This issue brief provides information and guidance to state education agencies (SEAs) regarding their accountability for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 (IDEA 2004) legislative mandates in the area of dropout prevention for students with disabilities. It also highlights the role of State Performance Plans as…

Students who are disengaged from school are at risk for poor academic achievement, skipping classes, sexual activity, substance use, and ultimately dropping out of school. Out-of-school time programs can play a role in increasing school engagement. This brief provides information on the importance of school engagement, how out-of-school time…

In many respects, Hispanic families share the aspirations and anxieties of many other families nationwide: They are keenly focused on the role completing high school and going to college will play in their children's future. Students and young adults see success in school and college as key to interesting work and a prosperous future, and most are…

Accelerated middle schools are self-contained academic programs designed to help middle school students who are behind grade level catch up with their age peers. If these students begin high school with other students their age, the hope is that they will be more likely to stay in school and graduate. The programs serve students who are one to two…

Several studies have documented low rates of agreement between clinician- and researcher-generated diagnoses. However, little is known about whether this lack of agreement has implications for the processes and outcomes of subsequent treatment. To study this possibility, the authors used diagnostic agreement to predict therapy engagement and…

Previous reviews of outpatient interventions for adolescent substance abuse have been limited in the extent to which they considered the methodological quality of individual studies. The authors assessed 31 randomized trials of outpatient interventions for adolescent substance abuse on 14 attributes of trial quality. A quality of evidence score…

We studied the effects of academic performance, motivation, and social connectedness on third-year retention, transfer, and dropout behavior. To accommodate the three outcome categories and nesting of data within institutions, we fit a hierarchical multinomial logistic regression path model with first-year academic performance as a mediating…

This study applied a multinomial HOLM technique to examine the extent to which the institutional climate for diversity influences the different types of college student withdrawal, such as stop out, drop out, and transfer. Based on a reformulation of Tinto's model along with the conceptualization of institutional climate for diversity by Hurtado…

This article reports the finding of a recent study conducted as part of a larger white paper, "Sounds of Learning: The Impact of Music Education on All Aspects of a Child's Growth and Development. The purpose of the study was to uncover what people know and what they do not know about the impact of music education on at-risk kids, in an effort to…

For juvenile offenders across the state, the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections (ADJC) is the last resort. Faced with limited academic and technical skills, these incarcerated students face a future that is very uncertain. The state recognized that educating this population is a key not only in reducing the dropout rate, but providing the…

This evaluation report of an attendance project in Portland, Oregon, public schools describes goals, methods, and results for 1985-86. The introduction states objectives of identifying, contacting, and counseling students leaving school or attending irregularly, with the purpose of guiding them into school or alternative educational programs. A…

Students failing to master minimum competency tests are categorized as dropouts in this description of the results of and remediation efforts for the statewide Texas Educational Assessment of Minimum Skills (TEAMS) Testing Program. TEAMS assesses minimum competency in basic skills at grades 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 and 11-12 exit level. The first…

A review of literature from the early sixties to the present provides an understanding of problems posed by potential dropouts (disadvantaged learners) and some potential solutions to those problems. The first section describes who potential dropouts are and why they are disadvantaged; how they can be identified; some remedial projects already…

The introductory material to this student retention manual focuses on the legal responsibility of Florida community colleges with regard to retention, and on data collection for program planning, factors that affect retention, accountability, and the essentials of a retention program. The remainder of the manual is presented as a checklist of…

The study was designed to identify and define the factors which contribute to undergraduate navigator training (UNT) attrition and to present recommendations to reduce the effects of those factors. Longitudinal data were collected from six UNT classes and augmented with cross-sectional data from a sample of 15 UNT classes. The student data are…