There is a growing body of research that suggests that improving the quality of online formative assessment strategies increases students' motivation to participate in online assessment. However, the way in which course leaders at open distance learning universities communicate the expectations of learning to students through online formative…

Four-day school week schedules are being adopted with increasing frequency, particularly in rural areas. In this paper, we consider the academic implications of students in Oregon attending a four-day school week for the first time when they enter high school. We find 11th grade math achievement in 0.09 standard deviations lower among four-day…

The National Guard Youth ChalleNGe program is a residential, quasi-military program for youth ages 16 to 18 who are experiencing difficulty in traditional high school. The program provides classroom instruction and other structured activities to young people at 40 different sites. The focus of this report is on determining how sites can measure…

The Texas Education Code (§ 29.051) requires school districts to provide every language minority student with the opportunity to participate in either a bilingual or English as a second language (ESL) program. This evaluation report summarizes the performance of students who participated in the district's bilingual and ESL programs during the…

This is the second brief of three summarizing results from the longitudinal analysis of the Transfer Opportunity Project (TOP). TOP, funded by a grant from the Institute for Education Sciences (IES), explores the possible factors contributing to the low percentage of community college students who go on to earn bachelor's degrees. The project uses…

The purpose of this study is to determine the factors relating to school dropout from the perspective of dropout students, their teachers, and their parents. It also explores students' experiences after school dropout. To this end, in this qualitative study, five young adults who dropped out of middle or high school and their parents and teachers…

This study utilizes a critical phenomenological approach and adopts concepts of linguistic hegemony and linguistic capital, to explore the life course stages of former Korean college student-athletes who dropped out of athletic programs and who faced vocational challenge but obtained successful careers in their ideal career fields through…

Background/Context: Emerging experiences suggest that research-practice partnerships (RPPs) can benefit both research and practice. As researchers and practitioners become part of the same social network, they also can become trusted sources of information for one another. By modeling the research use process, practitioners can incorporate what…

Ensuring that students of all backgrounds are smoothly transitioned through the stages of access, participation and completion in higher education has been the focus of much public policy and research in recent decades. Subsequently, public policy discourse treats those who do not complete their higher education degrees as unsuccessful, despite a…

The theoretical framework of the paper combines the notions of school disengagement and educational trajectories. Our current research has demonstrated that several trajectories of school disengagement can be distinguished: "unanticipated crisis, parabola, downward spiral, boomerang, resilient route, shading out." The text focuses on two…

Periods of being NEET (not in education, employment or training) can have long-term consequences for individuals' future job opportunities, earnings, psycho-social well-being and health, all with high societal costs. Therefore, policy-makers across Europe seek interventions that successfully reduce NEET numbers. Drawing on a longitudinal…

Based on existing empirical research, schools continue to use single intervention programs for intervening on behalf of at-risk students despite the fact that those programs do not meet with significant success in decreasing dropout rates. The problem is that the phenomenon of multidimensional approaches to intervening on behalf of ninth-grade…

Although research shows higher levels of perceived academic control are associated with academic adjustment in the first year of university, little is known about how changes in perceived control over multiple years relate to longitudinal university dropout and grades. Thus, our 3-year study (N = 1,007) examined whether changes in perceived…

Mixed methods longitudinal studies continue to be rare, yet have potential for transcending the limits of qualitative and quantitative paradigms. This article compares the life stories of 47 young people generated from a cohort study of 6000 children born in 1995. The cases were sampled through an association between two variables--drug use and…

Each year approximately 1.3 million students dropout of high school and an estimated 40% of minority students do not graduate on time (Roybal, Thornton, & Usinger, 2014). In high school, 22% of students repeat 9th-grade classes because students fail to make a smooth transition. This gives the 9th-grade the highest enrollment rate and the…