MDRC is a partner, launched a demonstration of one-semester learning community programs at six colleges; five of these programs focused on developmental education. This is the final report from the project and includes findings from analyses that pool data across these five…

According to research, dual enrollment (DE) participation is associated with a range of positive college outcomes (such as GPA, credit accumulation, and persistence) for mainstream students, as well as those in career-technical education pathways and programs. In addition, lower achieving, lower income students may experience greater gains from …

The Bologna Process is one of the largest endeavours ever undertaken aimed at reforming higher education continent-wide. It has created a framework of measures and policies aiming to foster greater compatibility and comparability of the national systems of higher education across Europe. Despite the impact reforms and change in higher education…

This report presents the findings of a rigorous experimental impact evaluation and implementation study of one such intervention, the Content Literacy Continuum (CLC), developed by researchers at the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning. This evaluation of CLC was conducted by three partnering organizations: REL Midwest, MDRC, and…

In an attempt to demonstrate the relevance of workplace learning (previously known as "cooperative education") in guiding student and curriculum development, this article presents findings from a research project on the current practice of workplace learning, drawn from an analysis of evaluation reports in a university of technology.…

Quality assurance (QA) and accreditation in higher education include the systematic management and assessment of procedures to monitor performance and to address areas of improvement. In the context of globalization, without assuring the quality of higher education programmes it is not possible to ensure credit transfer and student mobility, to…

The United States high school dropout problem has been called a national crisis, with only 74.9% of public high school students graduating with a diploma in 2008. With states and districts under mounting pressure to raise graduation rates, there is increasing urgency to obtain more accurate and timely data to systematically identify students most…

"We know that education can be an arduous process. Countries use different approaches based on societal acceptances, but effective education always requires enormous efforts. Whether success is achieved, depends on the development of a rigorous and progressive curriculum, while at the same time providing all students the opportunity to…

The past 30 years have seen a steady expansion in the educational choices available to parents as school choice programs have spread around the country. Enabling parents to choose schools that fit their children's unique needs is a win-win-win: Research shows that such school choice policies benefit the children who participate, give traditional…

To assist campuses with accurately forecasting student retention, and to help with increasing it, this report identifies early indicators of students' progress toward completing a degree and establishes benchmarks that campuses can use to evaluate their performance. The report is based on a Web-based survey of college and university officials in…

School voucher and education tax credit programs have proliferated in the United States over the past 2 decades. Advocates have argued that they will enable families to become active consumers in a free and competitive education marketplace, but some fear that these programs may bring a heavy regulatory burden that could stifle market forces.…

Programs linking college aid to academic achievement could work either by lowering the cost of college or by inducing additional student effort. I examine the PROMISE program in West Virginia, which offers free tuition to students who maintain a minimum GPA and course load. Using administrative data, I exploit discontinuities in the eligibility…

Using data from the 2005 NAEP High School Transcript Study, this paper examines the mathematics course-taking of rural high school students. Although several studies indicate rural high school students' mathematics achievement is comparable to that of students in non-rural high schools, the mathematics course-taking patterns of rural and non-rural…