Recent educational attainment targets set by Australian governments recognise education and training as pivotal to the economic and social well-being of Australians. The targets seek to close the gaps in attainment that socially and economically divide the population, and, in doing so, raise the levels of skills of the workforce and improve the…

What keeps students engaged in high school? Persisting to high school graduation is becoming more difficult for many students with the increased rigor of American high school graduation requirements. While many factors that contribute to students not completing high school have been explored, and while many interventions have been developed to…

Students enter colleges and universities with the expectation that they will attain the degree to which they aspire and graduate. Colleges and universities admit students they expect to be successful using research based academic predictors of success. Students who seek a degree from community colleges similarly enter with the expectation that…

Little is known about the leadership practices and behaviors of the building leaders of dropout recovery schools and how these behaviors correlate with the ability of their student population to pass state-required standardized tests. This study analyzed the responses of 8 building leaders of dropout recovery schools regarding their leadership…

There are many factors which might cause a student to drop out of a course of study; some of these are preventable. This paper describes the piloting of a survey tool designed to identify students at risk of not completing. Attendance was found to be the strongest predictor of module completion; low or declining scores on the survey were also…

There is a strong, positive and well-documented correlation between education and health outcomes. There is much less evidence on the extent to which this correlation reflects the causal effect of education on health--the parameter of interest for policy. In this paper we attempt to overcome the difficulties associated with estimating the causal…

Ten states, beginning with Texas and California in 2001, have passed laws permitting undocumented students to pay the in-state tuition rate--rather than the more expensive out-of-state tuition rate--at public universities and colleges. We exploit state-time variation in the passage of the laws to evaluate the effects of these laws on the…

The Shott Foundation for Public Education recently published "Yes We Can: The Schott 50 State Report on Public Education and Black Males." This report focused on the exceedingly low graduation rate for Black males enrolled in schools around the nation. According to the report, the graduation rate for Black males in Miami-Dade County…

We use data from the Texas Schools Microdata Panel (TSMP) to examine the extent to which dropouts use the GED as a route to postsecondary education. Lacking suitable instruments that would allow us to directly address potential biases in estimating the "GED path" to postsecondary education, our approach is to base estimates on a set of…

The educational accountability systems of both the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 and the state of Florida (as of 1999) were modeled after Texas' system, despite its flaws. NCLB reaches for all students to achieve academic proficiency and designates students with limited English proficiency (LEP) as an important subgroup. As we work with…

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to document and analyze students' experiences with dropping out of high school, using a social capital framework. Examining the stories of high school dropouts provided valuable information related to the root causes of dropout behaviors. The context of this study was a high school in an urban school…

Reported in this document are dropout statistics from the State of West Virginia for the school year 1985-86. This annual survey of the 55 county school systems has been conducted since the 1968-69 school year. Topics surveyed include Education Consolidation and Improvement Act (ECIA) status, exit interviews, grade at exit, month dropout left…

THE PURPOSE OF THIS STUDY WAS TO DETERMINE IN THE BLOOMINGTON PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT THE DROPOUT RATE, DROPOUT CHARACTERISTICS, AND WHAT HAPPENS TO THE STUDENT AFTER HE DROPS OUT. THE DATA IS DESIGNED TO BE USED TO DETERMINE WAYS TO REDUCE THE DROPOUT RATE. THE BLOOMINGTON DROPOUT RATE IS HIGHER THAN THE NATIONAL DROPOUT RATE BECAUSE GENERAL…

Excerpted from Youth in Transition, Volume 3: Dropping Out -Problem or Symptom?" (Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1971). Discusses the results of a nationwide research study set up to distinguish between causes and effects of a group of tenth grade boys who did or did not become dropouts. Professional…

This literature review focuses on the dropout phenomenon in general education, discussing interventions, dropout characteristics, and consequences of dropping out, and emphasizing literature on special education dropouts. The paper concludes by discussing implications for research and service programs that can address the dropout problem in…