Every May, hundreds of thousands of Texas high school seniors don caps and gowns to celebrate an academic rite of passage: high school graduation. Texas' youth face a rapidly changing world, one increasingly dependent upon education as the cornerstone for economic success. Without the skills to succeed in the nation's new economy, students who…

Basic skills and life skills'' are incorporated in an innovative effort to upgrade dropouts. (Author)

The study concludes that there is no significant positive correlation between reading ability and length of stay in the Job Corps. (Author)

Describes Project Intercept in Ossining (New York), which cut the high school's dropout, absence, and failure rates by involving teachers, students, and families. The program uses four major strategies--teacher/staff inservice training, alternative academic programs, student training in social and interpersonal skills, and family intervention…

A multiple regression was used to predict the grade in which secondary school dropouts would leave school. Predictors were twenty measures drawn from sixth grade records. It was concluded that a construct labelled "level of educational attainment" is the best determinant of both whether and when a student will drop out. (Author/JKS)

Reviews four current books on the dropout problem. Two are termed state of the art, but all are limited because the needs of at-risk students are numerous, the programs for them are diverse, and theories of student engagement are not yet well developed. (DM)

Students with disabilities who dropped out of high school (n=60) cited more school factors (lack of academic success, suspension, peer problems) than personal factors (motivation, pregnancy, family problems) influencing dropout. Three-fourths suggested improved communication with teachers, flexible scheduling, and more relevance would decrease…

High school dropouts interviewed for a study released in early March, 2006, were far more likely to say they left school because they were unmotivated, not challenged enough, or overwhelmed by troubles outside of school than because they were failing academically. This article discusses this study, which consisted of four focus groups with…

Every year 1.3 million U.S. high school students drop out of school with one quarter of female students failing to graduate on time. Female dropouts are more likely to be unemployed, to earn less when they are employed, to become pregnant before the age of 20, to become obese, to smoke, and to drink more heavily than their male counterparts. This…

REL Pacific at McREL, 1 of 10 Regional Educational Laboratories (RELs) funded by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), serves educators in American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia (Chuuk, Kosrae, Pohnpei, and Yap), Guam, Hawai'i, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Republic…

The United States has become more ethnically diverse, and this trend is projected to continue. Despite an increase in minority group enrollment on campus in the United States during the last decade, their rates of degree completion are not keeping pace (NCES, 2007). The question that remains to be answered is: What factors are unique to minority…

College readiness is becoming an increasingly important standard by which to measure school success and student achievement. While high school graduation and dropout prevention remain critical issues for educators, there is a substantial gap in outcomes between students who only earn a high school diploma and those who go on to obtain a college…

Many would agree on the primacy of a high quality education for social and economic health, democracy, and individual prosperity, but scarcely a week goes by that we do not hear that a quality education for all children is not possible. Intercultural Development Research Association (IDRA) and their partners are told that parents don't care;…

Engineering programs suffer a high attrition rate, which causes the nation to graduate much less engineers. A survey of the literature reveals that the high attrition rate is due mainly to the fact that the first year of an engineering program is all fundamental theory and students don't see the connection to their future engineering careers. To…

Fosterage is an important cultural institution which serves to strengthen kinship solidarity among a range of other functions including meeting needs for child labour. Its effects on education are ambiguous. This study examines fostering as a possible contributor to the low levels of educational access and progress in the district using secondary…